Call or Text Today And Schedule Your Complimentary Consult: (773) 405-4775

Call or Text Today and Schedule Your Complimentary Consult: (773) 405-4775

Get Started

With a FREE 30-Minute Consultation With One of Our Experts

GET STARTED

With a FREE 30-Minute Consultation With One of Our Experts

ACT & SAT PREP

Why is The Krupnick Approach the best test prep choice for YOU?

Play Video

Watch Dr. Krupnick and a student discuss Math test prep strategies, explaining the ways that the answer choices are constructed.

#1 They do not choose the most efficient method to solve a question

#2 They misunderstand the question

#3 They waste time trying to memorize everything

This is why we prioritize

Maximum Results. Minimum Time.

Our Experience in Test Preparation: You will benefit from our extensive experience helping students maximize their scores on the ACT and SAT. For over 15 years, we have been developing individualized tutoring programs and proven test-prep strategies to unlock the elusive nature of these tests. Our tutors are experts at conducting remote and in-person tutoring sessions with a variety of online platforms that create a seamless and efficient learning experience. Students consistently increase their scores by at least 7 points on the ACT and at least 250 points on the SAT–the best track record in the Chicago area.

Our Experience As Academic Thought Partners
We provide added value as an educational partner that will support you from the moment you schedule the test to the day you move into your dorm. Our tutors have deep expertise in the nuances of selecting college programs, developing college application essays, and inspiring confidence throughout the process. While our test preparation results are unparalleled, our consultation services will simplify the many complex decisions you will need to make.

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The Krupnick Approach

5.0

Based on 49 reviews

review us on

Veemon 22

02:08 23 Feb 22

My name is Anthony Leon and currently in my senior year of highschool. Being a a first generation immigrant, I'm the first going to college and with that comes a lot of new challenges seeing as I had little information to work with. However, the Krupnick Approach has helped me through a lot in navigating through the SAT and college process. I honestly can't think of how I would've managed without their assistance. Dr. Joe Krupnick, Joe Burton, and Kalea Ponce have been both kind and informative on the secrets of mastering the SAT and tackling the challenge of writing college essays. Thanks to our efforts, I've managed to secure a full ride to Amherst. I cannot recommend this program enough for any student with little knowledge on the SAT or college process.

Maddie Gardner

16:44 09 May 21

Krupnick approach is a great way to boost your test scores. I went from a 21 to a 26/27 superscore just from this company. He also helped me look at colleges and my college essays. Overall very helpful and I would definitely recommend!

Sydney Himes

16:29 08 May 21

I have been so impressed with Joe and his team or tutors. They are patient, and able to make the most difficult concepts easy to digest. Most impressive is the confidence they install in your student! It was a real pleasure for my student to work with the Krupnick approach! I would use them again in a heartbeat.

Ava Nelligan

20:44 07 May 21

Helped me raise my ACT score and ultimately get into 8 top universities! Lots of great strategies and tips, very informed. Thank you for your help!

Cooper Haislip

18:29 07 May 21

Phenomenal service! It helped me achieve academic success in a course I genuinely thought I would fail. All tutors, especially founder Dr. Krupnick, greatly surpass any current on-campus assistance. Each tutor is brilliant, personable, relate to pressures that come with higher education, dedicated to helping students reach academic excellence, and help you realize your full potential both as a student and an individual. I highly recommend The Krupnick Approach for anyone who needs/ wants the highest quality after-school assistance, and if I could give them six stars, I would.

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Test Dates, Registration Deadlines, and Score Release Schedules

ACT SAT

2 Simple Yet Effective Krupnick Approach Strategies:

Don’t Memorize; Learn How To Simplify Problems

Our geometry approach makes any problem simple. Draw it, Label it, Solve it!

RTFQ (Reading The Final Question)

Learn how “RTFQ (Reading The Final Question)” always increases scores!

