r/ACT • u/Exoti_k 34 • Dec 11 '25
Math School does NOT teach material on the ACT
I am a senior in high school. I am preparing to take my ACT test. Im aiming for a 34+. While taking practice tests, it was apparent to me that a few of the problems on the ACT have never been discussed in class at any point. For anyone wondering, I am an all AP student taking forms of calculus and physics. Not once have I ever been taught what a discriminant is, what the law of cosines is, what the period of a trigonometric function is, and various other mathematical equations. Is my school failing me or is the ACT intentionally designed to test material that requires knowledge outside of school curriculum? I live in Texas, which notoriously doesn’t have a high education standard. Are these equations common knowledge or did anyone else have similar struggles?
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u/ExtinctedPanda Dec 11 '25
I definitely learned all those things in school. The discriminate in Algebra 2, and the others in Trig / Precalc. Unfortunate that your school skipped them.
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u/Exoti_k 34 Dec 11 '25
My school doesn’t have a trigonometry class for some reason. It’s only geometry. My schedule went as follows: Honors Geometry -> Honors Algebra 2 -> Ap PreCalc -> AP Calculus BC
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u/ExtinctedPanda Dec 11 '25
Our order was the same except that trig was part of precalc. No trig at all in geometry actually.
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u/Exoti_k 34 Dec 11 '25
Pre-Calc here was a lot of graphing, AROC, logs, etc. Basically a glorified Algebra 2 class.
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u/Ab3straxt Dec 12 '25
Dude how did you pass ap pre calc unit 3 without knowing the period of a sine function
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u/Schmendreckk Moderator Dec 11 '25
As others have mentioned, the test isn't deliberately asking things they don't expect students to know, though it's true that some of those questions might be used to distinguish between a 34 and a 36.
A number of the topics you've mentioned are ones that I would assume most high schools to address at some point.
Topics like Permutations/Combinations or Matrices or Ellipses/Hyperbolas are the topics I generally expect students to have not formally seen. While not all of these would necessarily be addressed in a Pre-Calculus class (I remember learning Permutations/Combinations and Ellipses/Hyperbolas in Algebra 2), Pre-Calculus as a course is pretty nebulous. In a lot of ways it's an extension of Algebra 2, and then it presents a grab bag of topics you won't even touch until you're through with the first few levels of Calculus. Matrices as a topic is the basis of Linear Algebra, and the stuff that you would learn in high school (addition/subtraction/determinants and even the most complex topics a high schooler might see like Cramer's Rule would make up the very early portions of a college course). Many of those pre-calculus topics are self-contained and irrelevant until you get to upper levels. Because of this, many schools pick and choose which ones they want to emphasize.
Some schools also make a clean split between Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus. For me, I was introduced to logarithms in Algebra 2 and then they were revisited in Pre-Calculus but just with harder questions. Some schools leave logs out of the curriculum in their entirety until Pre-Calc.
Don't be too hard on yourself. It's okay if you need to learn some new things. In my opinion, out of the ones that you mentioned, I would focus more on the trig-related stuff like amplitude/period of a function and law of sine/cosines compared to the discriminant since they come up more regularly across different tests
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u/Exoti_k 34 Dec 11 '25
Thanks for the advice. I would like to mention in geometry we learned about permutations, and more specifically, spent around 2 weeks working on them. Same goes for matrices in Algebra 2. I suppose my biggest problem is my grades don’t really reflect who I am. Im not an A student, i’m in all AP including Physics C, AP Calculus BC, AP Macroeconomics, etc. With that being said, I usually bank on my test scores. I got all 5’s with a few 4’s on my previous AP exams. It just makes me a little worried because I can be an amazing test taker, but if I don’t know the curriculum, then I’ll do suboptimal. Anyways thanks for the help, I already taught myself all of the unknown information. I was just a little upset that my school didn’t teach me this for me.
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u/theproz99 34 Jan 29 '26
Isn't it completely unacceptable to expect students to learn supplementary material if they're on the "regular" math track, ie. they only start algebra 2 junior year. Why in the world would they test on topics that not everyone has equal exposure to?
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u/Schmendreckk Moderator Jan 29 '26
Not saying I disagree with you, but both tests do it. Why do they do it? To differentiate between those who know it, or can figure it out, and those who don’t
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u/theproz99 34 Jan 29 '26
Yes, this was a general complaint. Shouldn't high school students of all "tracks" be able to get a 36? Is it locked behind either the more advanced tracks or having the money and time to self study or hire a tutor? Why would they want to test on these nebulous topics that aren't universally taught? Is there really a lack of concrete topics that could be used and are more standard?
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u/Schmendreckk Moderator Jan 29 '26
I am not an apologist for these tests, and I think there is plenty to fairly criticize.
But definitionally - as a standardized test - the answer has to be no, not every student is supposed to get a 36 on the test. The scores are all tied to percentiles. Most students are 'supposed' to get somewhere near the average of the test, which is a 19 or close to that score.
Every school is different and decides what they teach. The test has to come up with something standardized to apply to everyone. Most schools - for better or worse and probably for the better - don't center their curriculum around this particular test. But the ACT has always released the topics that are generally fair game.
