Announcing our ACT Math Fundamentals Course
We released an ACT Math Fundamentals course: a full-assed, full-nerd bridge between standard school math and the kinds of problems that show up on the ACT.
Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.
We released an ACT Math Fundamentals course today!
This is the culmination of our full-assed, full-nerd effort to bridge the gap between standard school math and the kinds of problems that show up on the ACT.
The goal is to
- produce students with a high degree of skill in the subject matter, like well-trained athletes
- and ALSO make sure they are particularly well-practiced defending against the particular plays/tricks that their opponent (the test) is most likely to run in the upcoming game.
In addition to ACT Math, we also offer SAT Math.
Note that these test prep courses are comprehensive and require consistent daily effort for at least several months (often longer) leading up to the exam.
There are tons of “missing middle” topics that show up on these exams, that we teach, but that students don’t explicitly cover in school.
Additionally, we exhaustively assess all the prerequisite math knowledge that students need for the exams, and it’s common for students to come in missing gigantic swaths of foundational skills.
We automatically add those to the student’s learning plan, so any knowledge holes get filled in, but the sheer volume of knowledge gaps can come as a shock for students and parents who assume that an A in math class indicates mastery of that level of math (it usually doesn’t).
Basically, the bad news is that your student is likely much less prepared for the exams than you think, and it will take serious time and effort to prepare them…
But the GOOD news is that we can figure out the most efficient path forward, and all your student has to do is consistently put forth a serious full-focus effort for a few hours each week.
More on the “missing middle”:
We took a deep dive into past ACT exams and excavated a ton of additional topics that students won’t explicitly encounter in school.
Most students need explicit practice with these types of problems in order to reliably get them correct on the test, even if they could have figured it out eventually as a homework problem.
The thing that a lot of people forget about standardized tests is that there is an extreme time limit. You don’t have an hour to contemplate a challenge problem. You don’t even have 5 minutes.
What you have is 1 minute per question on average. That’s it.
That’s why it’s so important to come in well-practiced on these types of problems. If you can’t do it in about a minute, then as far as the test is concerned, you don’t know it.
Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.