Victory Step's Private Tutoring Programs

Victory Step Test Prep and Tutoring offers private tutoring for the SAT, ACT and Academic Subjects in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metropolitan Area! Private tutoring is offered to our students in the form of one-on-one setting, or a small group setting (1-3 students), based on what the client desires, with our highly trained instructors. Victory Step's programs are designed to offer exclusive attention and training to clients that prefer private settings to classroom instruction for SAT/ACT prep. The private tutoring sessions are specially designed to achieve maximum efficiency and output from both students and instructor. Call us or visit us online to register for one of our private tutoring programs.

Website - www.victorysteponline.com
Phone - 855 773 7744

An Easy Way to Practice Critical Reading: Newspapers

One of the cornerstones of a good education, whether in high school preparing for the SAT, in college, or after college, is the ability to read, comprehend, criticize, and discuss a variety of written material. As a tutor, English student, and self-proclaimed literature nerd, I am often asked for reading suggestions that will help students practice their critical reading skills without suffering through those boring SAT passages. Practicing SAT Critical Reading sections is useful for building endurance, testing comprehension, and providing examples of test questions, but the skills used in understanding those sections can be practiced using a variety of writing genres not found on the SAT. While the best practice is simply to read as much as possible from different sources and difficulties, today’s students usually don’t have the time for the 19th Century masterpieces of French, Russian, and British literature.

Luckily (while I do love a great novel) it is not as important what you practice reading as how you read it. What is essential is to use the same critical reading strategies used on the test: focusing on understanding rhetorical devices, comprehending argumentative strategies, discovering new words or new meanings for familiar words, and developing an ear for tone. Reading any text in this manner will reinforce the skills important to any humanities education or fulfilling life of reading.

That being said, certain types of reading material work especially well for practicing specific Critical Reading skills. Many high school students struggle with understanding the argumentation of passages on the SAT, often because students are more used to reading novels in their English classes and not this type of non-fiction. Many questions on the SAT rely on understanding why an argument is structured the way it is; questions often ask how a certain example adds to the passages main idea, how the author of a passage discusses an argument made by an outside source such as a previous study, authority, or hypothetical objection, or what would most undermine (or strengthen) one of the author’s arguments in the passage. To make things more difficult, the SAT expects students to recall these argumentative details clearly when they answer the questions. Without extra practice, students are likely to have difficulty with these types of passages. While any work can be read with an ear to argumentation (even novels are constantly putting forward a series of arguments), there is one type of writing which works particularly well for encouraging all of these skills: newspaper articles.

Now I know a lot of families no longer subscribe to physical papers, but there are many (often free) professional news sources online which provide great practice in understanding the workings of argumentation such as The Washington Post or The Guardian (UK). Articles are often the length of an SAT passage and written to express either a single viewpoint of the author or to summarize the opinions of various authorities, political figures, celebrities, or otherwise noteworthy people. In reading any news article, it is necessary to understand what main idea the author is trying to communicate to the reader and how the examples used convey that message or conflict with it. Many students struggle with types of questions which involve understanding how a passage’s main idea conflicts with an argument presented by a figure within the passage such as that of a scholar or social group. It is also important to think critically about the strength of the ideas expressed and question what information would be needed to strengthen or weaken the argument, much like on the SAT. Instead of having questions available to test information recall, each passage can be tested by attempting to summarize it afterwards without referring back to the article. Much like the Victory Step strategies strive for being able to read the passage once and not look back at it for all of the answers, each newspaper article is essentially written in a way that asks its reader to be able to remember and summarize the article to someone else if asked about it later. While this is difficult at first, as it is with students practicing their focus and recall on SAT passages, it becomes easier with practice. Lastly, each news article encourages its reader to compare its argument, examples, and findings with other articles about the same range of subjects, whether in the same paper over different days or in different papers. This mirrors the layout of the SAT’s two-passage questions where it is necessary to identify the main ideas of each argument and figure out the key points on which they differ.

Newspaper articles make great practicing material. Not only do they encourage the same type of critical thinking necessary for the SAT, but they are plentiful, quick, and constantly updated. Reading a few articles every few days provides an easy way to practice SAT skills without having to take out a practice test or having to worry about running out of reading material. Who knows, maybe those articles will be more memorable than the SAT passages and you’ll get to learn something new about the world while you’re at it.