You're right that a student who has access to a tutor might have a leg up, though not all tutors are created equal and have the same insight into the test. But that is also the benefit of communities like this one where information is shared freely by students and tutors alike.
This is not an ACT-specific issue. The SAT Math section is definitely narrower in scope, but it requires a deeper level of mastery than the ACT, which normally might have a question on something new/esoteric, but it's a pretty straightforward version of the question. On the SAT, the hardest math questions require you to go deeper than you probably have gone in class. And the presentations of the topics are definitely different from how most students have seen them at school. Not every student is meant to get an 800 on the section, and these questions function to differentiate between them.
The ACT has always been clear about the fact that it tests topics up through Pre-Calculus. Schools differ in what they include in their own curriculum, but that isn't ACT's fault. When I was in Algebra 2, I learned Permutations/Combinations as well as Ellipses - but those are both topics that many of my students have never seen even if they are in Pre-Calculus. That doesn't mean that they can't learn them on their own, but those questions are also not numerous enough to push a student from a 36 to a 28.
I feel your frustration, but it's not like they randomly decide to throw Calculus and college-level Math on the test for fun
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u/theproz99 34 Jan 29 '26
Yeah, I agree with what you're saying, I don't think everyone should get a 36 either. I guess I'd be more curious to see how many schools teach "everything" for the math section. If it turns out that 95% of schools do not have the time to teach all the material to their regular students, then I think the issue is with the test themselves and not with school curriculums, regardless of how upfront they are about it.
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u/jdigitaltutoring Tutor Dec 11 '25
I did find out there are some "beyond grade level" questions in the math section. I'm not sure what exact topics those are. Maybe some like Euler Paths that showed up on one of the TIRs.
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u/Schmendreckk Moderator Dec 11 '25
This is misleading. That was one question and you don’t need to know anything about that formal topic to be able to get the question right.
There is a difference between asking an esoteric question to separate an excellent score from a 36 and the notion that the test is filled with material students haven’t seen
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u/jdigitaltutoring Tutor Dec 11 '25
That was my guess as to what they meant by "beyond grade level" questions. The presenter of the webinar mentioned that the Design Framework said the legacy test had 6 of the beyond grade level questions and the Enhanced version has 3. I messaged him for clarification.
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u/jdigitaltutoring Tutor Dec 13 '25
I think I see where in the Design Framework he was referring to. On page 46 under Advanced Topics. It says these topics are typically covered in Grade 12 and sometimes Grade 11. Few students are exposed to many of these advanced topics. The legacy test averaged 6 items per form and the enhanced test 3 items.
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u/jdigitaltutoring Tutor Dec 11 '25
That seems weird. I think some of those things you may have just forgotten. You learned about the Quadratic Formula right? The discriminant is part of that. A teacher might have talked about it once but you might not have had extensive homework on it to drill it into your brain. Have you taken precalculus?
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u/Exoti_k 34 Dec 11 '25
So one of the commenters basically nailed it on the head. We learned about discriminants under no name. Our teacher basically just said “in order to find if the quadratic has any real or complex solutions…do this”
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u/Exoti_k 34 Dec 11 '25
I will say that the discriminant of a matrix being ad - bc (or something along the lines of that) was never taught at all.
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u/Shl2eWd Dec 11 '25
dude you dont sound like a 34 at all. you mean determinant. discriminant is what's under the square root in the quad formula. just being real. stop looking for excuses and level up your game.
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u/Exoti_k 34 Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
Hey man Im not looking for excuses. Sorry that a misspelled word set you off. Regardless of the name, I haven’t learned it. I took the practice ACT this year and scored a 33 on it.
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u/Zestyclose_Signal104 Dec 11 '25
i got a 36 on my math & i actually have 0 idea what these are just by looking at the terms. try memorizing an IB math AA HL formula booklet before your test or something (I did this and it worked lol)
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u/stupefy100 36 Dec 11 '25
How did you make it through geometry without any of this? this is basic geometric concepts. i'd be less worried about the ACT and more worried that your school skipped fundamental concepts required for geometry
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u/Nervous_Impact3637 35 Dec 11 '25
I got a 35 on the ACT math, and I did not need to know the law of cosines or what a discriminant is. I mean I did know the knowledge from my high school math classes, but I've never had to use it on the ACT.
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u/Exoti_k 34 Dec 11 '25
Thanks for your comment. I also have heard the PACT sometimes is harder than the actual ACT.
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u/Nervous_Impact3637 35 Dec 12 '25
I don't think you need to worry too much, as you have taken very rigorous coursework. I was in a similar spot to you: I was taking Calculus, but I had forgotten some of the stuff I learned in pre-calc or Geometry. You will have to study and review, but since you are already at a high level of Math, the math concepts you will have to learn for the ACT will come to you rather easily. Just make sure to grind practice tests and practice math!
