We develop individualized ACT tutoring programs to unlock the elusive nature of these tests. On average, our students increase their scores by at least 7 points on the ACT –the best track record in the area.
We’ve analyzed 26,000 official questions, conducted probability analysis, and explored every question and answer pattern in existence. In backtesting every question since 1996, we’ve unlocked the rules that govern the ACT.
Just as in school you wouldn’t want your English teacher teaching your science class, ACT tutors have strengths and weaknesses, too. While most other programs follow a jack-of-all-trades model that fails to meet your specific needs, our subject specialists help you achieve mastery across all sections. Some colleges will take your highest sections and superscore your ACT. With our method, you can superscore us!
In the “holistic” college admissions environment, the ACT is just one part of your profile that needs to be in sync with the rest of your application. Our tutors are experts in integrating test prep into the college application process. We help you identify your goals, reach them, and then soar above what you thought was possible. Let’s do this!
Based on 56 reviews 19:49 11 Dec 23My son did great on the selective enrollment high school test. Most importantly he got assistance where he needed the most help and did really well on that part. Huge thanks to Joe and the crew!Colin
03:33 21 Sep 23I am extremely grateful for Joe and his team who are passionate about improving the chances for acceptance into the top tier colleges. I appreciate his personal attention, follow-up and ease of scheduling sessions. With the Krupnick Approach our son raised his score to just 10 points shy of his goal. He also decided to take the test one final time because with assistance from Joe's team he feels even more confident that he can surpass his initial goal. Bringing out the best in teens and motivating them to demonstrate their abilities is truly a gift. And TBH it is a gift that keeps on giving since it has the potential to create a life changing opportunity! Thank.You.Joe.
14:17 25 May 23Highly recommend The Krupnick Approach to anyone studying for the SAT/ACT test! The Krupnick Approach tutoring helped raise my son's SAT test score 300 points. Joe Krupnick himself is very hands on and knowledgable about both tests. All of the tutors were great to work with and my son really learned so much from all of them including Joe. Andrew Kletzien, the math tutor, was exceptional. My son received a perfect score on the math SAT section and absolutely loved working with Andrew.
03:15 11 May 23I cannot thank Joe Krupnick and the Krupnick Approach enough for their exceptional guidance, support, and expertise throughout my college application process.From the beginning, Joe Krupnick took the time to understand my academic strengths, extracurricular activities, and who I was to help shape my college process around what would be the best fit for me.Thanks to their guidance, I was accepted into my top-choice school, Harvard University. I know that without their help, I would not have been able to achieve this dream.
00:03 21 Apr 23Joe and the Krupnick tutoring team blew us away! My son Marko raised his ACT score by 11 points! Quite amazing! The focus on practice, time management, and test-taking strategies really helped Marko feel confident and prepared on test day. The team was always punctual, proactive and had a fantastic response time with any question we had. My glowing recommendation and much gratitude goes to Joe and his team. You have made a significant impact on Marko's future, and we are forever grateful.
16:15 14 Apr 23Dr. Krupnick is an extremely skillful mentor, coach and tutor. Himself a PHD from Harvard, he is extremely focus, dedicated and committed to each student.We found his method and approach to be extremely helpful for my daughter. I have not seen such one on one and hands on approach with any other college prep counselor/classes. We have been extremely happy with Joe( Dr.Krupnik) and his personal involvement always made us feel at ease.My daughter has got accepted in one of her top three choice of college and to a big extent we attribute her success to Joe's commitment. We could not have been more happy with everything!
23:43 20 Feb 23Writing college applications is an incredibly challenging and intimidating process. It requires a unique form of writing that requires you to show off all your accomplishments while remaining relatable and humble. This can be really tricky to understand but Joe and the whole team at the Krupnick approach make it very easy. Joe’s coaching helped bring out my voice so that my essays stood out from the crowd. Joe also helped me through navigating the ACT. His test prep practice helped me raise my score by 6 points putting me in the range for more competitive schools. I am now studying at the University of Chicago, my dream school, and I would not been able to get here without Joe’s help.
