COllege Admissions News and ACT / SAT Strategy

The verbal section of the SAT exam includes a section on critical reading. Reading “critically” means reading without simply accepting the text as fact. When you read a text critically, you are trying to evaluate the validity of the claims presented, recognizing that the author necessarily has experiences, biases, or prejudices that influence his or her views on the subject.

If the piece presented is an argument, the author's biases may influence the choice of material presented or excluded, and the relative importance accorded to each claim in the construction of the overall argument. Ultimately, you have to try as far as possible to separate the author's biases from the objective merits of the claim.

The ACT Reading test requires you to read four short passages and answer ten multiple choice questions about each one. The time limit for this section of the ACT is 35 minutes, a little over a question a minute. Of course the 35 minutes includes the time required to read the passages, so in practice you'll need to answer around 2 questions a minute, depending on how fast you read and how thoroughly you understand the passage.