Playing the Waiting Game: Exercising Patience While Looking for Admissions Decisions

Almost every prospective college student goes through this: You turned in your application materials, you paid your fees, you maybe even visited the campus once or twice. Now what? It’s time for you to play the waiting game, the most excruciating weeks and months of your life while you wait for an admissions committee in some far-off locale to decide the fate of your future. You must be asking yourself: Did I get in? Will Harvard take me? Maybe Stanford? What about Baylor? Or will they all just be rejections, like a big pile of collegial coal?

This time can be distracting for a student, especially with senioritis setting in by now. It’s tempting to spend all day waiting for the mailman, checking your inbox, or twiddling your thumbs as you stare intently at the phone. Surely the mailman could make two deliveries today, right? What about the website? Maybe it will update after their office closes. Maybe the email got lost in my spam folder.

But no matter how terminal a case of distracted senioritis you get or how frustrating the wait is, this is when you most need to knuckle-down, because no matter the admissions decision, you won’t be going anywhere if you fail your final high school classes. So how do you focus on the next four months of your life, when the next four years and beyond hang in the balance?

1. Limit temptation. Set a time every day when you will check your school’s preferred method of communication, whether that is email, a website or snail mail. Limit yourself to that once daily check (or twice if the mailman came later than you thought he did), but no more after that. This takes a lot of self-discipline, and it might even require you limiting your computer time to make it easier, but it’s better than driving yourself crazy with obsessive checking.

2. Take care of business. You’re getting into one of the busier parts of the semester, with tests, papers and projects starting to come up in the next few weeks. Keep yourself distracted from waiting on admissions decisions by throwing yourself into your school work. If you’re one of the rare students that do not have anything due sometime soon, get a jump start on projects that will come up later in the semester, especially if you would otherwise procrastinate. That way, once you have your admissions decision in hand, you will have already done your projects and papers, and you can sit back and mellow into that lovely senioritis.

3. Develop a new hobby. Part of the college experience is trying a bunch of new things: hobbies, looks, interests, majors. Why not get a jump start on it by working on some new hobbies, or rediscovering old ones? This will distract you from that ever-tempting mailbox. It might also help you meet some new people once you get to college. So if you’ve never learned to cook before, now is the time, before you’re stuck eating ramen in the dorms!

4. Spend quality time with friends and loved ones. No matter how much you and your friends say that you will all go to the same school, that you will all hang out when you’re on break, that you will always be as close as two peas in a pod, college usually doesn’t work out that way. You’ll meet new people, develop new interests, and have different experiences, and that will change you. You may still spend time with your friends, but you’ll never be as close again as you are now, so make the most of the time you’ve got with them now. Similarly, your parents probably see you growing up before their eyes, leaving home, going away to college, getting a job, starting your own family… and so on. Taking some time to talk with Mom and Dad each day will help them cope with the fact that you’re not just leaving but that you’re growing up.

Simply by keeping yourself distracted from this all-important question, you’ll be able to focus much more on those things you have to deal with right now: school, chores, and life.

We Are Helping Students Everyday!

My Perspective as a Tutor - Devan Earle (Instructor)

My Perspective as a Tutor
By Devan Earle


If you turn on the news today, all you see about education in the United States is turmoil, inefficiency, and chaos. Many 24 hour news stations would have you believe that indeed, tomorrow, high schools around the country will simply DISAPPEAR.

And though it's clear to see that these trumped up claims and sensationalized stories are just that, sensationalized, there are a lot of troubling facts pertaining to the state of education in this country. Fewer than 50 percent of high school students go on to graduate and that rate is much lower in some poverty-stricken areas, and also for young men and minorities.

This inadequate educational system stands in stark contrast to the fact that all scholars and pundits agree that the key to a thriving and prosperous country rests on a well-educated populace. Our economy is increasingly moving away from production and manufacturing and towards a high tech information based economy which relies on skilled workers.

Personally, I have many ideas on how to shape the educational system in America. Unfortunately though, I am just a lowly college student and a SAT tutor; no one has consulted me lately about the state of educational decline in the United States. As a tutor though, I do have the ability to positively affect the lives of my students, and as the sayings go, change starts with the individual, and be the change you want to see in the world.

As someone who graduated from a DISD public school, went through the college admissions process not once, not twice, but three times, and who has attended two different universities in 2 different states, I have intimate knowledge about the state of being a High School and College student in the 21st century. For instance I know that many High Schools do not adequately prepare their students for the grueling process of college admissions and that many parents are (rightly) confused and overwhelmed by the whole ordeal.

When I tutor then, I try to shed light on, or be a resource for, the process of college admissions, and the steps that go along with it.