02:08 23 Feb 22My name is Anthony Leon and currently in my senior year of highschool. Being a a first generation immigrant, I'm the first going to college and with that comes a lot of new challenges seeing as I had little information to work with. However, the Krupnick Approach has helped me through a lot in navigating through the SAT and college process. I honestly can't think of how I would've managed without their assistance. Dr. Joe Krupnick, Joe Burton, and Kalea Ponce have been both kind and informative on the secrets of mastering the SAT and tackling the challenge of writing college essays. Thanks to our efforts, I've managed to secure a full ride to Amherst. I cannot recommend this program enough for any student with little knowledge on the SAT or college process.
16:44 09 May 21Krupnick approach is a great way to boost your test scores. I went from a 21 to a 26/27 superscore just from this company. He also helped me look at colleges and my college essays. Overall very helpful and I would definitely recommend!
16:29 08 May 21I have been so impressed with Joe and his team or tutors. They are patient, and able to make the most difficult concepts easy to digest. Most impressive is the confidence they install in your student! It was a real pleasure for my student to work with the Krupnick approach! I would use them again in a heartbeat.
20:44 07 May 21Helped me raise my ACT score and ultimately get into 8 top universities! Lots of great strategies and tips, very informed. Thank you for your help!
18:29 07 May 21Phenomenal service! It helped me achieve academic success in a course I genuinely thought I would fail. All tutors, especially founder Dr. Krupnick, greatly surpass any current on-campus assistance. Each tutor is brilliant, personable, relate to pressures that come with higher education, dedicated to helping students reach academic excellence, and help you realize your full potential both as a student and an individual. I highly recommend The Krupnick Approach for anyone who needs/ wants the highest quality after-school assistance, and if I could give them six stars, I would.
Sessions move between theory and practice, between our proprietary formulas and official ACT questions. We’ve distilled the ACT into systematic procedures and methods that are fun (fun!) and easy to learn.
Our strategy files are your rules of the road for the ACT. We present our proprietary test-specific and content-related rules in formats that are systematic and easily digestible. They come from ten years of research and our analysis of 26,000 official questions.
You should expect to clock a 1:1 ratio of session time to outside homework time. If we do a one 1.5-hour session per week, you’ll do about 1.5 hours of homework. Not exactly a full-time job, but it’s absolutely essential.
Mock tests are full-length official ACTs that you should take at least every three weeks. These practice tests are checkpoints and essential for tracking stamina. Our program allows you to take unlimited mocks for no extra charge.
Your baseline ACT will highlight key strengths and opportunities for improvement. With over 200 official ACTs, we wil analyze your diagnostics using our scanning software and data tracking system. If you're deciding whether to take the ACT or SAT, we usually recommend baselines in both tests. In order to not split your gains in half, we strongly encourage students to choose *either* the ACT or SAT--and never look back.
After reviewing your baseline and coordinating on a program, we will put together your comprehensive program specification document, including details on scheduling, test dates, and tutoring distributions. All programs come with full access to The Krupnick Approach’s proprietary database, including strategy files, curated question banks, content review, and outside resources. No matter where you are, we'll equip you to meet your test prep goals.
Like seasoned athletic coaches, we continue to adjust strategies and approaches throughout the program to meet your ongoing test-prep needs. As you begin to narrow down your college lists, we can help you determine how to integrate your ACT scores into your application for the best possible admissions outcomes.
You'll work with our Harvard and Ivy-League-trained experts in one-on-one tutoring sessions, which are personalized to your individual strengths and weaknesses. Whether you work with us on Zoom or in-person at our offices in Chicago, our unique team approach ensures that we will optimize your results across all four sections of the test.
With a FREE 30-Minute Consultation With One of Our Experts
Composed of 75 questions at a 45-minute hard stop, the English section is, first and foremost, about grammar and punctuation. More specifically, it’s about the specific forms of grammar and punctuation that the ACT deems important. This means you won’t be expected to know the difference between a period and a semicolon but will be expected to know four specific situations in which you can use a comma. It also means 30% of the English section of the ACT will be based on test-specific rules, or magic tricks, which you can automatically answer based on the internal structure of the exam.
Ultimately, if you learn the strategy files we’ve made and how to apply them, there’s nothing that should stop you from acing ACT English.
Math SectionMath is the one section of the ACT that’s actually based on skills you’ve learned in school. With 60 increasingly difficult questions to complete in 60 minutes, your job is to work through problems from numbers & quantity, algebra, geometry, and advanced skills from Algebra II.
