ACT · Released practice test
ACT Practice — 1572CPRE
Released form 1572CPRE — a widely-used official ACT practice form.
About this test
This officially-released ACT form follows the standard ACT math structure: 60 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes, all calculator-allowed under ACT's calculator policy. Questions are arranged in roughly increasing order of difficulty, so the first 20 should be quick wins for any reasonably prepared student, the middle 20 are where most score variation comes from, and the last 20 separate the high-band students from everyone else.
The official PDF, answer key, and scoring instructions are hosted on the test maker's site. We deliberately don't mirror them here — partly because we want you using the most current official version, and partly because the value we can add is in the breakdown below, not in re-hosting a PDF.
Math section breakdown
Below is the topic and difficulty mapping for the math items on this test. If your real-life score on this test is below where you want it, the fastest path forward is to find the topic rows where you missed the most items and click through to drill that subtopic.
| Topic | Items on this test | Difficulty mix | Drill this topic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-Algebra | 9 | 7 Easy · 4 Medium · 2 Hard | Open topic → |
| Elementary Algebra | 10 | 7 Easy · 3 Medium · 3 Hard | Open topic → |
| Intermediate Algebra | 13 | 6 Easy · 6 Medium · 3 Hard | Open topic → |
| Coordinate Geometry | 4 | 6 Easy · 4 Medium · 2 Hard | Open topic → |
| Plane Geometry | 7 | 6 Easy · 5 Medium · 1 Hard | Open topic → |
| Trigonometry | 8 | 7 Easy · 3 Medium · 3 Hard | Open topic → |
How to use this breakdown
After you take the test, mark every wrong or skipped math item against this table. The topic row that absorbed the most misses is your highest-leverage target. Don't try to fix everything at once — pick one topic, drill it for two or three sessions, then re-attempt the items you missed in that topic on this test under timed conditions. If you can clear them comfortably, move to your next-worst topic. That focused loop is how scores actually move; trying to "review the whole test" usually fixes nothing.
Time pressure on this test
ACT math is the most time-pressured math section of any major college admission test — one minute per question, no breaks. Students often finish the first 30 questions with 15–20 minutes remaining, then run into the back-half wall. The pacing fix is to triage the last 20 ruthlessly: identify the items you can clearly solve and bank those first; if a question reads as opaque after 20 seconds, mark it and move on. If you ran out of time, the fix is almost never to do mental arithmetic faster — it's to spend less time deciding what to do, and to skip the one or two killer problems with confidence rather than burning four minutes on each. Mark and move; come back if there's time. The test is curved on raw score, not on heroism.