Our Proven Approach - The Krupnick Advantage

Every tutoring student gains access to the “Krupnick Advantage,” which includes:

A dedicated team of tutors - subject matter experts in English, Math, Reading, and Science. Our Harvard and Ivy-League trained tutors support students throughout the college prep process by “cracking the code” of how the ACT and SAT are designed and which strategies are essential to know. Students work with our experts in one-on-one tutoring sessions which are personalized to their individual strengths and weaknesses. Our unique, team approach ensures that students are working with the top instructors in each of their exam's respective subject sections, and each team of tutors works together to maximize overall results for each individual student.

A thorough diagnostic assessment at the beginning of the program. Your baseline ACT and SAT will highlight key strengths and opportunities for improvement. With over 200 official ACTs and SAT, we prepare students with content training, pacing methods, and time-tested systems and strategies to ensure that our students make big gains. We break the test down into manageable parts, showing that you can be successful by simply mastering rules and shortcuts that are geared toward precision and high speed.

A personalized tutoring plan which emphasizes test taking, content review/remediation, and time management strategies. Based on analysis of over 26,000 actual exam questions, we have constructed proprietary strategies, running data-tracking to extract patterns in question categories, answers, and common traps. ACT and SAT programs include research and analysis, calculator programming, and full access to The Krupnick Approach proprietary database.

Ongoing consultation in all aspects of the college admissions process. Like seasoned athletic coaches, our tutors are here to support you as you select your colleges, develop your college application essays, and apply for college scholarships. Our essay writing support has led to top-tier college acceptances and prestigious scholarships such as Posse and Questbridge.

Four Elements of ACT/SAT Prep

Program

2. All parents and students, regardless of their chosen program, are provided with a program specification document, outlining all details of their program: test dates, their tutor team, information on scheduling with tutors, relevant contact information, program policies and procedures, and program resources, including:

Access to our ACT or SAT Database, including: practice tests, scoring information, strategy files and study guides, third party resources, and ZipGrade answer sheets for homework and practice tests.

A personalized student portal, providing detailed results for all full-length exams and homework practice sections, including question-level tag analysis. This enables live, detailed progress analytics across all sections over time, and frees students and tutors to adjust priorities and strategies as students progress in each subject section.

Access to a responsive team of subject-level experts and college consultants, available to answer any and all questions that arise as students navigate an increasingly complex test prep and application landscape.

3. Detailed progress reports are made available to students and parents, which summarize students’ progression in each subject over time. This allows all programs to be dynamically responsive to students’ unique and changing needs throughout the process.

Program

1. After deciding on a program, students are assigned a tutor team, usually consisting of 2-3 subject specialists. A certain number of program hours are allotted for each subject depending on the students’ baseline scores, total program hours, and test dates.

2. Parents and students are provided with a program specification document, outlining all details of their program: test dates, their tutor team, information on scheduling with tutors, relevant contact information, program policies and procedures, and program resources, including:

Access to our ACT or SAT Database, including: practice tests, scoring information, strategy files and study guides, third party resources, and ZipGrade answer sheets for homework and practice tests.

A personalized student portal, providing detailed results for all full-length exams and homework practice sections, including question-level tag analysis. This enables live, detailed progress analytics across all sections over time, and frees students and tutors to dynamically adjust priorities and strategies as students progress in each subject section.

Access to an accessible and responsive team of subject-level experts and college consultants, available to answer any and all questions that arise as students navigate an increasingly complex test prep and application landscape.

3. Detailed progress reports are available to students and parents, graphically summarizing students’ progression in each subject section over time. This allows for all programs to be uniquely responsive to students’ unique and changing needs throughout the process.

Schedule a FREE 30-Minute Consultation

Get Results Now!

5-7.5 hours

Expected program duration: 1-5 weeks
Expected point improvement: 1-2 ACT, 40-50 SAT

15 hours

Expected program duration: 4-10 weeks
Expected point improvement: 3-4 ACT, 70-100 SAT

22.5 hours

Expected program duration: 6-15 weeks
Expected point improvement: 5-6 ACT, 120-150 SAT

30 hours

Expected program duration: 8-20 weeks
Expected point improvement: 6-7 ACT, 150-200 SAT

45 hours

Expected program duration: 12-30 weeks
Expected point improvement: 7-9 ACT, 200-250 SAT

60 hours

Expected program duration: 15-40 weeks
Expected point improvement: 10+ ACT, 250+ SAT

See What Our Students Say

I had no trouble with Joe and the rest of his tutors, and his program definitely made me feel much better about taking the ACT, and gave me a higher score as a result. Definitely would recommend, couldn't have done it without you.

