Four Elements of ACT/SAT Prep

There are four elements of our approach to ACT/SAT prep – each critical for optimizing individual student improvements as efficiently as possible:

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. Our analytics demonstrate that there are two types of rules: 

A) Test-Specific Strategies. We affectionately call these the “magic tricks” because they work instantly, automatically, and will boost your score by adding accuracy and efficiency. These rules, which are derived from 26,000 actual test questions and have taken us 10+ years to identify, are not disseminated anywhere else. They have fun names like “the 3 and 1 rule,” “the delete rule,” “the addition rule,” “the when-in-doubt-take-it-out rule,” and “the economy rule.” On average, you should expect to improve your scores by 3-4 ACT points or 70-90 SAT points with test-specific rules.

B) Content-Specific Strategies. One thing we’ve discovered about the ACT/SAT is that they have very precise ways of asking questions about the concepts covered. So, rather than giving you grammar textbooks from the 1950s that take you through the 75 different situations in life when you might use a comma, we take you through our “Recognize-Approach-Test” Method to break down commas into exactly 4 situations. Rather than spending two weeks to reteach you the rules of asymptotes, we show you the 2 ways they are actually tested on the ACT/SAT. You’re already saving time.

Strategy files are your rules of the road for the ACT/SAT. Strategy files are proprietary rules and formulas that present the formulas of the tests in step-by-step, easily digestible formats.

Like in school, we do expect students to do some work outside of our sessions. Unlike in school, we don’t expect 4+ hours per night of soul-crushing trigonometry questions or annotations on a John Steinbeck novel. We expect students to complete one hour of homework for every hour of sessions. If you do one session per week (~1.5 hours), we expect 1.5 hours per week of homework. It’s not exactly a full-time job, but it’s absolutely necessary to get big score gains.

In addition to homework, you should expect to take a full-length practice test at least every three weeks. These are checkpoints, and they are essential for ensuring that we are staying on track on pacing and stamina. Yes, we recognize that each mock test will feel like a grueling, 3.25-hour, pride-swallowing siege, and that is why allow you to take as many proctored tests as you can for no extra charge. Parents love this.

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