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Member: Marc Gray

Business: Odyssey College Prep

Website: odysseycollegeprep.com

Started: Spring 2019

About Marc Gray

Marc Gray is the Founder and Director of Education for Odyssey College Prep. Marc uses advanced aptitude testing to simplify the college admissions process for students and parents. He also guides students to create targeted passion projects to differentiate their college applications. As a test prep educator, Marc helped write the Achievable ACT Prep Course, an online ACT course that uses machine learning and memory science to help students increase their test scores. Marc also serves as the Chair of the NTPA’s blog committee.

What techniques do you employ to assess and improve the effectiveness of your tutoring methods continually?

Recently, I joined an NTPA mastermind group. It’s run by NTPA Board Member Jim Wisemer of Ivy Experience. While the meetings are conversational and not overly formal, they’re incredibly instructive. Most of our discussions center around best managerial practices. Sometimes, we explore pedagogical techniques. Hearing how my colleagues handle teaching challenges often surprises me. It’s not that their approaches are superior to mine (though plenty are); it’s how different they are. Not better or worse, just different. By exposing my staff and myself to other approaches, we put more arrows in our quivers and have more options to help our clients.

What inspired you to start a test prep business?

Parents enjoy working with people they trust. And there’s no greater sign of trust than allowing an educator to teach their children. Before I founded Odyssey College Prep, I noticed there needed to be a comprehensive college prep business in Central Arkansas. There were college counseling practices, test prep firms, and some career counseling coaches locally. In that scenario, parents had to trust several organizations to give their kids a comprehensive college readiness program. No one-stop shop existed. Thus, Odyssey College Prep was born.

In what ways has your tutoring enhanced your community?

Recently, my team and I worked with over 100 Mamas Unidas students. Mamas Unidas is a nonprofit devoted to empowering Central Arkansas Hispanic students with cutting-edge education resources. Mayca Alverez and Sandra Carmona Jobe, who serve on the organization’s board, contacted us to facilitate this collaboration. Working with them was one of my greatest moments as an educator and entrepreneur. It also presented an immense but rewarding challenge. All of our tutors work exclusively with one-on-one students, not in groups. However, many of my tutors are teachers, so we’re fortunate to have a great pool of teaching talent.

I chose two of our best educators with teaching experience to prepare 65 students for the ACT. Since Mamas Unidas is a community-funded nonprofit, we wanted to give them as many discounts as possible. So, we reached out to Justin Pincar and Tyler York, our partners from Achievable, an NTPA Affiliate company. Tyler and Justin consented to give each Mamas Unidas student an Achievable ACT Course FOR FREE. This cut down the program’s overall cost immensely, allowing everyone to stay under budget while empowering each student in the class with some of the most advanced test prep curricula on the market.

Overseeing the program was a blast, but hearing the results two weeks later was encouraging. In just two 3-hour classes, the average student scored 2 points higher. Some even went up more than 5. On the last day of class, each student’s parents, siblings, and extended family gathered to celebrate their hard work. I’ve never seen the education of a group of students be so supported by their community, teachers, mentors, and family in all my days as an educator.

What strategies do you employ to build confidence and reduce anxiety in your students facing high-stakes tests?

One recent pivot we’ve made is to incorporate more technology into our tutoring. This technology comes in the form of online platforms that house our curriculum. We use Achievable’s ACT for ACT Prep and MentoMind for SAT Prep. This reduces administrative tasks (like grading practice tests) for our tutors and students. However, using online platforms does more than just cut down on clerical work.

For example, I assigned too many practice tests early in my tutoring career. Don’t get me wrong: practice tests are vital, as they approximate how a student will score on test day. However, I eventually learned that more precision learning is needed in addition to practice tests. Students who struggle with punctuation won’t learn punctuation if they take a 75-question ACT English Practice Test with eight punctuation questions. They need targeted exposure at high frequency.

Thus, using the online curriculum that we created with Achievable fixes this. If students need help with semicolons, we spend half an hour exclusively doing punctuation exercises centered on semicolons. If they need help with functions, we have an infinite number of ACT-based math questions revolving around functions. Incorporating this technology into my team’s pedagogical practices has streamlined our lessons, increased test scores, and better personalized our teaching to our students.

