Skills-based college prep
Ready for college. Ahead in high school.
Aim for the degree, not just the likely letter.
College advising
Show proof, not potential.
Students who get into their first-choice colleges don’t follow radically different plans to get there.
They stand out by staying on track.
The Roadmap to College
Fr
9
Adjust to HS academics
Create your four-year plan
Look for activities to join
Prep for PSAT
So
10
Attempt your first AP exam
Connect with counselors
Explore colleges/careers
Prep for ACT/SAT
Jr
11
Show strengths with APs
Aim for highest GPA
Pursue passion project
Reach ACT/SAT targets
Sr
12
Apply to college
David, 11th
David is taking four AP courses this year and hopes to sidestep the catch-up spiral entirely.
He knows that a cushion of time is essential for making knowledge stick, so he keeps track of upcoming topics and reads ahead independently to stay slightly ahead of the class pace.
When his classmates are just getting acquainted with a new topic, David uses his head start to work with his tutor on complex, creative questions instead.
When getting ready for the next test or the AP exam, he spends less time studying and worrying, knowing he can fall back on the deep understanding he built the first time around.
Great college advising doesn’t just set expectations
– it trains you to meet them.
Ambitious students approach high school’s hurdles as a proving ground for their skills, not just their memory. At the heart of academic coaching is the development of these skills, which enable students to push their boundaries and tackle the most rigorous challenges with confidence.
Great college advising doesn’t just set expectations – it trains you to meet them. By grounding your admissions strategy in proficiency over presentation, you can distinguish yourself to colleges through the skills you master and the merit they prove.
College-ready skills
Proven skills. Proven grades.
Think you’re
ready for college?
The following is a selection of real assignments students may encounter in their first semester.
LIT HUM (AP English)
Closely read and be prepared to discuss The Odyssey by Homer (512 pages) over the course of a week.
MATH 151 (AP Calculus)
Given that the limit of f(x) as x approaches c is 0 and that there exists a B > 0 such that |g(x)| ≤ B for all x in an interval (c–p, c+p), prove (using the ϵ–δ definition) that the limit f(x)g(x) as x approaches c is 0.
CHEM 002 (AP Chemistry)
In X-ray crystallography, X-rays of 0.71Å are generated by bombarding molybdenum metal with a beam of electrons. Why are these X-rays more effectively diffracted by crystals than is visible light?
CS50 (AP Computer Science)
Use a greedy algorithm to implement a program in C that prints the minimum coins needed to make a given amount of change.
HIST 1122 (AP US History)
Read America’s founding documents (The Federalist Papers, The Anti-Federalist Papers, The Articles of Confederation, and The Constitution) in one week.
These assignments aren’t cherry-picked for their difficulty; they’re standard fare for incoming freshman.
Good universities maintain high standards to ensure students acquire the expertise to succeed in their chosen fields. AP courses in high school are hard enough, but they just don’t replicate the rigor of college academics.
Undergraduates are expected to navigate this steep learning curve largely on their own. It’s no surprise that “overwhelmed” is a common refrain among college newcomers, even among high-achievers in high school. When it comes to college readiness, many students discover too late that high school alone just doesn’t cut it.
Study like a college student in high school.
College treats you with the respect a professional in your chosen field deserves. But it also holds you to greater accountability. If you slip up in the high-wire act of undergraduate studies, few safety nets are there to cushion the fall.
High school isn’t the finish line; it’s a critical window to prepare for what’s next. Work with your tutor to shed old habits and rethink how you learn, cultivating the skills that define students ready to thrive in college.
Build college skills in every class.
Mastering new skills takes time, but every class is an opportunity to move further up the learning curve.
Reach out to your tutor whenever you’re feeling stuck. We work together to diagnose study roadblocks, which often indicate that it’s time to rethink your approach.
By emulating the habits of successful college students and tailoring them to your strengths, you will learn how to consistently meet college-level expectations – through concrete steps developed with your tutor.
Study better
Stay focused
Take care
Expand horizons
Standardized testing
Test optional – isn’t.
College advisors aren’t very good at separating the signal from the noise in what drives successful admissions.
But one clear signal is backed by decades of research and remains one of the most important factors in admissions decisions: standardized test scores.
While no longer always required, ACT and SAT test scores offer admissions officers a clear snapshot of your scholastic potential. As an objective measure of how well you will evaluate, analyze, and apply the material you’ll encounter in higher education, test scores are used to reliably predict your future academic success, regardless of your high school’s definition of college readiness.