Helped me raise my ACT score and ultimately get into 8 top universities! Lots of great strategies and tips, very informed. Thank you for your help!

Thanks to Dr. Krupnick, my SAT score was raised 250 points – giving me more confidence and belief in my capabilities to apply to top-tier schools. He and his team knew exactly what I needed to focus on to raise my score, and I’m able to apply to the schools I’ve dreamed about as a result. The Krupnick Approach knows what it’s doing!!

The tutors over here are very nice and helpful in helping with test prep. The sessions were very individualized, which helped me learn how to pace myself faster while taking the SAT and how to approach older passages in the reading section. With the help of this program in helping me achieve a good score on the SAT, I ended up going into the University of Chicago! Many thanks to my tutor, Peyton, and the program’s donors for helping me achieve what I have to this point.

Our students average 7-point improvements on the ACT and 250-point improvements on the SAT.

Get a 30 minute consultation with one of our experts

Our students average 7-point improvements on the ACT and 250-point improvements on the SAT.

Maximum Results. Minimum Time.

Get a 30 minute consultation with one of our experts

Demystifying the ACT & SAT

(The Krupnick Approach)

After 15 years of working with students in all six continents (except Antarctica), we’ve concluded that traditional ACT/SAT prep is based on a myth. This myth is responsible for hundreds of wasted hours, thousands of wasted dollars, and millions of dispirited students and parents. The myth is that these tests are reflections of what students learn in high school. The perception is that their component sections (Math, English, and so forth) should map one-to-one to what students actually learn in school...

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Testimonials

(The Krupnick Approach)

“The Krupnick Approach taught me new ways of thinking for the ACT and consistently worked with me to ensure that I understood the material and was bettering my score.”
– Marina D’Arco

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Elements of The Krupnick Approach

(ACT & SAT )

In the sessions, we will move between theory and practice, between the proprietary rules/formulas we’ve derived and actual official questions from released and unreleased ACTs and SATs. After 15 years of researching these tests and analyzing over 26,000 actual ACT and SAT questions, we’ve distilled these tests into systematic rules that are fun (fun!) and easy to learn...

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Mock SAT Program Specifications

(Garcia, Megan)

Student Name:
Garcia, Megan [mgarcia08@gmail.com / (312)555-5460]
Program:
SAT Platinum Program (60 hours)

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Mock ACT Program Specifications

(Walther, Brandon)

Student Name:
Walther, Brandon [bwalther5@gmail.com]
Program:
ACT Platinum Program (60 hours)

Learn More

Test Prep FAQs

Q: What does the ACT/SAT actually measure and why do we have to subject ourselves to this?

A: The ACT/SAT doesn’t reflect what you’ve learned in school. It certainly is not an intelligence test. What it is is a test of how effectively and efficiently you can attend to details, ignore distractions, and transform unfamiliar words and concepts into ideas that make sense to you.

Q: If the ACT/SAT doesn’t reflect academic skills, why do colleges care about it?

A: For a number of reasons. First, colleges–like most of the rest of the well-educated public–probably do not realize it’s not essentially a test of school-taught skills. Second, even if they do realize this, the ACT/SAT is important because it requires a different but equally important set of skills that you do need in college and later in life. In college, you will take courses that assign 400 pages of reading a week. It is physically impossible to read 400 pages a week per class and also sleep, get to know your roommates, lose your virginity, etc, and the training you get on the Reading section of the ACT/SAT teaches you how to distill massive amounts of prose into a few core ideas. In life, unlike in school, you will have people who don’t like you, who are out to get you, take advantage of you. That’s the central pillar of the capitalist system. It is useful, in this world, to be able to keep your composure (elan), stick to your core principles and strategies, and fight back. A third reason colleges care about the ACT/SAT is that it is the single objectively measurable standard that colleges have to compare one applicant with another. (If you’re not convinced on this last reason, please see question and answer C below).