What are the most common misconceptions about test prep that you’d like to address with new clients?

Standardized tests could be more fun. If anyone argues that point, I’ll agree with them. However, I strongly disagree with others who say that standardized tests don’t prepare students for college. Test Prep DOES prepare students for college and their careers. There are measurable benefits of standardized testing that are hard to ignore.  I use the same grammar mechanics I teach my students in every email, article, or social media post I write. The statistics we teach in the SAT and ACT Math section are vital in running my business. The language, reading, and verbal sections of test prep, at least to me, are the most apparent transferences into the real world. So much of the corporate world is reading, scanning, or synthesizing major slabs of text into digestible information. Preparing for the Reading ACT helps students do that in spades.

While we try to make our sessions as lively as possible, Test Prep isn’t the most amusing activity on a student’s schedule. It’s no pizza party. I have no delusions about this. However, just because something isn’t fun doesn’t mean it’s not valuable or useful. If such were the case, I’d have a much easier time exercising. Yet, it’s nearly irrefutable that If more students had the hard skills required to score higher on the ACT and SAT, you’d have more literate and scientifically fluent students. That, to me, is a win. Thus, I daresay it’s appropriate to generalize the perks of test prep by saying that studying for standardized tests benefits society. It’s a bold claim, but it’s one I stick by.

Do you have a story of a student’s breakthrough moment that encapsulates the impact of your tutoring approach?

I worked with one student named Jonathan, who struggled with the English Section of the ACT. English is my favorite subject to teach students, especially for low-scoring students. It’s hands down the most straightforward score to raise, in my experience. At least with how I teach it, the trick is to turn the fuzziness often associated with language and writing into something more concrete.

Jonathan was a wiz at math. So, turning grammar mechanics into mechanics was the secret for Jonathan to master that part of the exam. We started with punctuation. I like beginning there usually because punctuation rules best illustrate the formulaic nature of grammar. Take teaching colons as an example. To use a colon correctly, you have to have an independent clause on one side and a phrase that specifies that independent clause on the other side.

In sessions, I often break down those rules like this:

Left Side: Independent Clause

Right Side: Specification.

Incorrect example: My favorite colors are: red, green, and turquoise.

Correct Example: I have three favorite colors: red, green, and turquoise.

When Jonathan learned that, he answered every colon question correctly. After completing his tutoring, he scored 34 on the English Section of the ACT.

He was happy, his parents were delighted, and I was thrilled beyond belief. Since then, I’ve taught punctuation like that to my students, and it works wonders for providing them with a solid foundation of grammar mechanics. It also helps them feel smarter, which is always refreshing to see.

Imagine that your tutoring business becomes huge in 5 years. What does your main office look like?

If Odyssey College Prep “goes viral” over the next five years, my office would be an exaggerated version of what it is now. A smattering of the obligatory college readiness books would still line my bookshelf; only I’d have more shelves. I also have sizable swathes of Greek Mythology figurines and books scattered on the tables and countertops (a quirky obsession of mine – hence the name “Odyssey” College Prep). Essentially, more books, bookshelves, and ostentatious Greek Mythology merch adorning said shelves. Lastly, there would be a picture of my wife Nikki and me on a cruise in Greece.

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Member: Heather Krey

Business: World Class Tutoring

Website: Worldclasstutoring.com

Started: February 2024

About Heather Krey

Heather has over two decades of experience in SAT and ACT preparation. She’s also World Class Tutoring’s leading test prep curriculum architect. Heather earned her bachelor’s degrees in engineering and psychology from Lehigh University and her M.Ed. degrees in Mathematics and Teaching from DeSales University and Kutztown University, respectively. She is certified in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and English and has taught roles at various Pennsylvania high schools. Heather has also worked as an adjunct professor at Cedar Crest College. Heather has been an NTPA member since its inception and is an active member of its blog committee.

How has your background influenced your approach to test prep?

