We are starting a new series at Accepted.com, featuring different LSAT prep courses. I had the opportunity to conduct a Q&A with the Marketing Manager of Atlas LSAT, Patty Tritipeskul, who gave me the lowdown on all Atlas LSAT has to offer.
How long have you been offering LSAT prep?
Our curriculum was developed over a year and a half ago, and we started offering our first inaugural class in January of 2009, and so we’ve been up and running since then.
Where are you located?
Our headquarters is in New York, but we have classes around the country, Chicago, Cambridge, Boston, and we’re going to be expanding to Houston, LA, SF, and Montreal in the fall.
Please describe your traditional in-class courses?
Our traditional 12-class course is our full class offering. It’s got 12 classes which are three hours long, so that’s 36 hours of instruction. You also get four two-hour study halls, which are small-group tutoring where it’s customized help for students. Students can submit questions ahead of time and the teacher will cover it in the study hall. You also get three of our strategy guides and our two practice books, and the practice books contain nearly 20 official LSATs. You also get recordings of all the classes just in case you miss one, so students will often use that to catch up in case they do miss a class or if they want an extra review. It’s not a recording of their class since it’s in person, but it sort of helps students get another perspective on the material covered, since it’s usually a different teacher covering it. Our in-person courses are capped at 18 students so we can ensure the best student-to-teacher ratio. Our 12-session class also includes access to our enhanced forum. Out LSAT forum contains a whole slew of answers and explanations to all the prep tests, which serve as a very valuable key for our students because the LSAT-produced tests have answers but no explanations, so we give that to our students and it’s constantly evolving. It’s a very valuable tool because one thing that students always struggle with is “great I got it wrong, but why?” and at the current moment, publicly speaking, there’s no available resource, so all of our students get that—sort of the keys to the kingdom.
In addition to our 12-session regular prep course, we also have games-intensive courses. Those are six sessions long, but they’re basically a subset of the 12-session overall course and it’s mainly targeted at students who need just whole focus on the logic games section. We find that students often will be fairly competent in the reading comp. and the logical reasoning, but are just bombing the games section, given that it’s such an unusual section for the exam, so we developed this sort of offering to save focus on just that section, and it’s actually surprisingly pretty successful. We tested the waters to see whether or not there’d be interest, and there’s been a resounding interest in it. It’s good for the student who is great in everything else, but is just totally tanking in that one section.
Please describe your online options?
Our online option is very similar in terms of the structure, that you still get the 12 sessions and the four study halls. The online difference of course is that it’s online—it’s using a live interactive platform where students are able to speak and able to listen and chat and draw on our virtual white boards, so it’s highly interactive. You will get cold called. You also get two teachers in an online class as opposed to just one, and the reason for that is sort of two-fold. The first one is because the classes are capped at 25, so to ensure that great ratio between teachers and students we staff it with two teachers. That way, one teacher can lecture and teach and do their magic, and then the other teacher can respond to students vis a vis like a chat room module on the side of the classroom, so that way students don’t feel like they’re interrupting the teacher, per se, with a question. So you always get attention, pretty much.
Do you offer a self-study option or study guides?
For our self-study, we offer two levels—the first basic level is called basic self-study, and it’s one of the best deals. It basically gives you all the trappings of the normal 12-session prep course, so you get the books, and the recordings, and the access to the forum, however you don’t get that face-to-face live interaction, but you do get the recordings and get to see what a class is like and still learn from a teacher. It’s slightly more passive of course as it’s self-study, but you still get the support and the access to the forums. In the premium self-study you get everything that you get in the basic self-study, except you get live interaction in the study halls. Premium self-study gets you four study hall sessions, so that’s eight hours of this semi-private small-group tutoring , and it’s a really great hybrid for students because it allows them so study at their own pace and time, but also gives you that personalized instruction that people often strive for but can’t afford in private tutoring. So it’s sort of a nice option in the middle for people who are looking for a more economic solution, and that’s only $550. So we often champion that as our best deal because it gives you everything in the real class. You have to have the diligence on your own to study, but you also get this personalized instruction.
