Dear Parents,

It’s an exciting moment.
The letter arrives in the mail, your child’s name printed in the center. You lift it up, rubbing your thumb across the embossed logo of the University. You’re nervous and excited, too scared to open it right away …. you feel its weight … holding it up to the light …

…and finally, you can’t wait any longer. You open it.

“CONGRATULATIONS…”

Elation! You jump and yell …. or laugh or cry … celebrate with your family …. call and brag to relatives … but one thing is certain. You won’t forget this moment.

Helping our children get into a good college is one of the proudest things we can do as parents. We’re helping set them on the right path … giving them the tools they’ll need to succeed in a competitive, globalized world.

We’re sending them to a place where they will discover important truths about themselves … meet interesting people and make lifelong friends … and begin a path that is truly their own.

Colleges send an admission email not a real mail anymore.

These days, the ‘C’ in College stands for Competitive

We all know that college admissions are a lot more competitive these days, with more and more students – including international students – competing for a spot at America’s best colleges. That means our children work harder – taking on more challenging course work and loading their schedules with one activity after another – than students ever have before.

It’s a fact that many of our students lead more stressful lives than fortune 500 CEOs!

What do Colleges Look For?

Colleges do their best to look at the complete individual who applies, but the truth is that there are far too many applicants to scrutinize closely. Though they pay attention to things like extracurricular activities, sports, adverse circumstances, and the spirit of a student that shines through their application essays – the fact is, colleges still pay the most attention to two important measures: their GPA and SAT or ACT scores.

For small colleges, SAT (or ACT) and GPA combined makeup about 74% of their admissions decision; for large colleges, like the University of Washington or Harvard, that number rises to 85%.

No wonder, then, that more and more students every year spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars at tutoring agencies to raise their GPAs and increase their SAT or ACT scores. In other countries, the money spent on private tutoring can almost match the money spent on public education!

We all want the extra edge, the competitive advantage that can help us grow past our limitations and conquer our goals.

A Plus Academy helps give you that competitive advantage.

We are a boutique tutoring agency in Edmonds that helps students raise their grades and their standardized test scores – like the SAT – while at the same time helping them develop the kind of thinking and study skills that will help them succeed once they get into college they want.

We begin every relationship with a free evaluation interview and help create a study plan that will help your student achieve their college goals … whether that means raising their GPA or increasing their standardized test scores.

The A Plus Advantage

Or, how a teacher from South Korea’s Multibillion tutoring industry brought his secrets to America

A Plus Academy combines the best of all possible worlds.

A Plus Academy has helped hundreds of students since 2005. We’re conveniently located on Highway 99 in Edmonds. We have spacious classrooms and top-notch materials. We’re highly selective about whom we hire – but more about what makes our tutors so effective in a moment.

South Korea’s emphasis on education is hard to match. Students in public schools attend school 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. And the private education industry dwarfs public education in size and money spent. In fact, the tutoring industry is so prominent that top tutors are “rock stars” in South Korea and are poached by competing tutoring companies. Some even have their own agents! Few countries offer a bigger emphasis on education than does South Korea. Since the Korean Civil war in the fifties, South Korea has had to play catch up with the rest of the industrialized world. And catch up they have dubbed one of the “Asian Tiger” economies, along with Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.

And that’s where A Plus Academy’s secret weapon comes from. Our founder and chief math tutor, Simon Park. Simon was an avid student, picking up advanced degrees in earth sciences and computer science for fun, but he discovered his true passion was teaching. He apprenticed with an elite tutoring academy in South Korea. Beginning with classes of just a few students, in a few years’ time, he was delivering lectures to over 100 students in large auditoriums. He became a sought-after tutor; people asked for him by name. Simon’s approach is the spirit behind the instruction at A Plus. Because Simon is the founder, owner, and chief tutor, education is always our priority at A Plus.

Other tutoring companies are started by business owners who buy a packaged curriculum and hire a college grad who can understand the material. That’s not how we do business at A Plus. Because we aren’t pushing a business. We are educators, first and foremost. You can see this in how Simon hires tutors. Whenever a position opens up, he’s flooded with resumes. Many applicants impressive degrees, both bachelor’s and advanced (for example, Ph.D.’s and law degrees). That doesn’t impress Simon. In fact, one time he hired a tutor who had a Stanford graduate degree, only to let him go two weeks later because while the man had an impressive degree, he wasn’t an impressive teacher. Simon hires teachers. Teaching is a science and an art, but it’s also a talent. A good teacher must bring the proper mix of erudition, empathy, and encouragement to the table; but the right teacher has that rare and valuable gift of making the complex appear simple.

That’s the kind of teacher who Simon hires. And once the right people are in place, they have the right tools, using a curriculum that’s been created in-house – not shipped to us from some national headquarters three thousand miles away. Because one size does not fit all. And the right approach is constantly being shaped.

With our pulse on what our students need, we can respond to it right away. A big national company doesn’t have that kind of agility – changes get filtered through the bureaucracy slowly, if at all. And individual tutors don’t normally have the resources or expertise to build an actual curriculum, a system that employs cutting-edge learning technology gleaned from the bleeding edge of cognitive science research.