Ryan Thomas – Testimonial

As the daunting process of college admissions initially faced our son and the rest of our family, we decided to take a proactive approach to the journey. During Ryan’s freshman year, we attended the college night offered by his guidance department at Daniel Hand High School and we were encouraged by your presentation on how to prepare for the standardized testing aspect of admissions. Two of the things you mentioned seemed to be most practical. First, you indicated that the standardized tests have almost a language of their own and that by learning the language, and/or its logic, significant testing improvements could be achieved. Then, you stated that your firm, College Planning Partnerships, would customize the program it offered based on the tests that the student was preparing for and the level that the student was at as an individual. This seemed to be a much better approach than the “one size fits all” training offered by the Princeton Review or the Kaplan Review type courses. As a result, we had Ryan work with you in preparation for his PSAT test during the summer between his sophomore and junior years. As he was preparing for the test, he worked on Math and English skills that applied to both the PSAT and the SAT. In October of his junior year he took the PSAT and came out of the test feeling so confident that we had him take his SAT’s the next month. Due to a quirk in the timing for receiving test results, we were thrilled to find out that Ryan had scored in the 99th percentile (with a combined score of 2300) for the SAT exam, before finding out how he did on the PSAT. When his PSAT score was given to him at school, he found he was also in the 99th percentile on that test and might even qualify for National Merit recognition. Overall, we have been extremely pleased with the support and guidance you and your co-workers have provided. We believe that this approach has been instrumental in maximizing Ryan’s standardized testing performance and relieving him of the stress associated with taking and retaking these tests, in order to achieve his best score. Sincerely,