Academic Approach®

What sets us apart is our approach: Academic Approach uses standardized tests—what many teachers and school administrators perceive as necessary evils—to achieve valuable academic ends. We are not merely tutors; we are educators.

For virtually all other test preparation companies, standardized tests are treated as obstacles to be "gamed." Little credence is given to the exams as educational media. This trivializing approach leads most teachers to disdain the practice of test preparation because most tutoring companies "teach to the test" rather than impart any valuable problem-solving approaches that can be applied in more meaningful academic contexts.

The educational mission of Academic Approach is to counter this trivializing methodology with our own approach, which we call "Teaching Beyond The Test." Academic Approach students are not taught games and gimmicks. They are instead taught the logical underpinnings of a test, its core academic content, and its relationship to broader curricula. The result is a mastery of the substance and skills tested on an exam, a mastery that makes our students significantly stronger critical thinkers. Our approach has proven effective for all of our students—from those preparing for high school to those preparing for graduate school.

By delivering a more edifying approach to standardized test preparation, we are quickly establishing ourselves as the teachers' preferred tutoring company. Our duty is not only to help students gain acceptance to the schools of their choice but also to provide them with the educational foundation necessary to perform well once they matriculate.

By "Teaching Beyond The Test," we have been able to show our students that standardized tests can in fact present valuable opportunities to learn the most important skills. To train the careless thinker into a critical reader and sophisticated student of logic, to hone the slapdash writer into a skilled proofreader, to shape the sloppy math student into a meticulous and systematic problem solver—this is precisely what "Teaching Beyond The Test" means at Academic Approach.