Online SAT® Prep for Schools/Groups/Organizations
Counselors and administrators, time after time, have told us that the problem of raising stubborn SAT® scores is their hardest problem to solve.
It's not the college application, not their kids' GPAs, not making sure their kids write a good essay or get teacher recommendations. Really moving the needle on SAT® scores is a thing that almost everyone struggles to do. Leave it to us - we've been doing it successfully for 10 years.
After years of improving kids' SAT® scores, we've found that significant (130+ points) improvement begins around the 80-hour mark.
We offer two main ONLINE options to get to 80 hours
Online SAT® Bootcamps:
Concentrated study in a short period of time, like 7-10 days (7-8 hours a day, 3-4 practice tests)
School Day SAT® Classes:
Meet every day as part of the school curriculum for a class period. Can last from 2 months to the school year, depending on the scope of the intervention the school needs.
We also provide college access wraparound services for schools that want them - and we specialize in working with kids from underserved schools.
Bootcamps and School Day SAT® classes are taught by SSA-trained/provided teachers (including our Executive Director and Curriculum Director), equipped with our extensively honed and tested in-house curriculum, strategies, and teaching methods.
Download an info-packed guide to SSA’s online offerings for schools!
How much does it cost?
We custom-build programs that are tailored to the number of hours and the option (Bootcamp/School Day Classes) that schools pick. In the spirit of our sister program, the Yleana Leadership Foundation, we have lower-priced options for schools serving underserved populations. We charge per instructor hour, so more hours is more expensive - but remember that to see 100+ point score gains, you have to get to the 80-hour mark (and that will be true with any SAT® prep program).
How do we get results? Four key ingredients:
The Oxford model
Flipped prep
Mandatory homework
Retention-minded methods
The Oxford model of instruction
The instructor gives some amount of instruction (15-40 min), after which students try it assisted and then on their own (15-40 min). After this period, students rejoin the instructor to give feedback, get answers to questions, and get more information (15-60 min). Students again try the method assisted and then independently (15-40 min), and then meet again with the instructor for feedback/questions/more information (15-60 min). Class proceeds accordingly, a mix of practice and immediate and delayed feedback, so that students are able to hone not only their application of the strategies but their critical thinking skills, because no SAT problem will be predictable. Each day's schedule will evolve according to the specific needs of students in the class, but students should block off the time of their bootcamp for exclusive focus on the SAT, or they will not master the strategies.
Questions? Set up a call with Alyssa
Flipped prep
When someone is talking at you, it doesn’t matter if they do it live or not. What matters in the classroom experience is the interaction between teacher and student - asking questions, engaging with ideas, getting feedback, getting tweaks to understanding, understanding the liminal space of what you’ve learned and how it can be applied. Lectures can be recorded. Implementing strategies can’t.
We prize the time students and teachers spend in the classroom, and do everything we can to maximize interaction during that time. Your kids have a limited amount of time with us - so we use that time to interact with them. We will send them lectures and explanations for them to watch at home. When they’re in the classroom with us, they can engage with the strategies and really understand how they work. This maximizes the impact of classroom time.
Mandatory homework
Homework is useful for two reasons:
There is no way we can spend as much time with your kids as we want - it’s just not feasible. That DOESN’T mean that they can’t be working on SAT® prep, though - if they’re shooting for the 80-hour mark, they need to rack up as much time as possible.
If kids are in a space where they’re constantly being told what to do and how to do it, they’re never going to learn these skills on their own. A lot of the SAT® exam is knowing what to do when you face a problem you feel like you’ve literally never seen before. Or doing a problem where, partway through, the strategy suddenly seems to no longer make sense. That’s real - and the cure for both of those is practice. Students have to apply the strategies on their own, see the places where they don’t know what to do or why or how, and then come back to the teacher with those situations and understand how to pivot within a given set of circumstances. Confidence on the SAT® exam is built on familiarity - familiarity is the greatest single predictor of success.
Retention-minded methods
Our greatest job is retention - if I am the smartest person in the world and I tell you the secret of the universe and YOU CAN’T REMEMBER IT, it’s as if I never told you.
One great example of retention? It has been proven that we retain more when we make a prediction about an outcome and then learn what happened than if we’re just told about the outcome. Kind of crazy, but backed up by data.
There are multiple important pieces to retention - from interleaving different types of problems to spaced practice to retrieval practice. It permeates the questions we ask, the homework we assign, and the ways we test students’ understanding.
Socratic Summer Academy has experience teaching to students across all levels of SAT® scores, including working with students with accommodations, and we tailor our teaching to the error patterns students actually make.
We are proud to create carefully customized options for those schools and community-based organizations who wish to provide elite SAT® instruction to their students.
