Let's Get Ready Completes Successful Season

Let's Get Ready recently completed their Summer 2013 season. High school students in need from communities in Westchester and Connecticut received free SAT instruction and college admissions counseling. Among the volunteer tutors from Scarsdale was Matthew Yaspan who served as the Head Verbal Coach in Port Chester.

Here is a comment on his experience:

"Let's Get Ready has been a wonderful, unique opportunity for me as a coach. I've coached both math and verbal at two different sites, Port Chester, NY and Somerville, MA, and both have been great experiences. The best part about being a coach thus far has been seeing the students improve and succeed, not just in the sense that their SAT scores have increased, but also that their goals are becoming larger and their fervor to go the extra mile to improve themselves is constantly increasing.

Going in to a semester at Let's Get Ready, I ask students what their goals are for the course. Almost always, the response is "to increase my SAT score." Every single time, they reach that goal so quickly that they expand what they want. The more I tell them about college and the more campuses they visit with Let's Get Ready, the more they feel they can get out of the program and college itself. The goal changes from increasing an SAT score to getting into a specific school, succeeding there, and using that degree to establish themselves and accomplish more than they had ever imagined entering the semester.

When you coach these kids for weeks, going over the application process and the nuances of college life, you make a large emotional investment in their success, and when a student gets to the next level, you feel a very strong sense of pride in them and yourself. One student I have had the privilege of teaching is now a student ambassador for the program, and the others are all poised to succeed in college and beyond. I have been fortunate to have had every advantage since day one to succeed: great teachers, great resources, and motivated peers. To take what I've learned from these assets and utilize it to teach other students with the same ambitions I had is a truly special opportunity for me, and Let's Get Ready is the best way to do it."

Let's Get Ready programs are built upon collaborations with community organizations and local high schools. Summer sessions in Stamford, Greenwich and Westchester County began in June and were staffed by college student recruits who returned home to Connecticut and Westchester for the summer. Students were divided into groups based on their performance on the test. They were given three diagnostic SAT tests for practice prior to taking the exam to gauge their progress and also received 15 hours of comprehensive information and guidance regarding college selection, applications, financial aid and scholarships.

Let's Get Ready operates programs in partnership with 34 prestigious colleges and universities in the Northeast, in the fall and spring, and with many communities between New Jersey and Maine over the summer.  For more information, contact Lauri Novick at 646-808-2766- or by email at: lnovick@letsgetready.org.

(Top) Group Photo of Let's Get Ready's Summer 2013 Port Chester Graduates, Coaches and Site Directors.

Photo Credit: Jaclyn Quartner