SAT and ACT Tutoring: Our Approach
Guides Not Just Tutors!
Much of the progress a student makes, and most of the time that a student puts in, will necessarily happen outside of the tutoring sessions, so it’s crucial that that time is well spent. We therefore bring our decades of experience to bear on the entire process of how to most effectively prepare for the SAT and ACT and guide every aspect of the process from start to finish. First, we help students and parents make the decision on which test to take, SAT or ACT. Then we come up with a target test date, design an overall study plan, assign specific homework to be completed between sessions, and guide our students on exactly when to take practice tests, which ones to take, and even how to take them. Over the course of 20 years of preparing students for the SAT and ACT, we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work, and we apply this experience and expertise to every aspect of a student’s prep.
3 Keys to SAT and ACT Tutoring
There are 3 main components of both the SAT and ACT that need to be mastered in order to achieve a great score. All of our students learn to cope with each element, though we place the greatest emphasis on Strategy/Critical Thinking, since it is at the core of what the SAT and ACT seek to measure.
Content Mastery
Success on the SAT and ACT is partly dependent on mastery of the “content” that appears on the tests, so we make sure that our students have a rock-solid foundation. If students need to be taught this content, we do it! But since much of this foundation can be learned by students on their own, we guide test-takers on how to master this content base in their homework, thus leaving valuable session time to get to the things that are harder for students to understand on their own.
Strategy
Most test prep companies and tutors make teaching the “content” their main focus. But what most test takers lack is an understanding of how to go beyond this knowledge base to apply their problem-solving and critical thinking abilities. As the name Reason Test Prep suggests, our primary focus tends to be on these reasoning skills, since being a strategic problem-solver and critical thinker is what leads to real success on the SAT and ACT.
Time Management
Most test takers have time management issues on at least one of the sections of the tests. In many cases this can be THE reason that a test taker is struggling and failing to achieve the much higher score that they seem to be capable of. So by analyzing practice tests with our students and by watching them work through sections, we help them understand where they are spending too much time and how to more effectively manage their time through the sections.
Getting Into the Mind of an SAT or ACT Student
One of our beliefs is that in order to help a student, a tutor must REALLY understand every aspect of the student’s thought process, and this belief is at the core of everything we do at Reason Test Prep. We don’t just review questions that a student got wrong. Even when a student gets questions right we examine and deconstruct the student’s thinking to make sure that the way that the student approached the question was effective. A student’s performance on any single question is relatively meaningless…We want to make sure that on future questions the student will be virtually guaranteed to get the question right!
Total Approach to SAT and ACT Tutoring
When parents hire a Math tutor and an English tutor they are locking their children into 1 or 2 hours of Math help and 1 or 2 hours of English help per week. However, that kind of split is rarely what is called for. In most cases a student needs help more urgently in one area than another and that often changes over time as the student gains proficiency. Because we tutor the entire test we have the ability to allocate the appropriate amount of time to what is needed most, both in terms of what we do in our sessions and what we ask a student to do for homework.
Benefits Beyond Score Increases
Although our main goal is to help students achieve their dream SAT and ACT scores, we also aim to make our students better critical thinkers and problem solvers and equip them with skills that will help them in college and beyond. There is a reason why these skills are tested on the SAT and ACT in the first place: they ARE the skills that tend to lead to success in college! We also view ourselves as mentors and build rapport with our students so that they enjoy the sessions and ultimately want to emulate the characteristics and skills that we model with our students. One of the greatest compliments we tend to receive is that students enjoy and look forward to their tutoring sessions and learn lifelong lessons that go well beyond the SAT and ACT.
Thanks again for everything. I know teaching is your livelihood, but I really appreciate what you helped me with. I still think about things that I learned from you outside the context of standardized testing.
Thomas V. (Wesleyan)
Further Reading
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