Over a period of many tests:
English: went up 6 points
Princeton Review Cracking the ACT English section. Page by Page.
Math:
went up 3 points
No prep-just took the test over and over and looked for patterns -got a 36
Science:
went up 6 points
Never really figured this one out-sat down once with my chem teacher but each test my score was up and then down each test. I think it was more dumb luck (and guessing B again and again)
Reading
went up 12 points (Im not kidding-this is not a typo)
I basically spent the summer filling out my applications and reading (and working). I really struggled with this section and did the most prep. I honestly took 20 practice tests-I dont think they helped much. what worked: My AP Lit teacher told me that If I read all of the books/magazines on his list he guaranteed I would raise my score at least one point for every book. It more than worked:
(1) The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (great book)
(2) To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (maybe the worst book ever-I kept falling to sleep-it is awful-terrible)
(3) Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (pretty ok)
(4) God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
(5) Consider the Lobster & Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
(6) Chaos: Making A New Science by James Gleick
(7) A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (science book written for non scientists really good)
(8) In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (great book!)
(9) Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (worse than it sounds-boring-terrible)
(10) Magazines like The New Yorker, Economist, and The New York Times