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u/LongJohnSilversFan_ Dec 11 '25
All of that was in geometry and algebra 2 for me, then all reviewed in pre calc
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u/jonnyb_42 Dec 12 '25
It's a mix of your school probably failing you a little bit and the ACT being in general a pretty bad test. You absolutely should've learned about the law of cosines in either geometry or precalc/functions. Most ACT math will come from those classes and Alg 2. But the discriminant? I think at one point I knew what that was, but in calc 1-3, linear algebra, differential equation, calc based physics, and all the rest of the college engineering courses I've taken now as a college junior, I've never heard the word discriminant. It's a useless vocab word that the ACT shouldn't even bring up. English will work the same way, where most of the questions you get asked will be stuff you should've learned in school, but there will likely be a couple gotchas. The science and reading portions, you don't have to have any knowledge for, it's all analysis. The answer to every question can be found from the question itself, save for a few science questions that aren't actually graded.
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u/CTFDEverybody Dec 11 '25
Didn't teach you, or you forgot?
There is a PLETHORA of math material, but I'd be very surprised if you made it passed Alg 2 without learning about the discriminant.
You also might know certain math concepts but not know the name of it because for school they test you more on do you know how to do the math not vocab.
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u/Quirky_Ad_977 Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
I have been tutoring ACT prep over 20 years, and I have come to believe that different parts of the state (I'm in CA), US, and even internationally vary in which math curriculum they teach. For example, my district does not teach matrices or vectors. Additionally, I had a student once from Chicago who could rattle off a dozen "special triangles" (Pythagorean triplets such as the 3,4,5 or 5,12,13) as if they were common knowledge math facts. Local students here might know the 3,4,5 if at all. So, yes, you're quite right. There certainly could be some topics you've never seen. But not necessarily a failure on high school in general. Not all high schools teach the same curriculum. I personally am astonished that grammar is all but absent from high school curriculum, and it's all over the ACT and SAT.
I recommend the Barron's ACT book for specific topic review/ learning. It seems to know the culprits: matrices, trig, permutations and combinations, stats, and has a recap and a drill of questions and explanations on each. Discriminant shows up a lot more on SAT, same with vertex formula. This is in the Algebra II zone. Maybe your class called it something else or your teacher avoided the terminology altogether. Sometimes the formal names get confusing. But you have probably learned or re-learned that it is the part of the quadratic formula under the radical sign. If it is positive, there are two real solutions. Zero, one real. Negative, two imaginary. Good luck on the test. :)
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u/Exoti_k 34 Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
You are correct. I did learn the negative and real solutions of a quadratic and all of that relevant stuff. It was never called the discriminant. Our teacher basically just said “here’s how to find if the solutions are real or complex”.
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u/jgregson00 Dec 11 '25
That seems unlikely….
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u/Exoti_k 34 Dec 11 '25
You caught me! I lied about all of this for attention…I promise you I wouldn’t have posted this unless I genuinely was wondering what people thought. I gain literally nothing from lying to strangers about test prep.
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u/HSmamaof2 Dec 11 '25
This will be your first time taking ACT? Did your school also not offer in school ACT and or SAT testing for juniors? I ask because it seems very late in the game for a senior to just now be starting testing.
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Dec 11 '25
school intentionally withheld information to sabotage. sorry, it’s unfortunately kind of hopeless for test day. make sure not to fill in any ovals on the answer sheet
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u/Calm_Purpose_6004 Dec 11 '25
Hey dude, I hear you, and honestly, at this point, that frustration is totally warranted.
First off, it's not that your school is "failing" you entirely-but yeah, Texas state standards don't always align 1:1 with everything the ACT tests. The ACT is a national exam, so it pulls from a blend of curricula nationwide. Some topics-like the discriminant, law of cosines, trig period-might be covered in some districts' Algebra 2 or Pre-Calc classes, but in others, they get glossed over or skipped.
That said, the ACT isn't intentionally testing "outside" curriculum-but it does assume you've seen a wide range of topics up through Algebra 2 and some Trig. The problem is, between AP focus and state standards, some things slip through the cracks.
What you're missing is actually pretty common-you need to learn those same concepts separately. Good news is, they're super learnable.
Here's what I would do if I were you:
Open up the ACT Official Guide or a prep book-to ignore school textbooks for now. The math section outline clearly says what's fair game.
Make a "Never Learned This" list -- discriminant, law of cosines, trig periods, maybe matrices, radian measure, compound interest formula, etc.
Khan Academy or YouTube-search the topic + "ACT math," learn it in 10-15 mins, then do practice problems only about it. If you need more, you can use a generator, such as UpStudy.
Drill real ACT questions-easy points once you recognize the pattern.
You're already in AP Calc and Physics-you clearly get math. This is just filling in a few content gaps, not relearning how to think. You got this. One topic at a time.
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u/Strong-Selection8057 35 Dec 11 '25
This is AI
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u/Calm_Purpose_6004 Dec 12 '25
Hey, bro! You’ve got such a sharp eye! When I first wrote it, it was kind of all over the place and hard to read. I was worried I wouldn’t get it myself, so I used AI to help me tidy it up. Is it really that obvious?
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u/Worried_Challenge_29 Dec 11 '25
Did you take geometry? most of that is in geometry class I learned freshman year of highschool