SAT & ACT Tutoring That Turns Test Dread Into Choices
Your student knows more math than their score says. The SAT and ACT don’t measure what they know. They measure what they can do fast, under a clock, without flinching. We find every question type costing them points, drill it until it’s automatic, and prove it with a timed practice test every week. The score opens the door. What walks through it is a student who has watched themselves master the thing that scared them.
“Our daughter wanted to improve her SAT math score and was willing to do test prep… Our daughter said her tutor, Olivia, explained things very clearly plus she was really nice and patient. Her SAT score went up 120 points overall and her math score went up 70 points.” — Mark F., Parent · Read on Yelp ↗
- No credit card required
- 50-Point SAT Math Guarantee
Meet SAT math specialist and math Olympiad competitor Caleb Nastasi.
Caleb scored 690 on SAT Math, then 720, then 800. He knows the climb because he made it, and he has spent about seven years taking students up it.
Caleb Nastasi
Caleb completed his master’s in mathematics at the University of Bonn, and he has tutored SAT and PSAT math with Alexander Tutoring for about seven years. He is also a math Olympiad competitor, and Olympiad problems reward the same thing the SAT does: seeing the shortcut before the clock runs out.
His own SAT Math scores went 690, 720, 800. That is the most useful thing a nervous student can hear: a top score is a skill you build, not a talent you’re born with.
- Master’s in Mathematics, University of Bonn
- Math Olympiad competitor
- About seven years tutoring SAT and PSAT math with Alexander Tutoring
- His own SAT Math climb: 690, 720, 800
Your key to the Ivy League
Our SAT students are routinely accepted to schools like these. This spring, one of Caleb’s students got into Cornell Engineering. And with all eight Ivy League schools requiring the SAT or ACT again by the Class of 2028, the score is back to mattering.
- Stanford
- Princeton
- Yale
- Columbia
- Cornell
- Dartmouth
- UC Berkeley
- UC Santa Barbara
“They know the math. They just freeze on the test.”
You’ve watched it happen. The homework is right on Tuesday, and the same kind of problem goes wrong under a clock on Saturday. It’s not nerves, it’s not laziness, and it’s not too late.
Here’s what’s actually going on. Most SAT math misses aren’t SAT problems. They’re Algebra 1 skills that were memorized for one unit test and never made automatic. School grades understanding with unlimited time. The SAT grades it at about 95 seconds a question.
And the digital SAT makes that gap expensive, because it adapts. Slip on the easier questions in the first module and the second module quietly gets easier too, which caps how high the score can go. A student can lose the top of the scale before they ever see a hard problem.
Careless mistakes aren’t carelessness. They’re what a skill sounds like before it’s automatic.
I’d love to tell you we have a secret trick. We don’t. There’s fluency, and there’s a clock. So we find the exact skills that aren’t automatic yet, and we make them automatic.
“Our tutor gave my daughter the strategies and confidence to bring her Math SAT score up, demonstrably. Highly recommended.”
Richard F. · Parent · Google review
Everything changed for these families.
Gerald has been amazing for my son to work with. He is always on time, courteous and ready to support my son in his challenges with Geometry. He does homework review and test prep during his sessions with my son and it has been very helpful in all of us getting through the school year. Thank you, Gerald... you are appreciated!
We are incredibly grateful for the support and guidance Caleb provides while helping our son prepare for the SAT math section. Caleb is not only an excellent tutor who explains concepts clearly and builds confidence, but he’s also a genuinely great guy who formed a strong connection with our son. That relationship made all the difference in keeping him motivated and engaged throughout the process. We truly appreciate Caleb’s patience, encouragement, and dedication, and highly recommend him to any family looking for an outstanding SAT math tutor.
Alexander Tutoring was great to work with, and the math tutor they assigned to my daughter, Caleb, was fantastic. He helped her with the strategies and confidence that allowed her to bring her Math SAT score up, demonstrably. Highly recommended
Caleb was very effective at helping with test prep. Setting things up was easy, thanks to effective and clear administration. Booking virtual session times was easy. There was advice, test information, and lots of practice working sample test problems. Highly recommend Alexander Tutoring!
Charlie worked with my son over the course of the summer on Algebra 2 and Pre-Calc in preparation for an advanced Pre-Calc class his junior year. Scheduling was easy and Charlie connected with my son in a way that other teachers have not. We highly recommend Alexander Tutoring and now have our go-to source for math/science/test prep tutors.