Importantly too, I take the opposite tone from those too-perfect, make-up smattered 24 hour newscasters. I am not panicked or apocalyptic in my approach to education. These attitudes are not helpful for the college admissions process (or in life for that matter). Instead I work with students at whatever ability level they're at, and with whatever set of goals they have, to do the best I can to prepare them for the SAT, for college, and for life. Whenever I can sprinkle in anecdotes from history, psychology or philosophy I do so, because I believe in the importance of being a well rounded and well educate individual. So while the college admissions process is something to take seriously, it's not something to FREAK OUT about. Many conceptions I've had about the whole process have been shattered as I've moved through my college career. Importantly: just because you don't get into THAT school doesn't mean you won't be happy or successful. Also important: just because you get into THAT school, doesn't mean that you will be happy and successful. I know that this a perplexing time for our country, and even more so for our youth and young adults, but if you're worried about the college admissions process, you're taking the right first step by signing up with Victory Step Test Prep & Tutoring. In case of emergency, identify the exit rows, put on your mask before you assist those around you, and sign up for a classroom or private tutoring program at Victory Step Test Prep & Tutoring. Oh ya, did we mention the Kindles?!

Practice, Practice, Pracitce!

Nowadays, for better or worse, most colleges require prospective students to submit standardized test scores as a part of their application. More often than not, this test is the SAT exam; however, some of the same strategies used to practice for the SAT can be applied to just about any other test you’ll ever take. The most important strategy, though, is always practice; but the question is, how should you practice?

Even though the College Board says there is no way to really “study” for the SAT, practice, as with everything else in life, really does make perfect. In this case, practice begins by learning the material in school, in your math and English classes. Even though the SAT tests your critical thinking skills, you’ll still need to start learning those skills from your school work.

If you understand the concepts behind the SAT math and have honed your critical reading and writing abilities, you have developed the strong basis needed to ace a test of critical thinking. These are all skills that you need for the SAT, for college and for the rest of your life, but you can only acquire proficiency over them with years of practice at school.

No matter how good you are at school, though, the SAT can trip you up if you don’t know how to find the real answer, or some shortcuts or strategies to move through questions more quickly. After all, the SAT is a timed test, and high scores inevitably rely on how fast and accurate you are. Much of this is based on really understanding the ways the test is designed to confuse you. At Victory Step, we help prepare you for this reality of taking the SAT by teaching you to avoid common pitfalls, such as not answering the real question, and by showing you ways to save yourself time answering each question. In doing this, even if you’re not always sure of how a problem works or what a word means, you can figure it out on the spot and earn that all-important point. We also provide you with intelligently created homework and practice problems that will help you hone your skills.

Finally, there is nothing that can prepare you for the SAT as well as taking the SAT itself. That is why most students take the test two or three times before they are finally pleased with their scores, or before they realize their true potential. Even taking practice tests at home cannot really simulate the experience of taking a test in a crowded classroom on a Saturday morning for four hours. You need to prepare yourself for the conditions of the exam- like the noise from other test-takers and the hunger that inevitably sets in by section 8.

Because we at Victory Step recognize this, our program offers you the opportunity to take four practice SAT exams, giving you a feel for not just the material tested, but also the conditions you will face when you really take the test. This removes morning-of jitters, prepares you for the less-than-ideal conditions of the actual exam, and helps you learn to work against the clock.

As you can see, a lot goes into making yourself ready for the SAT, but most importantly, it’s practice, practice, practice!

Toni Whalen
SAT/ACT Instructor
Victory Step
toniwhalen@victorysteponline.com

Victory Step's Newest Test Prep Center in Fort Worth!

In keeping with our company’s goal of helping every student reach their full academic potential, we here at Victory Step are opening our new office in Fort Worth on January 2, 2012! We hope this new location will help us reach out to college-bound students in Fort Worth and surrounding areas.

These are some of the high schools our new location will be catering to:
- Eastern Hills High School
- Dunbar High School
- North West Christian Academy
- Nolan Catholic High School
- Arlington High School
- Kennedale High School
- Temple Christian Schools
- Arlington Martin High School
...and many more!


The new location will offer the same excellent services as our Dallas and Irving offices, with private instruction and group classes available from our highly qualified, caring instructors, at the same affordable prices. Click here to look at our upcoming class schedule at our Fort Worth Center - http://www.victorysteponline.com/SAT_Schedule.html.


As always, we encourage our clients to share their experiences and success stories with friends and family, and to take advantage of our Refer ‘n’ Win program. With the opening of our new location, more students than ever before will be able to improve their standardized test scores!

Take a step toward your bright future today!

Victory Step In Fort Worth
5601, Bridge St, Suite 300,
Fort Worth, 76112