At Potentia, students entrust our community of dedicated online educators not only with their successful results in test prep and college admissions. Students also entrust us to dismantle their self-limiting beliefs, with proven pedagogical strategies for lifelong learning and self-empowerment.
Potentia teachers are ready to design your personalized test prep or admissions tutoring program through these steps:
Potentia Prep looks forward to welcoming you into our community: Removing stress over standardized tests and replacing it with proven results and ongoing learning for life.
“Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”
- John Wooden
Whether you choose our test prep or admissions consulting, we start with a Strengths Assessment for every student. For test prep we do an in depth analysis of your practice tests to create a personalized plan. For admissions consulting, we complete a comprehensive inventory of your accomplishments, skills, and values in order to better help find colleges that fit you.
If you want the greatest amount of improvement in the least amount of time, should you start with your greatest strengths or your greatest weaknesses? Almost everyone answers “your greatest weaknesses”. It sounds counter intuitive, but the opposite is true. Start with your greatest strengths. Why? For standardized tests, how much more is a high difficulty question worth than a low difficulty question? They are equal. Therefore, wouldn’t it make sense to maximize as many low difficulty level questions as possible? Why climb all the way to the top of the tree for fruit when there are plenty of fruit on the bottom.
By starting with your strengths, you give yourself mental and emotional momentum that helps you overcome the greater challenge of improving your weaknesses. It can be frustrating when putting in a tremendous amount of work to improve your fundamental skills without first seeing an improvement. Working on your strengths first can give you a motivational boost before you move on to your weaknesses.
A Strengths Based approach is equally effective in college admissions. The most successful applicants build on their natural strengths and passions. Don’t do things simply because you think it will look great on your college resume. Do it primarily because you have genuine interest in the activity. If you love football, then stick with it. If you don’t, find something you do love that you can put your time and energy into. Now more than ever college admission officers prefer someone who pursues their genuine interests rather than follow a well worn path.
As most football coaches know, if your defense is weak, you want to keep your offense on the field as much as possible. Focusing on your strengths will often minimize your weaknesses.
Potentia’s Approach
First, we help students believe in their academic abilities. Then, we help them conceive effective study plans. Last, we teach them effective strategies to achieve their goals.
Believe
Why do we start with the students’ beliefs? We often hear “I’m not good at test taking” or “I’m not good at math”. If we don’t work on students’ limiting beliefs first, the best strategies in the world will not stick. We help students develop an optimal learning mindset that allows them to overcome and even welcome learning challenges. We help them uncover conscious limiting beliefs and help them to overcome them.
Conceive
How do we help students conceive effective study plans? Even the best students often do not know how to create an effective study plan. We help them clarify their goals and break them down into actionable steps, including creating contingency plans in case the inevitable challenge arises. Students are often too overwhelmed to even know where to begin. As we often say, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. We help students break down the big elephant into chewable pieces.
Achieve
What do we teach students to help them achieve their academic goals? Our test prep is based on the most effective strategies that have benefited thousands of students.
The life of a student athlete is truly incredible. It is hard even for involved parents to understand the pressure of their student athlete's packed schedules, along with the physical and mental standards demanded of these students.
Potentia knows student athletes face their own sets of particular challenges when preparing for standardized tests, college, and academic coaching. Because of this, we keep student athletes in mind as a specific student audience for our four services: with their own learning goals for now, outside game time, and for success long after college.
As a student, CEO & Founder of Potentia Prep, Conrad Macalalad, assumed his test prep, college success, and entire life would be determined by his ADHD. With little optimism, as a teenager Conrad signed-up for SAT tutoring. Within days, Conrad's personal test prep tutor changed his views on everything: from his own intrinsic learning potential beyond test prep, to his capacity to live a life he had never thought to hope for. (You can read more here about Conrad's path, from unsure student to respected academic expert and #1 SAT tutor in the nation.) At the time of this writing, Conrad is now helping his own son study for the SAT.
Since its start, Potentia Prep has deeply valued working with an array of student learning differences. We are proud our years of pedagogical experience are filled with student success stories across ADHD, dyslexia, and other information processing needs.
Truly, one of Potentia's greatest assets is the results we offer students in these categories. Our approach supports students across learning differences: starting with test prep and building into helping them become intrinsic learners for life, perhaps when they never believed they could. Find more about some of our results here. You can also find which of our four services may be best for you here.
When its time to choose test prep or academic counseling for a high-performing student, Potentia Prep knows you have an abundance of impressive options. We also know it is difficult to find a community of top-ranked teachers who merge results with student empowerment, and who combine Ivy League credibility with proven, meta-cognitive practices to improve intrinsic learning for life.
With 20+ years experience and the #1 rated SAT teacher in the nation, Potentia has taught over 5,000 students. All of our instructors have received a perfect test score in the subject they teach. You can also find a full list here of top-tier schools where our students have been accepted.
Just as valuable to us, however, is our success in teaching students to use these methods beyond this time of test and college preparation. We see ourselves as your community, not only for measurable test prep and counseling, but also using these strategies in expanded learning for life -- long after your time with us.