Since every math question has two kinds of answers (a right answer and a trap), your goal for Math is to either get the question correct or get it wrong in a way unanticipated by the test makers. The advanced skill questions cover themes ranging from matrices and imaginary numbers to logarithms and conics, but even if you haven’t covered some of these subjects in school, the ACT only expects about a C- level of understanding of advanced skills. Often the hardest questions require relatively little math but involve challenging conceptual moves that aren’t ordinarily taught in standard school math curricula.
Reading SectionThe myth about the Reading section of the ACT is that it’s a test of a student's ability to comprehend and analyze written passages. This isn’t quite untrue inasmuch as reading comprehension skills will benefit you on the ACT, but the more fundamental skill for Reading is learning how to read quickly under enormous time pressure. A 70-minute test the ACT requires you to do in 35 minutes, Reading is a pride-swallowing siege of scanning, parsing, and locating words, synonyms, and ideas in passages in rapid-fire time and then triaging answer choices for traps and correct answers.
Our experts have deciphered algorithms for logical rules and correct answer locations and methods for reading quickly that will benefit you in both speed and accuracy on the ACT. And these skills will help you in college too; when your professor asks you to read 300 pages a week, you’ll know how to distill large amounts of information very effectively and quickly thanks to our work together.
Science SectionThe Science section, technically the Science Reasoning section, is ostensibly based on the biology, chemistry, and physics you learned in school, but there’s very little actual science on this test. With only 2-4 questions on science concepts you learned in high school, ACT science tests you on hard-to-pin-down skills like data analysis, chart reading, and the use of the principle of sufficient reason. Which is not to downplay its interdisciplinary rigor by any means, but we’ve discovered content-related rules, procedures, and methods to support even the most apprehensive students to jump 8, 9, and sometimes more than 10 points.
Writing SectionThe ACT Writing section is not only optional but entirely unnecessary because colleges do not use it as a criterion in the admissions process. Legend has it that colleges once scrutinized the Writing score–alongside students’ personal statements to spot inconsistencies–but they soon found out that writing scores were more highly correlated with the length of students’ essays than with their quality. Generally, we advise students not to take the Writing (a “Pascal’s Wager” kind of thing), but we have resources to help students with the section should they so desire.
Digital SAT vs. ACT| DSAT | ACT | |
| Timing | 2 hours, 14 minutes | 2 hours, 55 minutes |
| Number of questions | 98 questions | 215 questions |
| Minutes/Question | 1.37 | 0.81 |
| Test Format | Adaptive, Digital | Paper/Pencil, Linear |
| Sections | Reading & Writing Math | English Math Reading Science |
| Scoring | 400-1600 | 1-36 |
| Student Strengths | Students better suited to the DSAT are typically those who: 1) Prefer a shorter format (DSAT is 2 hrs 14 mins, ACT is 2 hrs 55 mins) 2) Prefer a slower-paced test 3) Are looking to emphasize math skills (given that math is 50% of the DSAT) 4) Prefer shorter passages for reading and punctuation/grammar. 5) Feel more comfortable with challenging vocabulary questions (DSAT includes 8-10 vocabulary-in-context questions) | Students better suited to the ACT are typically those who: 1) Prefer a longer format 2) Can tolerate a faster paced test. 3) Are looking for more rules and formulas. (20% of the ACT questions are based on “magic tricks” vs. 14% of SAT questions.) 4) Feel more comfortable with charts, graphs, figures, and tables. (These are tested on the ACT Science section.) 5) Feel more comfortable with the meat-and-potatoes paper/pencil style of testing. |
| Section | Standard Time Duration | Number of Questions | Number of Passages | Time Per Question | Time per Passage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | 45 minutes | 75 questions | 5 | 36 seconds | 9 minutes |
| Math | 60 minutes | 60 questions | N/A | 60 seconds | N/A |
| Reading | 35 minutes | 40 questions | 4 passages | 52 seconds | 8 minutes, 45 seconds |
| Science | 35 minutes | 40 questions | 6 passages | 52 seconds | 5 minutes, 50 seconds |
| Total | 2 hours and 55 minutes | 215 questions | 15 passages | 4 minutes and 49 seconds | 7 minutes and 40 seconds |
