Steven Gagliano – Testimonial

I took the SAT’s as a seventh and eighth grader with the older version of the test as a part of Johns Hopkins gifted and talented program. My results were good, but not where I wanted them to be. I did not really see myself improving to the point where my scores would be equivalent or stronger to those of my competition for the caliber schools that I wished to apply to. I had taken other classes but the practice tests that I took revealed that my improvement was minimal, if anything at all. As freshman, the test changed: out with analogies, in with the writing section. That was when I knew it was time to make a serious change.

Sam Rosensohn was my solution. The first session with Sam was a sort of conference about, “me.” We discussed what my schooling up to that point had been like, what I did as extracurricular activities, what my scores were, where I wished to go to school, and what scores I wanted to attain. He got an overview of what I needed and wanted to work on by a series of small assessments and we were off and running.

The very next class, we discussed the writing and editing portion of the test. He talked about different aspects of the test but somehow it was not like a lecture. It was almost as though I was just having a conversation with one of my friends about sports. It took no effort to understand his strategies. He gave me a portion of the test to again gauge my skill, which we afterwards thoroughly dissected. Going through my mistakes, he added clues to help me through certain problems and work out even the toughest puzzles. We worked on constructing and planning the perfect essay, and continued lessons with small homework assignments that were truly no problem to complete at home. Continuing with other lessons we studied the intricacies of the verbal portion of the test and built upon my vocabulary. Gary Burgard helped me with my math and on occasion, grammar. Each of them was somehow able to make the test simple. I don’t even know how they did it. They just did. I ended up getting a 770 on the writing portion of the test and a 2180 overall. “Yup, that’ll do!” I could not recommend a better program than what College Planning Partnerships offers. They know what they are doing and truly care about their students.

Sincerely,