Do your students have different goals and need different approaches to motivate them?

We often work with siblings in a family, and the first sibling we had the pleasure to know in this family was Luke.  Luke’s mom Julie told us that Luke was very creative and inventive, a great spatial thinker who loved building things.  As a teenager, he had built a huge cabana playhouse for his younger sister, as well as an outdoor movie screening room.  Luke was also a very competitive basketball player who dreamed of playing at a Patriot League school.  However, sometimes Luke was willing to settle for a “B” instead of an “A” – Julie had once paid him to get A’s to see if he could do it!  (He could.)

One of the things we made clear to Luke from the start was that test prep takes 100% effort, and that if Luke did not want to put in that effort, we would fire him as a student.  At RTC, we are very serious about our students’ work ethic in test prep.  Luke understood this.  ACT was his test, and he and his tutor got to work in the fall of 2018.

Luke’s primary challenge on ACT was careful, thoughtful test-taking.  Luke tended to rush as a test-taker, and his tutor showed him the strategies that would allow him to slow down and take a great test.  Part of this was showing Luke the difference between “A” and “B” work on ACT: what it took to do his best work on the test.  We know every student has a different personal best on ACT, and our goal was to help Luke reach his personal best. 

Through months of hard work, Luke mastered the skills he needed to take his best test, eventually seeing a seven-point gain on ACT on a scale of 36! (His score gain was equivalent to 330 points on SAT.) This exceptional score gain was a tribute to Luke’s commitment to achievement. What we saw at the end of test prep was a student who had learned to commit to his best effort, and Luke took these skills with him to Lehigh University, where he plays basketball, exactly as he dreamed.

In the fall of 2020, Julie returned to us with her younger son, Casey.  We know that all siblings are different, and Casey was very different than Luke.  Casey’s creativity is around money, and at sixteen, he had already learned how to invest in the stock market successfully! Casey demanded excellence from himself in everything, and sometimes he could be very hard on himself. He also knew that he thrived under pressure, sometimes delivering his best results when it mattered most. He was targeting Ivy League schools and a top-tier score. ACT was also his test, and he and his tutor worked virtually to push for an elite score.

Casey’s strengths were primarily in Math and Science. From the start of the program, he was ready to work on the most complex and difficult math questions ACT had to offer. On these two sections, the primary focus was for Casey to be as meticulous and careful as possible. He learned that there’s no room for error in shooting for a top-tier score. At first, Casey was a bit resistant to some of the strategies that would help him achieve this level of care, but we helped him see that to get his best score, he needed to focus and use every strategy at his disposal.

The verbal side of the test presented more of a challenge for Casey at first. While Math and Science were more intuitive, it took patience for the English section to click for him. Casey and his tutor worked on grammar rules and the test design of the section for months, looking at the ins and outs of how ACT tests English. It wasn’t until after Casey’s first official attempt that the English section clicked for him — his patience paid off, and he was able to pull a top tier score here as well. The toughest piece of the puzzle for Casey was the Reading section. Casey’s tutor understood that Casey needed intense, focused work to find his ideal approach and to lock the test timing down; Casey’s tutor used specialized strategies that helped Casey unlock his potential on the test, and they cranked together to raise Casey’s score.

Ultimately, the combination of this hard work and Casey’s clutch factor led to success — he achieved his best ever Reading score on his last official test, a 34. A perfect ACT score is 36, and Casey ended up with an elite Composite score of 35, including a perfect score on the Science section! (35 on ACT is equivalent to 1550 on SAT.)

Among many other fine schools, Casey was accepted to the Class of 2026 of both Harvard University and Stanford University. As you can see, he’s thrilled to be attending Stanford!

Luke and Casey were matched with different tutors, because each needed a unique plan to assure he could reach his best score. Every student does! Each of these brothers dug deep and found his best score potential on ACT, which meant each earned his strongest score on ACT.  Amazing work, Casey and Luke!