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Academic Approach’s student-centric approach emphasizes skill mastery, critical thinking, and adaptability to prepare students for future challenges and achievements.

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Academic Approach achieves remarkable results, boosting scores, scholarships, and college admissions, while fostering critical thinking and academic excellence.

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Our experience with Academic Approach was outstanding. Our son’s tutor was a perfect match in his approach and personality.

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Hinsdale Central High School

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Academic Tutoring

The Honors Advantage: Making the Most of Advanced High School Classes

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News and Press

Harvard Reverses Course, Reinstates SAT/ACT Requirement for Fall 2025 Applicants

April 12, 2024

ACT Floats Changes to its Digital Test

March 27, 2024

Illinois May Revert to the ACT

March 26, 2024

Test Optional?

While standardized tests are optional at many universities and colleges, many top schools are still taking test scores into consideration.

Check out our analysis of some top universities from the 2023 Common Data Set for college admissions.

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Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues:

A brief from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the Annenberg Institute at Brown University reviews research posing an essential question: what academic interventions and what strategies should schools prioritize?

What works?

• Frequent tutoring tied to core academic content (and designed to support students with their classroom work) can help students learn faster and lessen gaps in achievement
• Increasing time students spend learning has strong evidence of impact
• Strong systems to identify early student warning signs—while building strong norms and routines—help students engage academically
• Supportive relationships with adults are predictive of students’ resilience and ability to respond to adversity

What does not work?

• Teaching extra content without providing more personalized support for students does not work; in other words, compressing content through extra homework or more content in the same class period does not work
• Grade retention (or holding students back a year) also led to negative effects

Much of this research continues to encourage our work this year to provide carefully designed academic tutoring solutions for families and schools and to leverage standardized test preparation as well for rigorous, academic support to grow scores and skills by Teaching Beyond the Test.

Be well,
Matthew Pietrafetta, Ph.D., Founder & CEO