Parents who have college aspirations for their children want to give them the best chance of being accepted into their chosen institution.
If your child is looking to study math in particular, the odds are more stacked against them than ever before. With test scores plummeting since the pandemic, pupils face an uphill battle to maintain the skills they need to study math at an undergraduate level.
One smart investment that can help your child succeed in their college goals is math tutoring. By honing in on the areas they need the most support and providing learning that enhances their school education, you can give them the skills and academic confidence needed to succeed in higher education.
Here, we’re going to discuss how math tutoring can help your child gain entry into college and, most importantly, achieve the best grades once they’re there.
The benefits of math tutoring from an early age
Math tutoring offers many benefits for children from a young age. As well as building the key skills and knowledge they need to excel in the subject, it can also boost their confidence and critical thinking skills. Early math tutoring becomes a smart investment for college when it provides children with foundational knowledge and enhances the areas they struggle with throughout their school education.
Filling in knowledge gaps
Math tutoring — especially when it’s personalized to the learner’s needs — is key to helping your child overcome the math concepts they may find especially challenging. Children often perceive math learning in school as challenging because it’s not tailored to their needs. This means if they fall behind in one area, they risk falling behind the whole class.
Personalized math classes for kids help them overcome these challenges. If, for example, your child is gifted in geometry, but they struggle with algebra, a math tutor will spend time on improving their algebra skills instead of focusing on geometry. This helps kids improve in the areas they struggle with the most, ensuring they have a well-rounded math education ahead of a more challenging college-level education.
Improving children’s confidence
Not only are math test scores a pressing concern in the US, but the nation’s confidence is too. A recent Prodigy Education study found that 64% of Americans have math anxiety, with middle school the most common time for it to become a problem.
Tutoring improves children’s confidence because they can see how much progress they’re making and overcome their self-doubt in the subject. Having a supportive tutor in the subject helps them see that they are not a failure and that they can rise to any challenge when given the right resources.
Dedicated exam preparation
Alongside math anxiety, test anxiety is another challenge facing our students. Between 10% and 40% of students experience test anxiety, and these numbers rise with standardized testing. Investing in tutoring, especially classes that use exam-adjacent resources, can help children overcome this feeling.
Math tutors can specifically address children’s concerns around tests and use different methods to improve children’s confidence. This can include mock exams or the use of worksheets in sessions that mimic the style of school exams. By helping children familiarize themselves with exam formats and time constraints, tutors can create students who are well-prepared for standardized tests.
Flexible scheduling
There may be times when your child struggles with math more than others. The flexibility of tutoring, and in particular online tutoring, means you can enlist your child in lessons as and when you need to.
To start your child on a successful lifelong journey in math, investing in tutoring at a young age is highly effective. Introducing children to online math learning before they enter the classroom means they begin school with foundational knowledge, giving them a headstart over their peers. We know that a large percentage of fourth graders are behind in math, so if your child begins to struggle again at this point, you can enlist a tutor to get them back up to speed.
Similarly, many students experience learning loss over the summer break, which sets them back ahead of the new school year. It has been shown that summer tutoring programs achieved “significant improvements” in children’s math learning, so this is another stage in your child’s education where they can once again benefit from math tutoring.
Higher likelihood of achieving a scholarship to college
Scholarships are awards offered to students who are gifted in their chosen area of study. This means that, for your child to be considered for STEM scholarships, they need to show strong proficiency in the subject they want to study at college. While scholarships differ from grants, they are still a financial aid lifeline for parents who may financially struggle with sending their child to college.
Math tutoring means your child can build expertise in the subject and gives them the best possible platform to secure a math scholarship. Not only this, but committing to this extra-curricular math program shows your child’s chosen college that they are committed to being the best they can be in the subject — a key element of their college application.
Understanding Brighterly’s approach to personalized math learning
If you’re still struggling to visualize how math tutoring can support your child ahead of college, let’s look at a real-life example. Brighterly is an online service offering classes with highly qualified tutors for kids in grades 1–9.
Here’s why a Brighterly math tutor is the best way to prepare children for success in college.
Personalized, gamified learning
Personalized learning has been proven to improve children’s academic achievement, which is why Brighterly takes this approach to all its tutoring. Tutors achieve this by first providing a diagnostic math test that assesses students’ strengths and weaknesses. From this, they create a personalized curriculum addressing the learner’s areas of improvement.
Gamification adds additional proven benefits, from improving understanding to increasing motivation. This combination means tutors can not only improve kids’ math learning, and therefore their grades, but also their interest in the subject.
Employing a highly qualified math tutor
Children learn best from tutors who hold recognized, high-quality qualifications in their field. College-level education means that not only have tutors studied math at the highest level, but also that they understand the unique challenges of studying math in college.
Each Brighterly math tutor holds a Bachelor’s degree at minimum, with many that also hold higher-level degrees like Master’s and Doctoral qualifications. This means they have the skills and knowledge necessary to improve children’s math education and prepare them effectively for college. They also have at least 5–10 years of experience in tutoring, meaning they have vast experience in challenging students and engaging even the most reluctant math learners.
Regular progress reports
Parents and students can see their progress clearly and simply, because Brighterly’s tutors provide regular reports. These reports include key information that shows children’s improvements, including:
- Recent topics studied
- Insights into students’ knowledge, confidence and focus
- Topics students are enhancing their knowledge of
- Improvement in assessments
- Areas of improvement for the future
These progress reports highlight how tutoring is improving children’s knowledge and can be especially useful as children prepare for the demands of college.
What should a good math tutoring program include?
With so many options out there, it can be difficult to pin down the right tutoring program for your child. It’s important to know what makes a good tutoring platform, so here are some key areas your chosen provider should cover:
- Personalized learning: Is the educational experience tailored to your child’s needs?
- Flexible scheduling: Does the tutoring fit around your life, and can you sign up as and when your child needs support?
- Test preparation: Does your chosen provider offer dedicated test prep and support for college entrance exams?
- Experienced, expert tutors: What qualifications do your child’s tutor hold and do they have enough experience in teaching?
- Alignment with educational standards: Will your chosen tutoring complement your child’s classroom learning or contradict it?
Prepare your child for a successful college journey
Every stage of your child’s education matters when it comes to gaining entry into college and achieving their degree. The elementary math foundation learnt in the early years sets them up for a successful journey, while personalized support throughout their time in school keeps them on track when they’re struggling.
Tutoring provides this essential education and ensures your child has the knowledge and skills required to succeed in their college application and get the best grades. But we can’t forget about the personal progress they’ll make, either. Tutors show children that they can achieve anything they put their mind to, and that’s particularly important in math. Children who believe in their own math abilities perform the equivalent of a grade higher.
So, is it time to give your child the best chance of success and consider a math tutor?
