Dalby's ACT Classes

Many people are confused about whether they should take the ACT or the SAT. Our observation is that most people get approximately the same score regardless of which test they take; however, there are some interesting exceptions'

Students who do better on the SAT tend to be:

Strong readers with good vocabularies

Excellent problem solvers with strong basic math skills, but weaker skills in trigonometry, logs, and polynomials

Slow readers who find that the line references speed up their reading.

Students who do better on the ACT tend to be:

Doing well in all their math classes but lack an intuition about math

Poor guessers

Students with ADD or ADHD

Fast readers with poor vocabularies

Students who enjoy science (you don't have to know any science but the speed with which a student can do the passages increases with the comfort the student has with the material)

On the ACT students can create the illusion of higher scores if they have great grammar skills but poor math skills. Since the ACT English (called Writing on the SAT) is averaged in with the other three scores and the math weighs a quarter, the grammar pulls up the composite score. Schools are still in the habit of giving less importance to the Writing section of the SAT and tend to just look at the math and reading, so there is an illusion of a better score when you look at the composite ACT.

We recommend that all students check out the problem sets at the ACT website to see if they like the format.

The easiest way to see which test, if either, gets you a higher score is to take a practice test in both the ACT and the SAT. Do not use the PSAT as a predictor of SAT scores since the PSAT math is easier than the SAT math.

What’s involved in the ACT preparation?

 Four 2-hour classes grouped by math scores

 Four full, timed, real ACT tests (a pre-test, three full tests administered weekly)

 Timing strategies

 Grammar rules needed for English section

 In-depth math instruction with particular attention to pacing

 Classes taught by Kate or Rick Dalby

The class cost is $690 per student. Extra tutoring is $100/hour. Make-up for missed classes is $100/hour (it usually takes one hour to review a class privately). Extra testing is $25 per full test.

Because we have less demand for ACT classes, all schedules are customized and require four students minimum to form a class. This means that if you are interested in an ACT class instead of ACT tutoring you will need to join with three other students of your choosing to take our course. We recommend your friends have similar math skills so the class pacing works for all of you.

Click this link to our on-line class registration form for the custom ACT test preparation.

Payment in full is required from all four students once we have mutually agreed on a schedule. We reserve the right to add additional students to the class (for a limit of ten total). We reserve the right to cancel a class due to insufficient enrollment.

All classes and testing take place at our office at 1401 Chain Bridge Rd; Suite 102, McLean, VA 22101