Is your student strong in some areas, but needing to build confidence and skills in others?

Tomas worked with Miss Claire in a program RTC ran at a private nonprofit for promising low-income students. Tomas received RTC’s ACT curriculum and instruction, in a classroom with three students of a similar level. Tomas started with a 24 Composite, aiming for a significant score gain. (24 on ACT is equivalent to 1180 on SAT.) When he began ACT class, it struck Miss Claire how organized and on top of things he always was. Tomas was incredibly diligent and disciplined in his ACT studies, and it paid off in his work.

Tomas has excellent reading comprehension, and he very quickly used his exceptional reading skills to his advantage on the English, Reading, and Science sections. In English, Tomas worked to master grammar rules that he innately understood so that he could see the test and beat it.  In Reading, Tomas learned to analyze test design so that he could aim for an elite level score.  In Science, Tomas quickly decoded passages but struggled with the graphics, so Miss Claire taught him to effectively use his pencil to quickly and accurately identify the information he needed.

Tomas’s biggest challenge on the ACT was the Math section. Math has never been his strength, and in class Tomas found the design of ACT math problems very challenging.  First, Miss Claire grounded Tomas in content and formulas, so that he recognized and practiced the concepts he would see on the test.  Then Tomas developed comfort with how the ACT tested him. Miss Claire taught him strategies to maximize his points on the test at his level, and Tomas learned not to expect perfection from himself in an area that wasn’t his strength.

Through working on mindfulness with Miss Claire, Tomas also learned how to talk to himself positively during the Math test, so that after taking his most difficult section, he didn’t feel defeated on the Reading test that follows.  This mindful thinking enabled Tomas to both maximize his score in Math, a test that felt very difficult to him, and also to “reset” for Reading, his strongest section, so that Tomas could do his best work and reach an elite score.

Through diligence and hard work, Tomas learned to be a very consistent ACT test taker. Eventually, Tomas saw a three-point score gain in Math, and he earned every single one of those points the hard way.  Tomas saw seven- and nine-point gains in Science and English, and he achieved a remarkable perfect score of 36 in Reading.  By grounding himself in content, strategies, and test design, and by learning to take a mindful test, Tomas was able to maximize his score and achieve his goal, a Superscore of 30 on the ACT. (30 on ACT is equivalent to 1370 on SAT.)

RTC also helped Tomas with his college application essays; he has generously allowed us to share his Common Application essay below. Tomas and his older brother Santiago are the first generation in their Colombian immigrant family to go to college. Tomas’s family is incredibly proud of him, and so are we.

Tomas was awarded a full QuestBridge scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he is studying Political Science in the Class of 2025.  We are so excited to for him to soar!

Tomas’s Common Application Essay:

As a child, I heard adults tell me to do what makes me happy; however, they never seemed to mention that almost nothing is free. I had to learn that lesson as soon as I entered high school. When I started my freshman year, I very excitedly signed up for any extracurricular that piqued my interest. This is how I stumbled upon my primary extracurricular activity: Speech and Debate. I love to learn and exchange ideas with new people, and that is exactly what this activity allowed me to do. There was one problem, however: every tournament costs money!

Any travel tournament costs anywhere from $250 to $500 dollars, which my parents did not have. Sometimes an end-of-the-season tournament could cost more than $500 dollars. For the average competitor, this may not be such a great issue, but my parents are working class people who could not afford to send me to my private school, much less spend more than $2000 dollars a year for an extracurricular activity, no matter how much I loved it. Being a full-scholarship student at my school, I have always known that my family did not have the same financial capabilities as those of my peers, so I could never be angry with my parents. Instead, I would have to find a way to earn my own money.

That is why, last summer, I decided to work in construction with my dad. Fortunately, his employers were nice enough to give me a part time job. Nonetheless, it was not as manageable as I had originally thought. Most days I had to work outside or in houses with no air conditioning, either painting or working in demolition. The intensive work combined with the blistering sun struck me with a newfound respect for my father, his fellow laborers, and myself.

I have never been unappreciative of my parents, but this experience made me bond with my father in a way that I could never have imagined. He did that job every day for years on end, all for my brother and me. Of course, I only had to do it for a summer, and I was not going to complain to him daily, because, at the end of the day, I chose that job. Each day I would work alongside my father painting, pounding nails, and mixing concrete. This made me really think about how everything he and my mom have given me was borne out of hard work, a concept that I had never understood until then.

Above everything else, this summer job, that was only supposed to be about money, taught me about myself. It taught me about self reliance, that if I encounter an obstacle or a problem, all I have to do is look inwards, believe that I can do anything if I put my mind to it, and then take action. This lesson will serve me for the remainder of my life; whenever the road gets tough, I will remember that nothing is impossible unless I convince myself that it is so.

By laboring alongside others, I also learned to appreciate the efforts and tasks of everyone from a cleaner all the way to a supervisor. This will serve me in the future, enabling me to appreciate and respect the laborers of our society, because I have been, for just a brief time, in their shoes in the boiling sun working alongside them. While this job did allow me to go to many tournaments without such a heavy economic burden on my parents, more importantly, it taught me to be grateful, rely on myself, and appreciate those around me.