Charlie Wu worked really well with our daughter on SAT Math. He's very smart but didn't talk down to her and explained things clearly and concisely. Money well spent! Also Sean Alexander was great. Very accommodating and flexible in scheduling times that worked for us
Our daughter wanted to improve her SAT math score and was willing to do test prep. In order to target her weaker areas in the time frame she had, we decided 1:1 tutoring would be the most efficient way to go. Sean was great to work with on the admin side. The tutoring sites were convenient and safe. Our daughter said her tutor, Olivia, explained things very clearly plus she was really nice and patient. Her SAT score went up 120 points overall and her math score went up 70 points. It worked for us because of excellent tutoring combined with the extra work my daughter put in between the tutoring sessions. Highly recommend.
This tutoring service is wonderful. Sean listens to your needs and makes successful matches of tutors with your student. My son has used this service to help with chemistry, math, and SAT prep, and has gained confidence and motivation. Thank you Sean!
Desperate for some help with a challenging 9th grade physics class, we turned to Alexander Tutoring. Sean was very responsive and got my son set up right away with Tyler, tutor extraordinaire. Tyler is down to earth, extremely intelligent and was able to connect with my son on his level and make physics seem less daunting. It was worth the time and investment to turn things around and most importantly, give my son the confidence that he needed to face the challenge. Thank you, Alexander Tutoring! We'll definitely be back to take advantage of other programs they offer (like the SAT Master Class.)
My daughter Anna worked with Olivia to brush up on her math and science for her SAT/ACT tests. Anna found the time she spent with Olivia very useful and enjoyable, and is now much more confident, which we've also seen reflected in her results. Olivia and Sean were also very flexible, and always tried to accommodate our requests to modify the schedule, etc. I would definitely recommend Sean's service.
Sean is a great instructor. He works well with all types of students. My child with some learning difficulties did well under his tutoring. I sat in on several sessions and was really impressed with his style of teaching. He has a lot of patience.My 2nd child used Sean's summer program to gain some confidence in math! I highly recommend Sean.
We have lived in San Francisco for 14 years and my 3 children have attended public school. MOST of the time they have enjoyed great or fine teachers. When my daughter got to high school, the math teacher she had for Algebra 1 was not good. My daughter is curious and works hard. Math is not her favorite subject but she worked hard and still could not understand and got D & grades. As a parent, I’m not as concerned about grades. I want to know my children are making the effort they are capable of most of the time, showing up and trying. I also want them to learn and understand. Much of my high school math career was a total waste and I learned very little. If you don’t learn Algebra 1, it’s a hot mess as you don’t have the necessary foundation and once in calculus, if you make it that far, most mistakes are algebraic according to a principal we had with a PHD in Math. My daughter got another terrible teacher for Geometry. Even the school counselors would speak openly about this teacher being one of the worst in the School’s history. My daughter was trying hard and yet not understanding and getting terrible grades. After studying really hard for a test and feeling confident she understood, I remember watching her face fall one Saturday night as she checked her test grade and got a D. As a parent I didn’t know what to do Because we were watching Khan Academy videos and she was studying and still not understanding. My friend Laura told me about Sean Alexander tutoring and my daughter started with Olivia a few years ago. Immediate improvement in understanding and therefore grades. We had such a good experience with Olivia and Sean that we signed both of our teens up for the math intensive program in the summer of 2018. My kids went once a week with a tutor named Charlie to learn about algebra one and really focus on algebra basics. My daughter ended up getting a 700 on the Math portion of the SAT. She did take practice test and she did the tutoring with Alexander tutoring. She did not do any other test prep. She couldn’t believe she did better on the math portion than the language portion as she loves History and English. Our son was starting high school last fall and after his sisters experience with the math teachers, we wanted to get ahead of the issue and so he took the math intensive program just like his sister. Our son, like many do, struggles with focus and impulse control and I told this to Sean. Doing the summer intensive program relieved so much stress to the entire school year. We didn’t even do the tutoring during the school year. We tried to save money by doing online tutoring from Growing Stars (I think that is the name) and my kids thought it was boring and dreaded it and told me they really didn’t need the tutoring because what they had learned in the summer was caring them through in their classes. They both did fine