From the Founder and CEO
Hello, and welcome to Bailey Test Prep. My name is Brad Bailey. Back in 2008 I started Bailey Test Prep with the intention of teaching students a different, and more effective way to approach and master standardized tests like the SAT and ACT. Since 2008, I have worked with thousands of students from all over the world and have been witness to life-changing score increases.
These proven score increases don’t occur by magic, however. It took me thousands of hours to develop the one-of-a-kind SAT and ACT curriculum that we use at Bailey Test Prep. If you think of the exam like a game… we are simply getting you ready to play. Ready to beat the competition! To be able to win at any game, you have to build your skills and have the best possible strategies. That’s where we come in. We have developed the strategies that will allow you to maximize your score on the SAT and ACT!
The real secret to our success is cemented in an original curriculum that teaches students to think about test taking from the opposite perspective, that is, from the perspective of the people who actually make the exam. Basically, if you know what strategies the test-writers use when they create the exam, how they calculate the wrong answer choices, and the specific language they have to use when writing correct answers, you can use all this knowledge hugely to your advantage when it comes to actually taking the exam.
It all started back in 2005. As a senior in high school, I was the president of the Mu Alpha Theta math club. And if that doesn’t sound nerdy enough, consider the fact that we would wake up around 5:30am on Saturday mornings to travel across the state of Florida to take math tests for fun. Yeah, I know, I was super cool. So on one particular Saturday, my high school hosted a competition for students all around the state and I was given the honor of writing a test for this competition.
When I first agreed to write a test, I was supplied with a packet of aid materials like tests from previous competitions to use as guides, a curriculum of math concepts to test, and a desired curve which was a one page piece of paper saying something like 5% of students should score between this score and that score points, 8% between this score and that score, etc. To be honest, I had no idea what to do. How in the world should I know how many points students would score on this test that I hadn’t even written yet. So without any experience on writing a test to fit a predetermined curve, I sought help from many different established test-writers. With a few insightful interviews and some deep research, I was able to learn a ton about how to make a multiple choice test fit a curve.
For example, while writing my test, I discovered that the biggest challenge to test writing was not writing questions, but rather writing wrong answer choices. When you write a math question, there is automatically one right answer based on the question itself. The test-writer is then tasked with writing four wrong answers…these wrong answers are not just randomly generated numbers. In order to fit a curve, test writers have to come up with wrong answer choices that will fool even very intelligent students. This is no easy feat and takes a lot of thought and strategy.
Midway through the writing process, I was keenly aware of strategies I was using to generate wrong answer choices and thought to myself, “Gosh, I sure hope the students taking my test don’t know what I’m doing to write wrong answers, otherwise this test would be too easy for them.” Then a mental light bulb went on. If knowing the strategies I used to write my test could dramatically improve the scores of my test takers, would the same be true for takers of other standardized tests? I nerdily went through countless previous ACT and SAT exams and found that the answer was definitely yes!
That was the foundation for the Bailey Test Prep curriculum. Many of the strategies you will learn in our courses are based off the concept of putting yourself in the shoes of the test-maker and using this knowledge to answer questions more effectively. Sometimes these strategies even allow you to guess accurately on questions for which you either do not know the answer or are running out of time.
These unique strategies are why many Bailey Test Prep students have seen some astronomical score improvements.
I remember one student in particular who earned a truly unbelievable score increase. In respect of her privacy, we will call her Jane. Jane had just received her February ACT scores when she called me for help. Although she was a talented athlete, with a composite score of 17, she wasn’t sure if she would be accepted to any four-year university. I tutored Jane rigorously for two months, and in April, Jane retook the ACT. The first teary-eyed call I received from Jane was when she got her scores back and jumped from a 17 in February to a 29 in April! The second teary-eyed call came about a week later when the ACT organization accused Jane of cheating on her April exam and threatened to cancel the score. Of course, they had no evidence of cheating other than the fact that they claimed a 12 point jump in two months was an impossible feat, even with, and I quote, “intensive test preparation”. Sobbing, Jane swore that she did not cheat on the exam and just used the guessing strategies I taught her for questions she didn’t know the answer to. During an appeal process, I wrote a letter explaining how the unique curriculum we use at Bailey Test Prep could lead to unusually high increases because we teach students not only how to effectively answer questions they are familiar with, but also how to make strategic and accurate guesses on questions they do not know how to solve. While a 12 point jump is certainly unlikely, with the unique techniques and strategies Jane learned (and you will soon learn too), such a jump is not impossible. And by the way, thanks to our curriculum, Jane is now on scholarship at a top, selective university.
If this all sounds too good to be true, it might be. I should stress that this course is not some magical solution to instantly raise your scores. Two things that nearly all of our radical success stories share in common are hard work and commitment. In addition to paying close attention in class and completing assigned homework, we strongly recommend that you spend time practicing the strategies you learn in the course by periodically taking practice tests on your own time. With enough dedication, we are confident that we can help you raise your scores, get more college acceptances, and perhaps even get thousands of dollars in scholarship money. So thanks for choosing Bailey Test Prep. We look forward to seeing you in class!
Sincerely,
Brad Bailey
Founder, CEO
Bailey Test Prep
