Real People. Real Challenges. Real Clarity. 

Although all of these stories are real events and all clients have signed a media release form, the names and other identifying details have been changed to protect their privacy.

I wanted to work on my reading skills to become an efficient reader for the ACT as well as for college. Active reading, graphic organizers, study skills, and ACT prep are mainly the strategies that helped me the most. The strategies helped me better organize my thoughts and actually helped me to comprehend what I was reading, which boosted my confidence on my essays in college. The strategies helped me better prepare for the ACT and college essays, as well as just regular homework. It helped me organize what my thoughts were and the reading text for the essays and homework.

—K.G., 21, college junior

Being in college preparatory classes pushed me to utilize any and all skills for reading comprehension. Annotating and using graphic organizers helped me the most. Annotating is what helped me study efficiently in college. They [the strategies I learned] definitely helped me with college work and the ACT. These techniques allowed me to weed out the most important information and to not get overwhelmed by the course load thrown at me while studying in college.

—M.C., 27, professional

I started working on my reading skills because I would read the material, but I would not fully comprehend it at face value. My memory and retention skills are not as strong as I would like due to my ADHD. In order to properly digest the material, I had to go beyond just reading the material and really go in depth through my own means to actually comprehend what I was reading. Active reading made me rethink my approach to reading entirely and it’s how I approach anything of interest now. I engage with the material more by trying to extract the most important points and upon re-read, fully appreciating the content in its entirety. My main objective is to be able to summarize what I read either to someone else or to myself in order to properly understand what I took in. This has also helped me tremendously with college-level work, especially when it comes to writing essays. Note taking also really helped with my approach to essays because everything I write down builds the skeleton of my final draft and eases the process while still making me engage with the reading. Lastly, ACT prep really helped to build a skill of being able to extract the most important points upon first read. This was especially helpful in the context of the test because of its time-sensitivity.

—R.H., 25, post-graduate student