If so, you are very well-informed Americans of the Colbert Nation. If not, listen up: Stephen Colbert speaks the truth because he has the facts. And Stephen’s Sound Advice is that you must ace the SAT’s or ACT’s if you want to get into your top-choice college and get a good job.

Luckily, although Stephen asserts that you must spend money to prep for the exam, PrepMe offers premium online test prep starting at $299. We also offer a 100% money-back guarantee: your scores will go up or your money back.

And, in tribute to the good people of Colbert Nation, we're offering a special 10% discount off of our courses. To take advantage of the offer, apply the code COLBERT during enrollment or mention "The Colbert Report" to your PrepMe Advisor (1-877-773-7634). Offer is valid through May 31, 2010.

Learn more about our course offerings by clicking here.

Oh, by the way, the 10% off applies to the 20-hour video tutoring package as well.

The Ugly

- The "Joe Wilson Moment" on my panel where a lady yelled out "but they don't educate everyone" in response to me reminding the panel that the U.S. K-12 education system lags many other developed nations significantly.  Really?   For the record, the U.S. is ranked 18th out of 36 in the OECD's analysis of education in the developed world.  We most certainly aren't educating everyone.

- The test prep companies that get lost in the minutiae.  Good test preparation is about educating, not about tricks.  Please stop wasting students' and parents' time and money on things that have a minimal, if any, impact on their scores.

The Good

- Crab chips are quite tasty!  Thank you to our Twitter friends for your recommendations!

- Conference turnout was strong despite the challenging economy and impact on school budgets.  While attendance was down from Seattle 2008,  we had many more conversations than we did last year.  Thank you to the organizers.

The Great

- The panel on "SAT Test Prep - Sharing What Works".  It was terrific to hear form 3 guidance counselors from very different schools (rural - public, urban - public, suburban - parochial) talk about their experiences and how they've effectively integrated test prep into the school day to help their students succeed.  The key takeaways were that successful test prep needs to be (a) integrated into the school day, (b) focus on curriculum so that it integrates with school and can rely on teachers for support, and (c) be personalized so students get the help they need.

- The number of people who came to speak to us after the panel who agreed completely that curriculum-based test preparation is the only way to go.  Tricks just don't cut it.

- Meeting many of our competitors including some who are absolutely wonderful people and sincerely dedicated to helping students succeed.  Thank you for stopping by our booth!

- The friends we made in our industry and the partnerships we'll be starting over the next few months to help bring high-quality, personalized online ACT and SAT prep to thousands more students across the country.

- All the guidance counselors who came armed with terrific questions about how our curriculum is designed, how our reporting engines work, and how our tutors are compensated.  Your students are fortunate to have you as their counselor.

Thank you Baltimore for a wonderful time, wonderful food, and mostly wonderful weather!  We'll see everyone at NACAC 2010 in St. Louis!

As we head to this year’s NACAC Conference in Baltimore, we find ourselves in a place where ACT and SAT scores continue to decline in America and college continues to become more expensive despite the recession we’re in.  Schools have faced budget cuts and families are in a tighter economic situation than ever before but we all want students to succeed.

At last year’s NACAC Conference in Seattle, we listened to numerous counselors talk about what students needed to succeed in the college admissions process.  We spoke with counselors about the tools they used to help students improve their ACT and SAT scores and found that most counselors were quite dissatisfied with their current options.  (We also ate a lot of great salmon and we’ve been told to try crab chips in Baltimore this year!)

More specifically, here’s what we heard:

Classroom Course

-       The classes are not targeted

-       Students become disengaged quickly because the classes aren’t relevant to their needs

-       Students are extremely busy and have a hard time fitting classes into their schedule (and therefore also miss classes frequently)

-       The quality of instruction is often low and teachers from some companies sometimes don’t even show up

-       The classes almost always focus on tricks and students don’t learn much

Many Online Programs

-       There is little-to-no personalization

-       The pedagogy is weak

-       The curriculum is just text on a screen and is not engaging

-       The courses crash very often and frustrate students

-       There is no one-on-one support

What we heard even more often was “we have no evidence that any of these work.”

