Kids Under Construction’s SAT/ACT Private Prep Course is a comprehensive 10-week course that prepares your student to take either the SAT or the ACT exam. All students need to have completed (or be enrolled in the Spring semester of) an algebra 2 course before beginning the program. Here’s how it works.

1: take free discovery exams at kuc
2: pick an official exam
3: register for your official exam & buy your prep book
4: enroll in Kuc's private prep program
5: take your official exam & watch your score soar

STEP 1: TAKE FREE SAT & ACT KUC DISCOVERY EXAMS
On select Saturday mornings, your student is invited to register for a FREE SAT and/or ACT discovery exam with us in our office from 9a-12:30p.  These exams give us baseline data and exam experience so that we can help your student decide which exam they should take for their college admission applications. Ideally, this is done in preparation before an exam that will be taken during an 11th grader’s Spring semester or a 12th grader’s Fall semester. They can also be taken during the student’s 9th or 10th grade year to gain exam familiarity and project future areas of weakness. You may take your choice of exam on any day, but they are designed on back-to-back weekends to allow one week’s time between tests if you choose to take one of each.

Register for your FREE KUC discovery SAT or ACT exams here.

STEP 2: PICK AN OFFICIAL EXAM
Let us help you decide which exam is best for your student! We'll use the results of your discovery exams, your experience taking both exams, and entrance exam requirements from your list of colleges and universities to which you'll be applying, to recommend the best exam for you. If you already know which official exam your student would like to take, skip to step 3.

STEP 3: REGISTER FOR YOUR OFFICIAL EXAM & PURCHASE YOUR PREP BOOK
After you decide which official exam your child will take, either through our discovery exams or on your own, you’ll need to register for an exam as soon as possible. Official test dates can fill up quickly, and you’ll want to make sure you give your student enough time to receive their score reports to meet college application deadlines. Students should plan on taking their final official test no later than October of their 12th grade year. Register for the SAT exam or the ACT exam. The big blue Official SAT Study Guide, published by The College Board, is available at most local book retailers and on Amazon. The big red Official ACT Prep Guide 2021-22, published by Wiley, is available at most local book retailers and on Amazon. Do not buy the Kaplan or Princeton Review books as these are not published by the same companies that create the exams.

STEP 4: ENROLL IN OUR PRIVATE PREP PROGRAM
During the 10-week private prep course, your student will complete 10 2-hour sessions with our SAT/ACT prep tutor. These sessions will take place in our office on 2nd Street in Long Beach, and can be scheduled after school during the week or on Saturdays. The first hour of the session will be spent reviewing homework exam questions, and the second hour will work through a binder of materials that cover 15 grammatical concepts (such as subject/verb agreement, degrees of adjectives, and comparative/superlative comparisons) and 11 math concepts (such as decimals, fractions, exponential logs, and linear equations). These sessions will review concepts your child missed on the discovery exam, missed test questions that arise from weekly homework exams, and challenging concepts that most exam takers find difficult (like trig functions, algebraic fractions, setting up complex logic and word problems). They will introduce systems for notating reading passages, tracking tricky problems, reducing test anxiety, managing test timing, and establishing move-on points in the test booklet. Additionally, your student will be expected to complete a full exam (approximately 3 hours of work) every week at home independently before their session.

enroll in our KUC private prep program here

STEP 5: TAKE YOUR OFFICIAL EXAM & WATCH YOUR SCORE SOAR
Students that make 150 point improvements on SAT exams, or 3 point improvements on ACT exams (as determined by their KUC discovery exam or an official SAT/ACT score report), will earn a $50 Amazon gift card!  Your student’s score improvement will strongly correlate to the effort they put into improving their score through their weekly practice exam homework. We’ve helped over 100 SAT and ACT students study for these exams, and based on that experience, we are confident that a score improvement of 150 points on the SAT, and 3 points on the ACT, is attainable for all students.