all year. If you do you want to do the tutoring in the school year , I would sign up now and early because it does fill up. We took a risk and didn’t sign up because my kids felt confident they were going to be OK and they were. This summer my son, who will be a sophomore fall 2019, is meeting twice weekly with Felix. On Tuesday they meet at the library for physics and Thursday at the library for Geometry. I have learned that engaging your kids in the summer a little bit pays off a huge amount during the school year. My children do really well with the one on one tutoring and we have found it is a great investment. It’s not cheap because these are knowledgeable tutors and they have to pay SF rent too! We haven’t done any other test prep (because the free one at the high school for a day) and my daughter is doing really well on her ACT and SAT math scores but more importantly to me, she understands math! She is willing to sit and do all the practice tests on her own because math doesn’t intimidate her anymore. Like all of the tutors, Felix is exceptionally organized
My daughter began tutoring with Olivia in November of her senior year. She was very stressed in her AP Physics and AP Calculus classes and although she attended extra sessions her teachers provided, she became increasingly confused and behind in both subjects. I contacted Sean at Alexander Tutoring who talked with me to figure out which of his tutors might be the best match for my daughter's personality and her situation. My daughter takes a long time to warm to anyone however, very soon after she began tutoring with Olivia, her understanding of concepts improved. Olivia is very patient and an excellent teacher but what was even more helpful for my daughter was that Olivia was willing to dive deeper into a problem, patiently explain it different ways until my daughter understood it. More than once, my daughter told me "wow, I really thought that problem was more complicated than that, why doesn't everyone explain it like that!" Very quickly my daughter became immersed in the world of Calc and Physics and would go to Olivia prepared with questions of new concepts that she did not understand from that week's lessons. Not surprisingly, my daughter grades shot up and she ended the year very successfully however, this tutoring experience had a greater impact on my daughter than her grades. She told me she always thought she was really bad at math and now realizes that she is not bad at all, when she works at it, she can do very well. Her AP Calc teacher has been celebrating her accomplishments for several months now, giving her a big smile when handing back tests to using an unnamed student's work (my daughter's) to explain to the rest of the class how to do a problem. In the spring, my daughter was smiling as she told me she was paired with a girl in class, "the most brilliant girl in the class, near perfect SAT math score etc" to complete some calc problems. They were looking at a new problem and the girl said, "wait a minute, let me get my calculator" and my daughter answered "wait a minute, I've got this." When my daughter completed the problem without the use of a calculator, the girl looked at her with a open mouth and said "How did you do that!" So my daughter does feel more in control of her classes this year but she also feels more in control of her life, challenges are not nearly so intimidating. I can't thank Olivia enough for her patient, intuitive and thorough tutoring and to Sean for running such a responsive and efficient tutoring service that made such an impact on my daughter!
We have used Alexander Tutoring for the last two years for my high school daughter in both science and math. The results have been amazing. For a non-STEM kid, the tutoring has resulted in all A's across the board. Our daughter has used several different tutors and they have all been amazing. I would highly recommend them and we will continue using them for SAT math prep.
SAT & ACT Tutoring at a Glance
- Who teaches
- Mathematicians, physicists and engineers with degrees in their field, not college students. Meet the team.
- What we tutor
- SAT Math, ACT Math and ACT Science, the section built on reading graphs and experiments. We don’t tutor Reading and Writing or English.
- The program
- The SAT & ACT Math Master Class: twelve one-on-one lessons for $2,495, one time, with a Magoosh practice subscription for the length of the class. See all plans.
- How it works
- A full diagnostic first, then foundations, then speed and strategy by question type, with a full timed practice test every week. Most students need about twelve weeks, so start about three months before the test.
- The first lesson
- Risk-free, with a skills assessment and a 30-day game plan that is yours to keep. If the match isn’t right, try another tutor at no cost.
- Results
- If your student gains fewer than 50 points on SAT Math after completing the full program, we keep tutoring at no cost until they do.
What Our SAT & ACT Tutors Cover
We tutor the math: SAT Math, ACT Math, and ACT Science, the section built on reading graphs and experiments, where a physics mind is an unfair advantage. We don’t tutor Reading and Writing or English. We stick to what we’re best at. Every student starts with a diagnostic, so we spend time only on the question types actually costing points.