Q: But, what is this I keep hearing about test-optional policies? Are ACTs and SATs really optional and if they are, why should we invest all this time and money in prep?

A: Again, for a number of reasons. But let’s back up and lay some groundwork here. It is important to recognize that test optional policies are real, that they’re not going away, and that they don’t represent some kind of disingenuous stratagem on the part of colleges to lull you into ponying up $100 for an application you’ve got no chance of getting into. Colleges mean it when they say that you don’t have to submit an ACT or SAT. They also mean it when they say that they won’t explicitly hold it against you. There are two important caveats, however. First, while they do offer you latitude on whether to submit your scores, they do take the ACT/SAT seriously. Second, while they may not explicitly penalize you for not submitting, they cannot very well reward you unless you do.

Test optional was born not out of COVID but out of the diversity movement, which has been gathering steam for decades. COVID may have accelerated the process, but colleges like University of Chicago and NYU went test-optional well before the pandemic in an explicit effort to admit more equally qualified lower-income and first-generation minority students. These students, universities correctly surmise, are at a disadvantage in the ACT/SAT process because they’re less likely to have the resources to afford multiple test sittings, programs like ours, etc. If you are not a lower-income and minority student, colleges will extend considerably less latitude for you on these tests. And if they perceive you have the resources to prepare for these things, they recognize that the exams are still important differentiators that transcend geographical, cultural, and social differences. In other words, for the vast majority of working, middle, and upper-middle-class college applicants, the ACT/SAT are still important.

The second issue is that they cannot reward you unless you submit your scores. From our perspective, the function of success on the ACT/SAT is to give you as many options as possible. When you’re working with us, our goal is not merely to “keep up” with the other students at your school; we want to give you an advantage over the other kids whose profiles are, superficially at least, essentially the same as yours. Like terrific grades, a well-crafted essay, and flattering recommendations, a great score on the ACT or SAT will appreciably improve your odds of acceptance at universities across the world and maybe even help you get some scholarship money.

Logistical FAQs

Q: How do we get started?

A: After the complimentary consultation with a team member at The Krupnick Approach, students take a full-length baseline exam: either the ACT, SAT, or both. After these are graded, we will design a recommended program around each student’s particular strengths, weaknesses, and score or school goals. We may request an additional consultation at this stage to discuss baseline results and agree upon a recommended program length. When a program package is selected, a tutor team will be assembled to cover all subject sections of the exam. We will send students and parents a Program Specification Document outlining all of the details of the program: total hours, baseline scores, official test dates, mock test dates, the assigned tutor team, recommended pacing for each section, scheduling instructions for each tutor, and the policies and procedures of the respective program. This document will also provide access to the student’s Drive folder, The Krupnick Approach ACT/SAT Database, virtual whiteboards, and student portal login instructions. Students will then schedule sessions with each tutor in accordance with the agreed-upon plan outlined in the specification document.

Q: How do I know whether to take the ACT/SAT?

A: If families are unsure of which test is more suitable for a student’s strengths and goals , we will administer, score, and analyze an ACT and SAT baseline exam, on different days. We will then collect feedback from the student about their experience with each exam, and advise on the best approach moving forward. We discourage students from preparing for both exams.

Q: How do we schedule tutoring sessions?

A: Some tutors utilize an automated scheduling system, which will allow students to choose from all remaining available time slots for that individual tutor. Others schedule directly with students via email, text, or phone. When scheduling through our automated system, students will receive an email confirmation for each time reserved and a calendar event will automatically be created on the account they are signed in with. If the session is virtual, the link to join the Zoom meeting will be included in the calendar event and email confirmation, or the tutor will send you a unique join link before your scheduled session.

We highly encourage students to schedule their own sessions so that they appear on the student’s calendar. We find that students who take over the execution and management of their programs fare far better both in our program and in the inevitable chaos of college life and classworkwork. When using our automated system, parents can be added to the calendar events after the initial scheduling so that they know when students are scheduled to meet.

