Culver City High School students strive to be leaders of the future. That means helping as many people as possible reach their full potential. I and three other CCHS juniors – Arjun Palkhade, Brandon Kim, and Jackson Hausrath – have striven to seek that future by starting a free SAT Peer Tutoring program after school that currently boasts over 25 members after only two meetings.
For many students, the SAT – an important standardized test that helps determine which colleges a student gets accepted into – can be a speed bump determining their collegiate careers, yet the majority of students are unable to afford expensive tutoring, highlighting the disparity of students’ economic opportunities to score well and get into their “dream schools.” This wealth barrier in standardized testing is precisely what CCHS SAT Tutors seek to break down through free, personalized tutoring from enthusiastic peers who already have SAT experience.
Co-founder and executive of this program, Arjun Palkhade, recalls attending a “summer SAT program that cost
[him]
$2000, and [he] realized quickly that not many people can afford to have these programs” that often mean the difference between one’s highest potential score and a mediocre one. Palkhade hopes to create more opportunities for students in his immediate community at CCHS because even on a small scale, when more people achieve “bigger goals, the rest of us do” too. By providing free services and tutoring “We are able to balance the playing field and help our peers,” Palkhade said.
The SAT has recently become a topic of conversation among CCHS students who have heard that standardized testing may become less important in the college admission process as testing students on “niche subjects such as the SAT” does not demonstrate a student’s full set of capabilities, according to Palkhade. Some progressive top universities, including Yale, openly tell their student-applicants that they have started to weigh SAT scores less in the admissions process and increase the importance of extracurriculars and activities to encourage a broader skill level amongst new generations of students.
The SAT Peer Tutors have definitely embraced this new emphasis and, through their program, want to make students aware of all the changes that may come about in the college admissions process. Meanwhile, the SAT remains a crucial college admissions factor, second only to a student’s GPA, and this group of peer tutors will continue to help students get the highest possible score.
The SAT Peer Tutors plan on personalizing their program through consistent diagnostics, utilizing Khan Academy, tutoring groups of 4-6 students at a time based on skill level to tend to each student’s needs, and keeping weekly progress data on each student to determine which of the four test sections – Reading, Writing and Language, Math with no calculator, Math with calculator – that they can improve on.
Jackson Hausrath, the program’s Writing-and-Language-specialized tutor, added that this free SAT peer tutoring program is not only “beneficial to students, but also to the CCHS community, as learning from each other as equals and learning together with motivated peers sparks a sense of togetherness.”
