We Heard You Loud and Clear: Personalized ACT and SAT Prep for Better Results (PrepMe @ NACAC 2009)
NACAC LAST YEAR
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