Q: When are sessions held?

A: Students work out their schedules individually with each subject-specialist, depending on the student’s and the tutor’s schedule. Tutors do their best to be flexible and each tutor team will be selected with any scheduling restrictions in mind.

Q: How long are the sessions?

A: ACT and SAT students are expected to meet with tutors for 1.5 hour sessions, with exceptions made for students with accommodations or other extenuating circumstances.

Q: How much homework should we expect?

A: Students should expect a 1:1 ratio of session time to homework. If a student meets with a tutor for 1.5 hours per week, he or she should expect to complete about 1.5 hours of homework per week. Failure to complete assigned homework can significantly impact a student’s ability to reach his or her score goals. Students are required to complete and submit all homework assignments on a ZipGrade answer sheet to ensure comprehensive data collection and analysis. This ensures that a student’s tutor team and The Krupnick Approach administrative team can track student progress and adjust priorities among and between subjects over time. Students can submit ZipGrade answer sheets via email to their respective tutors at any time. Tutors will scan these into our comprehensive grading system so that tutors and students can review overall performance and missed questions the next time they meet.

Q: What are mock tests and when do we take them?

A: Mock tests are designed to evaluate student progress across the subject sections throughout the entire duration of the program. Most students will take a full-length mock test every 2-4 weeks, depending on the length of the program and the student’s goals. Regular mock testing ensures that students are able to integrate the lessons of all of the subject sections in one full exam, rather than merely as individual subject-level homework assignments. Mock test results are used to recalibrate the remainder of the program and reorient the student’s priorities in accordance with any progress made. The results of each mock test and each homework section will be accessible via the student’s unique portal, and The Krupnick Approach administrative and tutor teams keep a close eye on all results to ensure students are progressing at a reasonable pace.

Students may take their mock tests at home or in The Krupnick Approach’s downtown Chicago offices at 321 N. Clark. St. If students test at home, they need to print the entire exam and all answer sheets to mimic test day conditions as closely as possible. We recommend students take mock tests on a weekend morning, or at least not testing after a full day of school. Students should reach out to a member of The Krupnick Approach team to schedule mock tests in the office, and students will need to show a photo ID in the first floor lobby to access our 5th floor offices.

Q: What materials and resources are available for test prep programs?

A: Students will be given full access to The Krupnick Approach’s ACT or SAT Database, which includes many dozen official, full-length practice tests, score and percentile information, individual subject-specific practice sections, strategy and systems study guides, third-party resources, and ZipGrade answer sheets for all homework. Students will have a dedicated Student Drive, accessible by the entire tutor team, for easy sharing of score reports, study guides, schedules, or other related program information. All students will be provided a personalized ZipGrade Student Portal, where they can view all past results for baseline exams and homework sections. This portal will show each individual question results and the associated concept tags for each question. These tags are diligently assigned by The Krupnick Approach’s subject specialists and allow students and tutors to consistently and dynamically address each student’s particular weaknesses as they progress over time. Some students will be given access to a virtual whiteboard for some subject sections, which they will be able to access independently for further review and independent study.

The Krupnick Approach tutors and administrative staff are available to assist students and parents throughout the test prep process via email, text, and phone call. We are happy to advise on applying for testing accommodations, when to register, how to prepare for test day, and all other aspects of the process that families should be thinking about. We provide wraparound services that can keep all interested parties on the same page and focused on the same goals.

Q: How many tutors will my student be working with?

A: Most students work with 2-3 subject specialists. Often, a single tutor will be assigned to cover more than one subject given the similarities in the sections themselves and the best strategies for approaching them. This will always depend upon the student’s unique strengths and weaknesses.

Q: What is our late cancellation policy?

A: Students are expected to maintain a professional and punctual attitude towards their time with our subject-specialists. All sessions must be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance, and scheduled sessions must be canceled with at least 24 hours notice. Tutors will retain discretion to accommodate less than 24-hour notice, but reserve the right to charge the entirety of the reserved time to the student’s program totals.