Edison Prep: A Spotlight on Excellence in Test Preparation
The NTPA proudly features Brian and Silvia Eufinger as this week’s member spotlight. As the founders of Edison Prep, Brian and Silvia have become renowned experts in test preparation. Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, Edison Prep serves students worldwide, primarily focusing on SAT and ACT tutoring. The company also offers highly popular AP History boot camps and subject tutoring in all levels of Math and STEM.
Member Details
- Member: Brian and Silvia Eufinger
- Business: Edison Prep
- Website: edisonprep.com
- Started: 2010
How Did You Become a Test Prep Tutor?
Edison Prep’s co-founders began tutoring in 2007 alongside their corporate jobs. We had both paid our way through college via merit aid from high test scores we earned self-studying during high school; we began tutoring 12 hours a week. Things went well, with many of our initial clients telling us we should ponder doing it full-time (‘you can always go back to corporate’). We finally listened, and in 2010, Edison Prep was born. We wrote our books and curriculum. For the first 12 years, it was just the two founders; since then, we’ve grown to a team of 16 as demand has exploded. The irony that test-optional caused our business to explode is not lost on us (or our clients, who often vocalize it on phone calls!). We are excited to have just had our 23,000th student! We can help many students because 90%+ of students begin with or only do one of our popular group classes.”
How Do You Incorporate Feedback From Students to Enhance the Learning Experience?
We revise our SAT and ACT books yearly and incorporate student feedback in numerous ways. We solicit feedback sometimes in sessions when appropriate, and we also do anonymous surveys of past students asking for constructive criticism, which has helped unearth blind spots and improve materials over time. A collective of 15 of the 255 pages in our ACT book were probably directly inspired by that anonymous survey feedback!
What Key Factors Should Students and Parents Consider When Choosing a Test Prep Service?
We always tell potential clients that we are in one of the least scalable industries on earth if maintaining quality is paramount. Not impossible, but very difficult. Most NTPA members know this intuitively, having inherited many students from big-box agencies who have economies of scale yet don’t pay their staff well enough to avoid employee turnover, attract top tutors, or have nimble curricula that evolve as the test content continues to evolve. We proudly pay our staff 200-400%+, which is what most other firms in town pay since we don’t think quality tutors can be retained in the long term without paying them like professionals. When parents are skeptical, we are fond of sharing our famous Our Industry Is Broken article that illustrates the reality of our business via raw truth from GlassDoor.com. Parents should seek out testimonials, text mom “Class of 20XX” group threads at their high school for referrals, and rely on real client feedback rather than flashy ads. Tutor experience, communication skills, past score improvement results, and soft skills are paramount in our industry, and parents should ask questions to determine how potential tutors stack up on those variables!
What Strategies Do You Employ to Continually Assess and Improve the Effectiveness of Your Tutoring Methods?
The flagship services at our company are our ACT and SAT group classes, which 90%+ of students do as either the first step of their prep or their entire prep. These classes provide a natural environment to do lots of A/B testing with our students to see which ways of teaching content stick better and produce better results, rapidly iterating and incorporating what works best into our curriculum. We take notes on what works best and incorporate it into each new edition of our book. Version 14 of our ACT book is about to arrive and our Digital SAT book will be on Version 3 by New Year’s!
Do You Have a Standout Story of a Student’s Breakthrough Moment That Encapsulates the Impact of Your Tutoring Approach?
One of our students was about to be the first student in his family in four generations not to be able to make it to the Naval Academy after notching an ACT that was a literal slot machine score: 21/21/21/21. Dejected, he and his parents were about to give up and not even pursue tutoring, so we asked him to trust us and give us three weeks to show that this test is not magic nor an IQ test, but coachable content—’commas, rectangles, and putting in the reps.’ We focused exclusively on grammar for the first three sessions (the easiest section to improve), and he did his part, completing eight 45-minute grammar sections those first three weeks, pulling his English score up 10 points to a 31 in the process. Once he saw that initial proof of concept, he was pumped and locked in; he maturely paused his 10-hour-a-week job at Zaxby’s (his idea, not ours) and reallocated those 10 hours to three practice tests a week. He got his service academy nomination, got his score up to a 32, and enrolled in the Naval Academy.
We always tell potential clients that we craft our tutoring style as part teacher, part standup comic (to make material memorable and make it stick), and part Tony Robbins-style motivation, which improves tutoring efficacy and makes it more fun to boot! A slightly different spin on Roosevelt’s people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
How Has Your Tutoring Enhanced the Community?
Our tutoring has enhanced the community in three main ways: increasing odds of admissions to more selective schools, saving families $50M+ in earned merit aid, and enhancing college readiness for students, including those whose math, reading, analysis, and grammar gaps were impacted by COVID learning loss (or just had not been adequately covered at their home schools).
We also like to do meaningful pro bono work. Our two founders came from humble backgrounds and used these tests as a way to transform our college process and avoid student debt, so we pay it forward in our tutoring. We don’t go out of our way to publicize it, but always endeavor to have at least one scholarship student in each of our classes. We have cultivated a network of high school counselors and youth pastors that we let designate students for those spots who they know would really make use of the prep, and have had the pleasure of meeting some amazing kids as a result!
Tell Us About a Time a Student Really Surprised You With Their Boldness.
When our company was in its infancy (3 months old) and didn’t have a brick-and-mortar yet, we drove to clients’ houses. One particularly entitled student did not do homework for our co-founder Brian three weeks in a row, despite us asking for parents to help enforce homework completion, and Brian had to be stern with him. He said, ‘What makes you think it’s acceptable to not do homework three weeks in a row?’ and the student shot back, ‘Um…cause I’m the client?’ with the most smug face in history.
This remains to this day the rudest moment in company history. That was the end of the abbreviated session, and Brian followed up with the mother the next day. Brian had to, unfortunately, breathe while talking with his mom, bifurcating one sentence at the most inopportune time. ‘Ma’am, with all due respect, we work with winners when he’s ready to be one. Please call us back, and we can always reschedule.’ It did not go over well. Over the following three weeks, nine of that mother’s book club members quietly called me and signed up for tutoring because she had told them what happened, saying, ‘But please don’t tell her.’ If we could map our referral chains backward to those nine OG clients, probably 10% of them came from those nine clients and their subsequent referrals.
Last Updated on August 31, 2024 by Marc Gray