Digital SAT Math
- Algebra: linear equations, systems and inequalities
- Advanced math: quadratics, exponentials, polynomials and nonlinear functions
- Problem solving and data analysis: ratios, percentages, statistics and probability
- Geometry and trigonometry
- Module strategy: nail the first module so the test opens up its harder, higher-scoring second one
- Pacing across two 35-minute modules of 22 questions each
- Fluency with the built-in Desmos calculator
ACT Math
- Pre-algebra through trigonometry, at the enhanced ACT’s pace: 45 questions in 50 minutes
- Functions, geometry, statistics and probability
- Modeling and multi-step word problems
- Four-answer-choice elimination strategy
- Timing drills so the last ten questions get real attention
ACT Science (optional section)
- Data representation: reading graphs, tables and figures fast
- Research summaries: what an experiment actually tested
- Conflicting viewpoints: comparing two scientists’ claims
- 40 questions in 40 minutes, and whether taking it helps your student’s applications
The Three-Month Climb
- Month one: a full diagnostic, then rebuild the foundations the test is quietly punishing
- Month two: speed and strategy, question type by question type
- Month three: a full timed practice test every week, reviewed line by line
- A score you can watch climb, so test day holds no surprises
The program
SAT & ACT Math Master Class
Twelve one-on-one lessons that rebuild the math the test punishes, then drill speed and strategy until test day holds no surprises. SAT Math, ACT Math and ACT Science.
- Starts with a risk-free first lesson
- 12 one-on-one lessons with a specialist tutor
- A Magoosh practice subscription for the length of the class
- A full diagnostic first, so every lesson targets the question types costing points
- 50-point SAT Math guarantee: gain at least 50 points, or we keep tutoring for free until they do
Upcoming test dates
The next SAT is November 7
Most students need about twelve weeks for the full climb. Here’s every date you can still register for, so you can plan backward from the one that fits.
SAT
| Test date | Register by | Countdown |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 7, 2026 | Oct 23 | |
| Dec 5, 2026 | Nov 20 | |
| Mar 6, 2027 | Feb 19 | |
| May 1, 2027 | Apr 16 | |
| Jun 5, 2027 | May 21 |
ACT
| Test date | Register by | Countdown |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 12, 2026 | Nov 6 | |
| Feb 27, 2027 | Jan 22 | |
| Apr 10, 2027 | Mar 5 | |
| Jun 12, 2027 | May 7 | |
| Jul 10, 2027 | Jun 4 |
Dates from College Board and ACT. Always confirm at collegeboard.org and act.org before registering.
SAT & ACT questions parents ask most
Should my student take the SAT or the ACT?
Colleges accept either one equally. The digital SAT is shorter and adaptive, with more time per question. The ACT moves faster and has an optional science section. The simplest way to decide: take a practice test of each, compare percentiles, and prepare for the one your student does better on.
When should we start preparing?
Ideally about three months before the target test date, which for most students means the summer before junior year or early junior year. The PSAT in the fall of junior year is a useful checkpoint.
Is the SAT still optional?
Less and less. Six of the eight Ivy League schools already require SAT or ACT scores, and Princeton and Columbia follow starting with the 2027–28 application cycle. In June 2026, Columbia became the last Ivy to reinstate the requirement. Check each school’s current policy, but plan as though the score counts.
How long is the SAT now?
About 2 hours and 14 minutes. It’s taken on a computer or tablet in the Bluebook app, with two sections, Reading and Writing, and Math, each split into two adaptive modules.
How does the SAT Math guarantee work?
If your student gains fewer than 50 points on SAT Math, we keep tutoring for free until they do.
How it works: we measure a starting score with a full-length official practice test in Bluebook. Your student completes the full three-month program, including every weekly timed practice test, then takes the official SAT within 60 days of finishing. The guarantee covers the Math section, the part we teach, and applies to students starting below 650 in Math.
You’ll also see the trend every week along the way, so test day holds no surprises.
Is tutoring online?
Yes. Every session is one-on-one and online, so your student works with the right tutor for them, not just whoever lives nearby.
Most test prep teaches tricks for one Saturday morning. That’s not what we’re for.
Your student walks into the test having already done the hard version of it, many times, under the clock. The number goes on the application. What goes with them to college is harder to measure: a student who has watched themselves get fast at the thing that used to freeze them.
50 more points on SAT Math, or we keep going for free.
Your student gains at least 50 points on SAT Math, or we keep tutoring for free until they do.
The terms are simple, and they’re in the FAQ above: a starting score from an official practice test, the full program completed, and the real SAT taken within 60 days of finishing.
- No credit card required
- 50-Point SAT Math Guarantee