What’s rarely acknowledged is that preparing for the ACT or SAT is one of the most effective ways to meet – and exceed – the demands of high school. Not only does a comprehensive review of the fundamentals bridge skill gaps to make high school less frustrating, but a thorough exploration of advanced concepts allows you to reinforce those skills outside of the limited contexts in which they are typically taught.
The sooner you begin your test prep, the better positioned you are to ensure academic success both now and in the future.
Top Score Recipe
A tried and true method that delicately balances effort with desired outcome.
Submitted by all_in_one
Updated Today
ACT
SAT
PSAT
Estimated Time
6 weeks +
Ingredients
Directions
Step 1 Get the basics down.
Cover every concept on the test. Learn how they want you to solve each question.
2 weeks – 2 months | ACT 28+ | SAT 1310+
Step 2 Reach your plateau.
Target areas where you lose the most time or points. Improve each attempt with feedback.
4 weeks – 4 months | ACT 32+ | SAT 1430+
Step 3 Anticipate, optimize.
Make changes to familiar habits to gradually improve speed while maintaining accuracy.
6 weeks – 6 months | ACT 35+ | SAT 1540+
Why isn’t my score improving?
Don’t worry,
it’s just a skill issue.
From hefty tomes to online courses, you might feel like you’re spoiled for choice in test prep resources. But to get past the plateau everyone eventually hits, you’ll need consistent practice with questions more challenging than what’s offered in most third-party practice material.
Our targeted problem sets are curated from various sources to closely replicate the quality and difficulty of your chosen college admission test. Using questions from other tests has been particularly effective for the digital SAT, whose novelty and fluctuating difficulty make it harder to prep for than the ACT, its more tried-and-true counterpart.
Shatter your score ceiling by combining curated practice material with our three test prep approaches:
College applications
In a league of your own.
It’s fall of senior year. You’ve stacked your credentials, locked in your test scores. All signs point to yes – you’re poised to make the initial cut. But now comes the last hurdle of your journey: standing out in the crowd of applicants.
As college admissions get more competitive, the flood of misinformation has only gotten worse. The overwhelming noise of do’s and don’ts on how to look like the ‘ideal candidate’ – advice that’s impossible to back up – leads many students looking for an edge to do the one thing that guarantees they won’t get noticed: erase themselves from the page.
Admissions “experts” are really pundits at best, trying to make sense of an opaque process like everyone else. The only true expert here is you: nobody knows your story, your insights, your experience more than you do.
Your most competitive college application is built on the journeys you’re proudest to share. Our years of experience help you find your voice that puts you in a league of your own, because the most effective way to stand out is to be the one person the “experts” can’t replicate.
Your competitive edge is built on the journey you’re proudest to share
Imagine you’ve been chosen to give a TED talk. For a few minutes, you’re going to tell a story that articulates a truth about who you are or the experiences you’ve had that you’ve finally made sense of. What will you say?
This is precisely the challenge of the college admissions essay – a task made daunting by the realization that, perhaps for the very first time, you are addressing a captive audience that will take your every word completely seriously.
Nearly all students come to our essay work-shops believing that they don’t have a good story to tell – that their lives are too quiet – only to realize that their seemingly unremarkable experiences hold an insight that can be expressed through their voice alone.
A college admissions essay stands out not because of extraordinary events or narrative fireworks, but because the author has the audacity to believe that their genuine perspective is worth sharing.
“ First, discover The Story, the one only you can tell. Then craft a voice exactly suited to telling that tale in the truest, most beautiful way. ”
College essays
Sentences that paint a thousand words.
Our workshops owe their popularity to one key insight: the most captivating college essays read like works of memoir.
You, too, can apply the distinct qualities of this genre to craft the kind of piece our students consistently find more rewarding than anything else they’ve written.
Authentic
Writing that rings true cuts through the babble and posturing of a thousand essays. It’s the truth that commands your readers’ attention and insulates your work against AI suspicion.
Essential
You won’t reduce a chapter of your life into 650 words without uncovering The Story – a narrative that’s more compelling, and often starkly unlike, the one you had intended to write.
Evocative
Stop recounting events and start showing them. A few sensory details can pull a reader into your perspective, whereas a list of “I” statements has all the depth of a social media feed.