In high school, back in the 1990s, teachers and other adults often told me how unusual it was for a girl to be so good at math. (I’m not kidding – we’ve come a long way since then!) So I majored in Industrial Engineering and loved every minute until I got to work. Turns out I just loved being in college, engineering not so much. That’s when I finally realized that what I love is school. So, now I get to do the things I love the most every day: homework, studying, math, and engaging in academic discussions with all kinds of people. Engineering is a beautiful job, and I have several students who have become successful engineers. But I couldn’t be happier staying in high school for the rest of my career.

What strategies do you employ to build confidence and reduce anxiety in your students facing high-stakes tests?

One of the best things I learned in my college psychology classes was how to use the power of association to gain a measure of control over your subconscious processes. Just like Ivan Pavlov trained his dogs to salivate at the sound of a dinner bell, we can train ourselves to relax when given a specific signal. My homework in this psychology class was to practice a particular breathing exercise every night after I went to bed but before I fell asleep.

After doing this for a few weeks, my body learned to associate that wonderful feeling of my fuzzy blankets and soft pillow with my specific pattern of “in through the nose, out through the mouth” breathing. All these years later, when I’m feeling especially stressed, I can take a few of these breaths, and my heart rate goes down, my hands stop shaking, and my voice drops half an octave. I tell my students this story and encourage them to try it themselves. A breathing exercise is so simple and unobtrusive that you can do it during the SAT or ACT. It won’t completely fix anxiety, but it can help many people manage it better.

What are the most common misconceptions about test prep that you’d like to address with new clients?

Test prep isn’t about “tips and tricks.” Yes, we learn the format of the test and the best strategy for different question types, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. I spend most of my time with students doing some educational work. I use diagnostic tests to identify gaps in their knowledge, help them learn those missing skills, give them plenty of practice as homework assignments, and then check back in to ensure the concepts have been mastered. The SAT and ACT are highly well-written tests, and getting smarter is the only reliable way to raise your score. The nice side effect of this process is that my students improve their scores and are more ready for college because of their work with me.

How do you stay updated with the latest educational trends to enhance your tutoring approach?

Continuing education is so important! This is why I love being a National Test Prep Association member. I attend their online summits, town halls, and mastermind meetings to talk shop with other tutors and travel to their in-person conferences twice yearly. The SAT and ACT have been around for a long time, but they’ve also been through many revisions. Thanks to the National Test Prep Association, I know about all these changes well in advance and, in turn, can make sure my students and their families are as prepared as possible to make solid testing-related decisions.

What challenges did one of your most successful students overcome, and how did you support them through that process?

Last year, I teamed up with DAWNetwork to support five girls in Syria in preparing for and applying to colleges here in the US. These girls had many challenges, not the least of which was a terrible earthquake during the semester we were meeting. Fortunately, they were all okay, but they told me they had packed bags and sat by the door in case they needed to exit quickly at the sign of another tremor.

They also had to travel to several towns to take their SAT and couldn’t take the ACT because the journey to that center was through a war-torn area. Not only did these girls work very hard to study for their test, but they were also a delight to get to know, and I found myself looking forward to seeing them each week. About halfway through the semester, the oldest girl in the group emailed me to say that she was sad she’d be missing the rest of our classes, but she had a very good reason. She had just been accepted to Bowdoin College on a full scholarship! I’m so excited for her and wish the best for her four classmates when it’s their turn.

Imagine that your tutoring business grows exponentially in 5 years. What does your main office look like?

Of course, I want World Class Tutoring to become a leader on the international test prep stage over the next five years! But what will my office look like? Exactly the way it does now! World Class Tutoring is an all (or at least mostly) online business where we go to our students worldwide using the magic of Zoom. I’ve tutored students in Canada, Germany, Syria, the Dominican Republic, Spain, the Philippines, Ethiopia, New Zealand, and even a pair of students on a boat near Panama! And I did it all from my home office in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Over the next five years, I plan to continue meeting new and exciting people worldwide and train a team of tutors to help me reach even more students who could help with the college testing process. The fantastic thing is that I can accomplish all this without getting a bigger office or leaving my family and community.

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