About Us
No matter which instructor you work with, all students at Jake SAT Prep experience the same rigorous, innovative, and current preparation for the SAT and ACT exams. Jake, and Jessica have different personal styles, but their approaches, philosophies, and course materials are identical.
Jessica came to Jake SAT Prep several years ago with a wealth of knowledge and experience, and with recommendations from many satisfied former students. But she has also received detailed training in the Jake SAT Prep methods and materials. Though their classroom dynamics reflect their different personalities, the instructors all share a common curriculum, and a common vision for how to best help their students prepare for these stressful exams.
Jake
Jake has been preparing students on Long Island for the ACT and SAT for over 15 years. He has taken these standardized tests over 80 times, tracking patterns and developments in the questions for his own customized preparation materials.
His students benefit from the fact that Jake teaches not only techniques for specific kinds of questions, but also the deeper principles that underlie them. These skills are relevant no matter what curveballs the College Board throws our way.
As a result, when the SAT changed dramatically to emphasize grammar and new math concepts in 2005, he adapted his materials and approaches seamlessly. Now that they have just revised the SAT again in 2016 to focus on evidence-based reading and introduce Common Core math, Jake is bringing his expertise on not just what the College Board tests, but how and why, to this new iteration of the exam.
While many other test prep instructors are teachers in their day jobs, Jake has dedicated his entire professional life to preparing students for these exams. His holistic approach to student preparedness involves training for not just difficult exam questions, but the many anxieties and stresses of test day.
Quick Facts about Jake
- Most frequent SAT score 1600
- Most frequent ACT score: 36
- Holds a BA in psychology from Tufts University: Go Jumbos!
- This is his favorite web comic
- A former competitive runner, Jake’s PR for the 800m is 1:58
Jessica
Jessica has been teaching SAT prep classes since 2013. She credits her past internship at the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office for her SAT score success: With the mindset of a lawyer, Jessica wholeheartedly defends the right answers and ferociously prosecutes the wrong ones, one word at a time.
Never one to rule out any options until she’s absolutely sure, Jessica toured 28 colleges before deciding to attend the University of Pittsburgh (Hail to Pitt!) on a Full Tuition Honors College Scholarship. During this time, she studied abroad in Rome, which entailed eating pizza three to four times daily. If you ask her about her best times as a college student, she’ll wax nostalgic about her host family in Italy, with whom she tried tripe for the first (and last) time, and to whom she offered the American delicacies of peanut butter and Goldfish in return. A lifelong Italophile and Francophile, Jessica graduated from Pitt summa cum laude with degrees in French and Italian Languages and Literatures.
Now, as a speech-language pathologist in the public schools, Jessica believes in helping each student find their own path to success while still keeping a close eye on the progress of the whole class. She deploys multiple teaching strategies to appeal to all learning styles—and she also believes that everyone learns better when there’s room for some humor and fun.
When she’s not teaching, Jessica can be found trying to locate New York’s closest replica of her Nonna’s pizza while plotting her next transatlantic flight.