While most college students spend their summers as camp counselors or lifeguards, Duke University sophomore and Rego Park resident Helen Chen is taking a different path. She was selected to lead a local branch of Ivy Insiders, a new SAT preparation program.
The opportunity to manage the location at the Rego Park Jewish Center popped up when Chen was looking for a summer job. A graduate of Hunter College High School, she, like the other Ivy Insiders leaders, achieved an SAT score in the 99th percentile. For the program, founded by Harvard undergraduates in 2003, the thinking is that people who have previously excelled on the exam can use their knowledge and experience to help high school students succeed.
In preparing for her SAT, Chen took a lot of practice exams and “bought a lot of practice books.” She also enrolled in a local prep class, which wasn’t the perfect fit.
“I wanted to be somewhere else on Saturdays, not doodling for three hours,” she said.
According to Chen, the Ivy Insiders course takes place over three weeks, with two, three-hour lessons each week. There are weekly practice exams, timed like the actual SAT, to “try to simulate it so the students, when they take it the first time, don’t sit there saying ‘when does this end; it’s horrible!?’”
Chen also said that the program works to dispel the common myths about the SAT.
“Students think the SATs are IQ tests or cumulative [of everything they learned in high school]…The questions [the exam] asks are always the same…We take these things that we know they tested time and time again, [and teach] how to tackle these problems.”
What advice does she have for students looking into the various SAT tutoring programs? “I would definitely say to make sure that you know what you’re getting into; that you want to be there when you’re in the classroom. You definitely can do much better than you thought you could.”
For more information on Ivy Insiders, visit www.ivyinsiders.com.
