Hello,
I am unsure when I should really start putting hours into prepping for the ACT. I'm a rising sophomore (meaning I'll be 10th grade for 2016-2017 year) and just took my a few practice tests at home to determine where I'm at.
Math: 32
English: 31
Reading: 28
Science: 30
These are the scores I got, with no prep at all. I don't know if these are good scores? I don't know if I should start prepping now while I have a whole year before I take the ACT (we do spring ACT but I'm going to take it in the fall outside of school) or I should just "wait" until later on. I'd really like an answer on this!
Note that I want to get a perfect score.
Those are very good scores for a rising sophomore. You're on track to reach your goals, so I'd recommend waiting a bit longer before putting any serious time into ACT prep. Just focus on your classes for now.
Your composite score at the moment is a 30, which means you're looking for a six point increase on average to reach a perfect score. For most students, that translates to around 80-100 hours of prep total. I'm guessing you won't need to put in more than 80 hours because you earned your current scores without any prep at all. My suggestion is to start studying at the beginning of next summer. If you spend five hours a week studying over the course of that summer, your goal will be in reach by the beginning of junior year. Even if you don't quite get the score you want junior fall, you'll still have the rest of the year and the beginning of senior year to study a bit more and retake the test.