Knowing the order of difficulty will help you shape your approach to the test. ACT claims that the Math Test is ordered roughly by increasing difficulty. We want to emphasize the adverb “roughly” so you will not be surprised to find an easy question near the end of the test or a difficult one near the beginning.

You should pace yourself according to the knowledge that an early problem on the test will be easier than a problem late in the test. With 60 minutes to solve 60 problems, you might be thinking that you should allot a minute for each problem. But easy problems should take you less than a minute to solve, while solving a difficult problem can be time-consuming. If you find yourself spending too much time on a problem early in the test, skip it and come back to it later.

That said, you should not rush through the early problems on the test to save time for the problems near the end. Remember that all questions on the ACT are worth the same to the scoring machine, so you should set a pace that allows you to answer the early problems carefully without sacrificing speed.