Frequently Asked Questions
Our Services
Where do you meet?
We meet with students at a location of their choice, which sets us apart from most educational providers. We recognize that our students and their parents have busy lives, and we strive to be as accommodating as possible in scheduling meeting times and locations.
We are happy to meet students wherever is most convenient for them, within the Denver metro area. Most often, we meet students at home, but if they’d prefer to meet at a coffee shop or library, we’re happy to do that too. We do sometimes ask students who live on the outskirts of the Denver metro area to come partway to meet with us.
For home meetings, we do require that a parent or guardian over the age of 18 be present.
How do you bill me?
At the beginning of each month, we send out invoices for the previous month’s meetings to the preferred billing email listed on the new student enrollment form our students fill out before beginning to work with us. Our invoices have a link that allows for easy online payment.
Do you offer a guarantee of improvement?
We do not offer a guarantee of a specific amount of improvement. Some students come to us with baseline test scores that are well below average, and may improve their scores by as many as 300 points on the SAT or 6 or 7 points on the ACT. Other students come to us with very strong previous test score and are hoping to improve, for example, from the top 2% to the top 1%. For them, an improvement of 40 to 50 points on the SAT or a point on the ACT might represent a major triumph. Thus, we also do not see any use in reporting an “average” improvement since such a number would have little real meaning.
Furthermore, not surprisingly, the amount of time and effort that students devote to homework and completing practice tests has a significant impact on their test outcomes. Hard-working and self-driven students who complete the homework we assign them almost invariably see significant improvements in their test scores. Other students struggle to prioritize their homework and don’t put in time on their own to expand on what we’re covering during our meetings. Those students are less likely to see large improvements.
What we can say is that we do not offer guarantees because we don’t need to resort to gimmicks. Throughout the test preparation process, parents and students receive regular feedback in the form of practice test scores, allowing them to continuously measure progress and improvement. We pride ourselves on our reputation and the factthat our clients have always been very gracious in recommending us to their friends.
How do you measure improvement?
Students’ scores on the practice tests we assign them give us a constantly growing bank of data on where a student has been, the improvements he or she has made, and where he or she still needs work. Student scores on these tests are excellent predictors of how they’ll do on the real thing.
Do you offer group classes?
We do, but we only arrange small group classes by request, and then generally only if the students are similar enough in performance and needs to make a group structure consistently effective for all. Students are responsible for coming to us with groups (i.e., we will not match strangers to form a group). It is inefficient for students with very different needs to work together, even if they are close friends. However, groups of two or three can work well when students have similar needs since often times the group dynamic adds an element of accountability (and healthy, friendly competition between students). More often than not, we work with siblings (twins) in pairs (though not necessarily if their strengths and weaknesses significantly differ). Often times we’ll supplement group meetings with individual sessions to specifically focus on particular areas of need.
While small groups can be very effective, we have categorically avoided offering large group classes. We believe such classes offer students very limited benefit beyond a superficial overview of some generalized strategy. There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to success on the ACT and SAT, and we strongly believe that the best approach to achieve success on these tests is through an individually customized, narrowly-tailored preparation process.
Do you work with students with learning differences?
We do. We have worked with countless students with a variety of learning differences. While our approach is generally the same for all students, we do adjust many of our techniques and strategies based on a student’s particular learning differences. We work together with parents, and even sometimes counselors, to put together a preparation plan that will best suit a student’s unique learning process.
Many students with learning differences receive some type of time accommodation (50% extra time being the most common). Other accommodations include double time and testing over multiple days, though these are less common. Once we know a student’s particular test accommodation, we tailor our instruction (and homework assignments) to suit the student’s situation and help them come up with the most effective strategy for their specific accommodation.
Do you help with test anxiety?
Absolutely. To a large extent, students experience test anxiety due to a fear of the unknown. For example, when a student is studying for a U.S. History test, he or she knows the topics that are fair game, but has no idea what the questions are going to look like. How many questions will be multiple-choice? Short answer? What will the essay questions ask about?
A lot of test anxiety can be attributed to this fear of the unknown. Taking the SAT or ACT is a completely different animal. Due to the fact that they are standardized tests that by their very nature cannot change much, they are highly repetitive and therefore highly predictable. Through taking real practice tests, students become incredibly familiar with their format and content, and thus much less anxious.
Furthermore, aside from repetition itself, we do teach students specific methods of how to manage their anxiety. We have many techniques and strategies meant to help alleviate stress both before and during test day.
General Testing
How far in advance of the ACT/SAT should students start preparing?
When a student should start preparing for the ACT or SAT varies dramatically based on the student’s needs and goals. Some students come to us just weeks before a test, hoping to make any possible improvement, and many can improve (at least some) in a relatively short time with intensive preparation. Most students begin test preparation meetings at the beginning of junior year and continue with regular (though perhaps eventually less-regular) meetings through June or beyond, though many might finish sooner depending on their test scores.
How long we’ll work with a student depends on the student’s initial performance, learning style, and goals. We do not have an “average” student nor a fixed program. For that reason, we do not offer “prepackaged” programs. We charge an hourly rate because different students have different needs and goals and we want to ensure that students receive the appropriate amount of instruction: not too much and not too little.
