Boosted Brains ACT Prep

I was a 4.0 student taking all AP and honors classes, flying through them with no problem.

Took the ACT for the first time and got a 31.

Not bad—but I knew I could do better. So I did what every motivated kid does. Grabbed the big red prep book off the shelf and started grinding.

12 practice ACTs in a row. Probably 100 hours of work when you count all the review.

Took the real test again. Got the exact same 31.

For a long time I figured I was doing something wrong on my end—studying the wrong way, rushing, not focused enough. Eventually I realized none of that was actually the problem.

The tool itself was broken.

Practice tests measure your skill. They don't build it.

It's the same thing as a baseball player walking up to live pitching, swinging, missing, walking back to the dugout, and doing it again. He'll figure out he can't hit. He won't figure out why or what to do about it.

That's what 12 practice tests gave me. 12 diagnostics. Zero development.

The fix isn't more practice tests. It's pulling the test apart, finding the specific question types costing your kid the most points, and drilling those individually until they're not weaknesses. Then moving to the next thing.

Most ACT prep in this country is just repeated measurement. That's the whole reason scores don't move.

If your kid has been grinding practice tests and the number isn't budging, they're not the problem. The tool is.

If you want a breakdown of the system we actually use to develop ACT skills (instead of just measuring them), comment SYSTEM and I'll send it over.

If you've been the homework police for ACT prep for the last 6 months, the problem isn't your kid.

The default advice is "be more consistent with consequences." Tighten the rules. Take away the phone. Stand over them while they open a practice test.

That advice is wrong — not because consequences don't work, but because it treats nagging as a kid problem when nagging is actually a system problem.

When a teenager won't study for the ACT, two things are usually missing. They don't have a reason to care, and they don't have a system that's easy enough to stick with. Either gap alone is enough to stall everything. Both together produce the exact dynamic you're probably living in right now — them avoiding, you reminding, the relationship slowly turning into a transaction about a test.

Spencer didn't get to a 32 because his dad nagged him harder about studying. He got there because his dad set up a job shadow with an FBI-agent friend, Spencer locked in on the Coast Guard Academy, and his 25 became the only thing between him and the life he wanted. The motivation closed the first gap.

Liv didn't get to a 30 because she found more time in the day. She had AP classes and 25 to 30 hours a week in marching band. She got there because we built a system that fit into the cracks of her life — 30 to 45 minutes in study hall after school, 15 to 20 minutes after marching band practice. The system closed the second gap.

Here's what's underneath both stories. The goal of ACT prep isn't a 30. The goal is your high schooler studying for the ACT without you having to ask.

That's a system outcome, not a discipline outcome. And every additional week of being the homework police is a week of erosion on a relationship that has to last way past this test.

Stack the two pieces — a real reason to care and a system that fits their actual life — and your teenager studies because they want to. You stop chasing them. The score moves on its own.

If you want a breakdown of the system we use to add 5 points to a kid's ACT without the nagging, comment SYSTEM and I'll send it over.

If you've already paid for a big-name ACT prep class and your kid's score didn't budge, the class was the problem. Not your kid.

A few years ago my sister was in one of the most well-known ACT programs in the country. Came in at a 27. Huge Zoom class with dozens of other students, fixed curriculum, almost zero access to the instructors.

She did the work. Her score didn't move.

After a few weeks of watching her grind on a system that wasn't built for her, I pulled her out. We sat down and figured out what was actually costing her points—for her, it was transition questions on the English section. We drilled those, and only those, until she was getting them right reflexively. Then we moved to the next thing.

A few weeks later, she scored a 33. Princeton, Dartmouth, and Penn all sent her acceptance letters.

Here's the thing about a big-name class. It teaches to the average student. So when your kid sits through a unit on something they already know, that's 45 minutes gone—and not 45 minutes spent on the thing actually holding their score back.

Personalization is the variable. A class structurally can't deliver it.

If you want to see what an actually personalized prep system looks like—the one we use to add five-plus points without a single group session—comment SYSTEM and I'll send you the breakdown.

Mia got a 33 on ACT math without ever hiring another math tutor.

She was in AP Calc and AP Stats. Every chapter test in high school — crushed it.

Then the ACT came back with a 24 on math.

Her family did what almost every family does first — hired a math tutor. Drilled more math problems. Made sure she could do the work.

The score didn't move.

Because the problem was never the math.

The ACT throws 30 to 40 different concepts at your kid in 50 minutes. Right triangle. Statistics. Systems of equations. A circle. Question by question. High school has never once tested her on switching between concepts that fast — she gets a chapter, she gets a unit test, she goes deep on one thing at a time.

Mia could solve any of those questions on a chapter test. She just couldn't switch between them inside a single section.

It's like making a soccer player who's never played a real game do more shooting drills. The drills aren't bad. They're just not the skill the actual game is testing.

The fix was mixed worksheets — 30 different question types in one block, drilled until her brain stopped resetting between every problem. Four weeks of that.

24 to 33. $60,000 at Auburn. $60,000 at Louisville. Over $100,000 at Marquette.

If your honors kid is in AP-level math and still pulling a low-20s ACT math score, more tutoring isn't going to move it. The diagnosis is the variable.

If you want the breakdown of how we figure out exactly what's actually holding your kid's score back, comment SYSTEM and I'll send the system we use to add five points.

A perfect ACT score has nothing to do with how smart your kid is.

I know how that sounds.

I've scored a 36 on the ACT 13 times—and people always assume there must be something genetic going on. That I was just born "good at tests."

I wasn't.

I scored a 31 my first time. I had a 4.0, every honors and AP class my high school offered, and my score wouldn't move for months.

What changed wasn't me. It was the method.

Once I figured out the right process—break the test into individual skills, find each weakness, drill them one at a time—my score went 31 to 36.

And every student I've taught that process to afterward saw the same thing.

My sister: 27 to 33 in a few weeks. Princeton, Dartmouth, and Penn admitted her.

A student named Carter: 23 to 30 in seven weeks doing about an hour a day.

283 students past a 30 now. All kinds of kids—athletes, valedictorians, kids who hated school, kids who loved it.

The thing they had in common wasn't talent.

It was the system they were running.

Parents tell themselves "my kid just isn't a good test taker" when nothing's working. It's the easiest story to land on. But it's almost always wrong.

When a hardworking student's score is stuck, the variable isn't the student. It's the methodology.

I wasn't anything magic. There's just a repeatable process.

If you want to see what that looks like in action—a student named Ava went from a 22 to a 30 with $88K in scholarships—comment AVA and I'll send you her case study.