OUR WORK IN THE LAST YEAR

We heard you.  Your students are unique in their own way.  They learn differently.  They need help in different areas.  They need something that works on their schedule.  They need a tutor who they can connect with.  Most importantly, your students need something that works.

We spent the last year working very hard at improving our personalized online ACT and SAT courses, and have added significant interactivity along with dozens of additional lessons and hundreds of additional practice questions. Our goal has always been to allow for greater insight into student achievement while giving students more opportunities and resources to master the various skills they need.  Our standards-based approach allows us to deliver curricula that not only help students succeed on the ACT and the SAT, but in school as well.  Just this past year, students using our ACT Gold Program in schools (this is our program that does not include a tutor) averaged a 3.2 point improvement on the ACT.  You can hear one of the teachers involved with this program speak about PrepMe at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAhPEYslJJg

In addition, we’ve upgraded our personalization algorithms, iterated on our user experience based on user studies, and implemented an extremely powerful reporting platform to help schools analyze their students’ performance.

We have built our ACT and SAT course to offer true value to students, parents, counselors, and schools.  Students love that it’s accessible 24/7, that it’s interactive, that it’s personalized, and that their tutors are paid based on how much their score goes up.  Counselors and schools love PrepMe because it’s easy to administer, we offer teacher training and support, and we offer deep insight into a school or district’s performance across essential curricular areas.

NACAC THIS YEAR

We’ve been asked to speak alongside one of our partner schools – New Oxford High School in New Oxford, PA and you can find us at:

Date and time: Thursday, 9/24; 3:15 p.m.-4:30 p.m.

Room Number: 309

Session Number: A100

Final Title: SAT Test Prep – Sharing What Works

You can also find me alongside the PrepMe team at Booth 416 in the exhibit hall!  If you can’t catch us there, call us at 1-877-PREPME-4.  We’re here 24 hours per day, 7 days a week to make sure your students succeed!

Best,

Karan Goel

CEO & Co-Founder

April 22nd is the 39^th celebration of Earth Day. It is an event that knows no national boundaries nor digital barriers. All efforts to preserve our planet, no matter how small, can make a difference. On Earth Day, April 22, 2009, we are asking students and parents to join us in picking the environmentally responsible test prep solution: PrepMe.

Using PrepMe's online test prep instead of commuting to classroom-based PSAT, SAT, or ACT classes reduces fuel consumption, decreases air pollution, reduces carbon dioxide emissions, and reduces our society's dependence on paper materials. These are just a few reasons why we believe PrepMe is the greener way to go.

PrepMe is offering services at 10% off our regular prices for one day only! You can take advantage of this promotion by enrolling at http://enroll.prepme.com or calling us at 1-877-PREPME-4. The 10% discount will be applied automatically when you enroll.

This promotion is good until 11:59PM Pacific Time, Tuesday, April 22^nd. Please feel free to distribute this promotional offer to friends and family.

Sincerely,

When we first started this project, we obtained proposals from numerous firms but one narrator stood out: Johnny Heller. Johnny is an Audie Award winning narrator with over 300 audio book titles to his credit, was named one of the Top Voices of the 20th Century, is a 2008 winner of Publisher's Weekly Listen Up Award, and a part time stand up comedian. With a resume like that, it is easy to see why we picked Johnny to narrate our courses!

We are currently working with Johnny to create narration for our ACT courses and will be working towards even better and richer media integration for all of our new programs (shhh, we cannot tell you what that entails yet). You will see us enhance all of our courses with more media and give our students more ways to learn using high-quality curricular materials personalized to meet each individual's needs.

Thank you to Johnny and Spencer (editor and technician) for helping us launch PSAT and SAT course narration! We're thrilled about this launch and excited for the many additional upgrades we have coming in the next few months.

If you are already a PrepMe student, you can check out the new lessons by logging in at www.prepme.com/classroom.

Best,
Karan Goel
CEO and Co-Founder

As part of our partnership, every public high school 11th grader in the State of Maine is enrolled, at no cost to the student, into PrepMe's SAT Gold Course (which generally retails for $299.99 per student). This course, which offers personalized curriculum and over 60 hours of lessons, quizzes, and full-length practice tests, has been shown to dramatically improve SAT scores.

How can Maine 11th graders get started?