Do you offer any one-on-one or individualized tutoring?
We definitely offer private tutoring in person in the cities where we have teachers, and we do also offer tutoring online using our virtual interactive online platform. The tutoring is generally done at the student’s convenience—where possible, teachers obviously try to meet with the students in person, but we understand in terms of the limitations of our reach at the moment, a lot of our tutoring is done online. We do offer the first hour free as a way of introducing students to the Atlas LSAT offering. It’s up to students whether they want to do one hour, 10 hours, or what not. We generally do offer a discount for a 10-hour tutoring package, so it allows the student to create an arc of tutoring lessons with one teacher, but it’s really up to the student whether or not they need additional help or not. We’re completely flexible on that, we don’t have any minimums.
What is the focus of your instruction?
The main focus of our instruction is really two things. It’s really great teachers who are teaching a great curriculum. We go through such an extensive screen of our teachers to make sure that not only are they smart and savvy, but they can also teach, and they can actually have the patience and the camaraderie and good will to be able to bring people up the curve. I think often times when you’re in a class it’s hard, you feel like you’re struggling and you need someone who will support you and sort of understand where you’re coming from and try to bring you along with the class up the curve and reach the scores you wish to reach. The crown jewel is our great teachers. We are extremely diligent about screening them and training them and making sure that they are up to par before we even allow them to teach. They sit in on classes, they go through training, they have a mentor, an existing teacher to help train them. There’s so much before people can actually start teaching. We don’t just throw books, and say, “hey, go ahead, here’s your first class.” And the second part is our curriculum. The two teachers who developed the curriculum have been exceptional teachers and support for the development of it. They have spent so much time making sure the curriculum really is flexible, and it’s not teaching just the tricks. And I think the curriculum really allows students to, not only for elite students to really reach that 172+ score that they’re looking for, but also it’s flexible and comprehensive enough for students who are at the 50-60th percentile range to come up the curve. So it’s designed to be flexible, comprehensive, and really very rich. There are no tricks and short cuts in it.
Do you cater to any particular kind of student?
I think we cater toward the student who is ready and willing to do a lot of work. The reason why I say that is because the amount of homework we assign and the rigor of the sessions is not really meant for someone who is just aiming to score 160—while a perfectly respectable score, the rigor and the amount of work, and what we expect out of the student and the interaction in the class, more importantly—we’re looking for a student who is very much invested in attaining that top score and really putting the hours behind it. I don’t think that precludes us to any particular score type, but I think it’s the student that’s not just going to coast and want a middle-of-the-road score, because if you do, then I think the amount of work that we ask of our students is not worth it for them.
What qualifies someone to teach for Atlas LSAT?
I’ve mentioned some of this before, but they need a 99th percentile ranking, previous teaching experience. I really just want to reiterate that we don’t plan to be a Kaplan or Princeton Review. Our whole focus right now is to make sure that teacher quality stays up and high. One of the most important things about a student’s learning experience is teacher quality, and we keep it very close to the chest in that sense. We make sure that teachers are constantly getting feedback. At the end of the class, each student provides a review and a feedback loop—those are well gone over with the teachers. It’s a very tight-knit group right now, and we want to keep it that way to make sure that the students get the best experience that they can get.
What are your company’s unique strengths?
The main thing that comes to mind initially is that we only teach one exam, and some people may view that as a negative, but I think that’s a whole positive because we’re not focused on bringing anyone else up to the curve. We’re focused on the one exam, we keep abreast on all the latest changes, developments, the latest games that are tricking everyone up, we are 110% focused on the LSAT, and we don’t focus our attention on anything else. So students get this really catered experience, and it’s not like, “oh we actually teach the GRE, and the MCAT.” We just teach one exam, and we’re very intimate with it.
Read the full article: Atlas LSAT Q&A