Your ACT study plan

What this does, and what it refuses to do

The schedule follows three findings rather than anyone's opinion about studying.

• Topics come back after a gap. Reviewing something days later beats reviewing it twice in one sitting — in Cepeda and colleagues' review of 254 studies, spaced practice won 259 of 271 comparisons. So a concept you work on returns three sessions later, then seven, then fifteen.
• Sessions end mixed, not blocked. In a randomised trial in real classrooms, students given mixed practice scored 61% on a delayed test against 38% for students who did the same problems grouped by type. A real test never tells you which method a question wants, so practice should not either.
• Less, near the end. Nothing met for the first time in the last week is ready by test day, and the attempt costs sleep. The final days are review only.

It will not tell you what you are going to score. The figure you have seen quoted — twenty hours of practice for a hundred-odd points — comes from data that could not separate students who were also paying for other test prep, and no honest tool can turn your practice history into a promised number. This plan chooses what you do next. What that is worth is up to you and the day.

It also caps itself: at most 40 minutes in a day, never more than five days in a row, and a rest day is part of the plan rather than a failure of it.