1. Visit the PrepMe Maine Page at: http://www.prepme.com/maine.
2. Click "Claim Account" and follow the instructions to verify that you are a Maine public high school 11th grader.
3. Create a Username and Password.

It's that easy! To login, students should visit the PrepMe Login Page at: http://www.prepme.com/classroom.

Students begin by completing their Diagnostic Exam, which allows our system to analyze the student's individual strengths and weaknesses. Following the Diagnostic, students select "Saturday May 2, 2009" in the drop-down box and click "Update Test Date". This will allow our system to create a personalized study plan for the student to follow week to week. After that, students simply follow their schedule en route to a higher score on the May 2, 2009 exam.

PrepMe Partner Program
This year, we are also launching a new initiative called the PrepMe Partner Program. This program is an opportunity for Maine high schools to work closely with us to integrate the PrepMe program into the classroom and to drive tremendous results. Partner Schools receive extra support, training, and access to online tutors. If your school wants to become a Partner School, please call us at 312-265-6446 or email us at maine@prepme.com.

Special thanks goes out to the Maine Department of Education for their continued support.

Good luck Maine 11th graders! We are excited about the opportunity to play a valuable role in your academic and professional success.

Best,
The PrepMe Team

We made the announcement today at Portland High School in Portland, Maine with Maine's Governor, John Baldacci, and Maine's Deputy Commissioner of Education, Angela Faherty. One of our advisors, Rick Bolton, spent much of Wednesday afternoon walking students through PrepMe's SAT program and helping them understand how our adaptive learning technology works. The students and the principal of the school all have had extremely positive things to say (hear what they have to say on a video from NBC News - Portland, ME) and we look forward to working with Maine's public schools to make test prep available for their students. There is also a Boston Globe story on our substantial donation.

We will keep you posted on all of the press and the success of these wonderful students.

We are thrilled about this opportunity and hope to announce many more equally exciting initiatives here in the coming months. A big thanks to our advisor Rick Bolton without whom none of this would be possible. Thanks Rick!

Best,
Karan

PrepMe CEO

Governor Baldacci, Karan Goel, and Principal Michael Johnson announce PrepMe's $13.5 million donation of free SAT prep over 3 years

As promised, here are my next two tips.

4. Don't Get Lost in the Language of your Essay
As a corollary to the last tip, don't waste your time over-correcting grammar and don't use words you're not sure how to spell. ADD can often cause you to spend far too much time fussing with the language of your essays. SAT graders are not looking for a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. They want to see the basics of structure with competent language use. Using familiar and comfortable grammar and vocabulary will not only remove distractions, it will leave more time to focus on the all-too-important structure of the essay.

5. Always Leave Time to Revise your Essay
This may seem simple to some, but a majority of students don't proof and revise their test essays. They are rife with simple mistakes in spelling and grammar which would easily have been corrected after one reread. Always be mindful of the time as you're writing your essay so you can have a few minutes to reread and check for argument cohesion. It can make the difference between an average and a great essay.

Best,
Eric

PrepMe Senior Tutor

As promised, here are my next two tips.

2. Don't Read the Reading Comprehension Passages Fully
The reading comprehension passages can often be long and full of unnecessary information. This is a big problem for anyone with ADD or slow reading habits in general. A great way to cope with this is to read the first one or two sentences and the last two sentences of each paragraph. This way, you'll get the general idea of the passage.

Some questions will refer to overarching themes, which by this point you'll be prepared for. Other questions will refer to specific words or lines. When responding to these questions, find the word(s) or line(s) in question and examine the text around them. Seldom is there a question which requires specific knowledge of more than a few lines of the text at a time, so this provides you with more than enough information to answer this type of question. Following this approach will not only focus you on the relevant information, but also save time which can later be used for revising.

3. Structure your Essay before Writing
The graders of the SAT essays rarely spend more than a few minutes on each essay. They only have time to verify your thesis, support, and conclusion, and then do a cursory read through for grammar and spelling. This means that structure is stressed over eloquence. Therefore, it is very important to understand where your essay is going before you put the pen to the paper. It is a very good idea to have your thesis and at least two points of evidence firmly in mind before starting. That way, you'll never be distracted from your main point, and your structure will be obvious to the grader.

Best,
Eric

PrepMe Senior Tutor