Having said that, it’s always better to err on the side of starting the preparation process sooner rather than later. The sooner students gain exposure and confidence with the ACT and SAT, the less intimidating the whole process becomes. It’s always easier to taper off a bit on meeting frequency (or meeting duration) when appropriate than it is to need to dramatically increase preparation as a test date approaches.
Is is bad to take a test multiple times?
No. On average, most students will take both the SAT and ACT once, and then retake their stronger test twice. It’s not uncommon for students to take their stronger test a total of four times.
Colleges don’t care how many times a student has taken a test: they are only looking at a student’s best scores in their admissions decisions. Different schools have different policies regarding how they treat multiple test scores. Some will just look at the best overall score a student achieved over the various test dates, while others will allow students to mix and match sections scores from multiple test dates (see below for a more detailed response/discussion of Score Choice and Super Scoring). There is no school that averages multiple test scores, so there’s never any disadvantage in retesting.
Should I send scores to colleges right away?
Almost certainly not. When you register for tests, you are asked where you want to have your scores sent to a certain number of colleges for free, but unless there is a specific reason to do so, don’t. Wait until you have the results of ALL the tests you will take, and then decide which ones best reflect your abilities. The cost of sending test scores to a school later is nominal. Why directly send scores from your SAT to schools when you ultimately might be much better at the ACT? Or vice verse. While schools only look at test scores in the best light possible, it’s still best to have as much control over what you do with your scores as possible. You can log onto the SAT or ACT websites anytime and easily have the scores forwarded to any college.
What is the difference between Super Scoring and Score Choice?
Score Choice is a policy whereby colleges allow you to pick and choose exactly what test date scores you want to submit on your application. For example, if you’ve taken the SAT three times, you’ll simply send the highest overall score from those three test dates.
Super Scoring is a policy whereby colleges will combine the highest subsection scores from each time a student has taken the ACT or SAT. This allows students to “lock in” high scores from a good test section even if their overall score from that test wasn’t their best.
Does Super Scoring apply to the ACT essay?
It depends. Some colleges extend Super Scoring policies to the essay portion of the ACT while others don’t. Keep in mind, though, that many colleges don’t use Super Scoring to begin with.
It’s always best to check with a specific college’s admissions information to determine its policy. However, if you’re retaking the ACT and feeling on the fence about signing up for the essay potion, it’s always advisable to go ahead and sign up. That way, you’ll know for certain that you can use those test scores at all of the schools you may end up applying to.
Can students Super Score their Reading Test and Writing Test scores from different SAT test dates?
As a general rule, no. While there may be some schools that do in fact let students do so, the overwhelming majority rule is that students can only combine their Evidence Based Reading & Writing and Math scores (the scores out of 800) from various test dates.
Test specific FAQs
SAT vs. ACT
What are the most significant differences between the SAT and ACT?
Much of the content tested on the SAT and ACT overlaps, which is why students can prepare for both tests simultaneously. For instance, the vast majority of the English and Math concepts covered on one test appear on the other. Nonetheless, there are significant differences between the two tests, which explains why in the majority of cases students will ultimately perform better on one than the other.
- Timing: In general, the ACT involves much more time pressure than the SAT. Most students will run out of time on at least one section of the ACT, often several. In fact, the ACT was designed so that timing would be a significant factor in the test’s difficulty. While many students run out of time on SAT sections (most commonly on the Math sections), students almost invariably find that ACT test sections are more difficult to complete on time than SAT test sections.
- Reading: One of the most significant differences between the ACT and SAT reading sections comes down to the timing issue discussed above. On the ACT, students have 52.5 seconds per question (not including time spent reading the passages) while on the SAT the time per question increases to 75 seconds (again, not including time spent reading the passage). Furthermore, the ACT contains many “fact-finding” questions that essentially require students to locate relevant information in the text. While these questions don’t tend to be particularly difficult for most students, they are rather time-consuming. Although the SAT does contain questions that require students to find supporting evidence in passages, these questions almost always provide four choices of line references in the answer choices themselves that student can look up and evaluate. In short, students spend very little time looking for information on the SAT and quite a bit of time doing so on the ACT. While the time pressure on the SAT is much less acute, most students find the passages and questions to be somewhat more difficult on average than on the ACT. For one, the SAT reading section includes a passage that draws from a US or global historical document (e.g., the Constitution, a speech by Abraham Lincoln, an essay by a contemporary of the French Revolution, etc. ). Since these texts are often drawn from 18th and 19th centuries, students often struggle with the language used. Furthermore, the SAT contains a Literature passage that also sometimes draws from older works of fiction (e.g., 18th and 19th centuries). All of the ACT’s reading passages are drawn from contemporary sources, so students generally find the language used to be more approachable.
- Math:
- ACT
- 1 section with 60 multiple-choice questions
- Calculator use permitted on entire section
- Slightly broader scope of concepts tested than the SAT, particularly pre-Calculus
- SAT
- 2 sections: No Calculator (20 questions) and Calculator (38 questions)
- 45 multiple-choice questions and 13 “student-produced response” questions where students must solve a question and grid in the correct answer
- Slightly heavier focus on Algebra than the ACT. Not as many pre-Calculus based questions as the ACT
- ACT