Essential Components in an SAT Program

It has been a long time since I last posted. My free time has been consumed with preparing students for the SAT and ACT, totaling about 30 hours per week (I spend the rest of my waking hours running Hammer Tutoring). My students often ask, "Doesn't it [tutoring the SAT] get old?" My answer, "No, because every student is different." I'm always learning; I'm always making adjustments; I'm always writing better material. In my attempt to create the best SAT curriculum, my pursuit is never-ending.

So, what are the components of a good SAT curriculum?

1. An experienced and passionate tutor - Tutoring is a trial and error business. While training helps expedite the learning process, there is no substitute for logging lots of tutoring hours. Great tutors not only understand the test from every angle, but they understand how to best communicate this information. Great tutors TUTOR full-time. Hiring a full-time professional tutor is an investment.
2. A tutor who the student enjoys working with - Test prep is about the student, not the tutor. Since test preparation is one of the last things a high school student wants to do in his or her free time, I've always found it quite strange that many test prep specialist are out of touch with the students and their interests- to put it bluntly, they're old. How does a student identify with a 52 year old retired astronaut? I think the answer has something to do with who is paying the bills and who is "ultimately" hiring the tutor- the parent finds it easier to relate to such an individual.
3. The right amount of prep time - There are no shortcuts in test preparation. Improvement requires hard work and time. The amount of time varies from one student to the next, and should correlate to a student's starting score vs a student's target score.
4. Real SAT tests and questions - Sound obvious? Well, Princeton Review, Kaplan, and Ivy West don't use real tests.
   
5. Helps you in the classroom - All of my students become more confident with test-taking as a result of my SAT program. The methods that I teach, help my students perform better on classroom tests. That's why I never understood this complaint about teaching to the test, but that can be saved for another blog entry.