400-point score improvements combined with traditional summer camp fun!
We are a residential SAT summer program at Colgate University, we balance the best of summer camp fun (campfires, water balloon fights, Ultimate Frisbee) with interactive, small-group instruction that garners dramatic SAT score improvements in just three weeks.
For the past seven summers, the Socratic Summer Academy at Colgate University has worked with hundreds of students from around the country and the world, helping them achieve dramatic score increases on their SAT -- on average, several hundred points in three weeks. Students come to Colgate not just to learn, but to be part of a vibrant camp community that nurtures their passions, exposes them to life on a college campus, and helps them overcome their individual academic challenges and prepare for their future.
We achieve these results in three ways:
- [1] We aren't like most test prep programs - as a residential academy with high teacher to student ratios, we emphasize small-group and one on one instruction. Students get constant personalized attention and work individually with coaches who help them set bi-weekly goals, make sure they are mastering our curricula, and tailor our program to students' unique learning needs. Our curricula, in turn, helps students of every stripe improve their scores through interactive games, simulated test-taking experiences, and refined - and evolving - strategies and content.
- [2] Our program isn't a school - it's a camp. We inspire students to succeed on the SAT by devoting ourselves to making our program not a stuffy classroom, but a fun, exciting, and rewarding experience. Our highest praise came from one student, in 2011, who told us that SSA was not just his favorite test-prep experience, but the best camp he had ever been to. Part of that comes from the exceptional facilities at Colgate: tennis courts, basketball courts, an olympic swimming pool, hiking trails, and extraordinary views. Part of it comes from our devoted teachers and counselors, who spend free times bonding with students while eating marshmallows around the campfire ring, playing pick-up basketball and ping pong, and exploring the campus and surrounding community.
- [3] Our team of administrators ensures our curricula, program design, and teacher training remain unmatched. Our founder, Max Rosen, created SSA after years of working as a teacher and camp administrator. He went on to graduate from Harvard Law School, where he was the valedictorian of his class. Our executive director and co-founder, Alyssa Bowlby, co-founded SSA and also founded a non-profit academy that works with over 70 low-income students each summer to help them improve their SAT scores and get scholarships and financial aid to competitive schools. Together, Max and Alyssa design SSA's curricula, train teachers, and oversee the program each summer - ensuring camp remains a place that values academic exploration and community even as it never loses sight of its goal of exceptional SAT results.
2016 is a complicated year for college prep: the SAT is changing, college admissions are getting increasingly competitive, and college prep is getting more and more stressful, and more and more impersonal. The test may change. But at SSA, our academic philosophy, nurturing camp community, and exceptional team will ensure our program remains the most effective, most fun, and most nurturing place to prepare for your future anywhere in the country.
Our track record: On the 2400-point SAT (the "old SAT"), those students who had not studied the SAT before (at a multiple-week program) averaged a 400-point score improvement. Those who had previously studied it (for a month or more with a professional instructor) averaged a 210-point score improvement. This will be (as with all programs) our first summer teaching the new SAT; we expect that our track record, if anything, will get stronger, given the detailed attention we're paying to the new test.
There are still spots left! Register now at https://www.socraticsummeracademy.com/2.php.
