Yesterday I swapped a few texts with a mom, a successful architect, about signing up her son for our upcoming SAT prep class (starts tonight).  

She was a repeat client, which isn't unusual for a business like ours. What was unusual, however, was the story of her older daughter, Mary.

When Mary enrolled in her prep class with our head tutor, Marissa, hopes were pretty low.   She was a little down and out, having taken the ACT four times, failing to hit the score the rowing coach said she needed to be recruited to her top choice college.

The more she tried, the worse things got.  Marissa and I figured that Mary was suffering from a classic case of Test Anxiety, but the weird thing was that Mary was a competitive athlete, used to performing under pressure.

I personally thought Mary should have opted for 1:1 tutoring to focus on her specific issues, instead of taking a full-blown, basic review, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

Weeks passed.  Mary did all of her homework -- mostly pr...