At Let’s Get Ready!, we know that educational success is a collaborative effort by students, their families, and their communities. The mission of Let’s Get Ready! is to foster the same networks of support around disadvantaged students that help other students get to college. “Fostering networks of support,” means mobilizing those who live and work around students to encourage their ambition and actively support their education.
These essential players include the students’ families, schools, churches, community centers, and local businesses. Toward this end, Let’s Get Ready! provides free SAT preparation courses and college/financial aid advising to disadvantaged high school students and involves these key players in offering our services.
Let’s Get Ready! also draws upon resources outside of the community to administer the program. College students from surrounding communities run the programs and serve as instructors, role models, and mentors to our students, helping them to navigate the college admissions process.
While our focus is SAT classes and college advising, on the larger canvas Let’s Get Ready! is about equity and social mobility—of individuals, generations of families, and in turn, communities. It is about opportunity. Our goal is to open up opportunities and turn them into reality.
On a daily basis, Let’s Get Ready! is about caring for and inspiring students to greatness by demonstrating that someone cares about them, believes in them, and has faith that they have “what it takes” to achieve their dreams.
Volunteers are essential to accomplishing Let’s Get Ready!’s mission, as they work directly with the students and are a significant component of the support network that we try to create for our students. The time when a student makes the decision to go or not go to college is a flashpoint in his life. Tremendous potential can either be realized or lost. Let’s Get Ready! volunteers have the chance to use their unique expertise to be the mentors, instructors, role-models, and friends who guide younger students through the often trying period of college admissions and into personal eras of new opportunity.
Our volunteers teach SAT classes and serve as college advisors and mentors to our students. They are channels of information as well as our students’ cheerleaders. Because we want to provide our students with a fresh perspective on college and the admissions process, our volunteers are college students or recent college graduates.
In addition to the joy of seeing students move toward their goals, volunteers gain insight into the social, economic, political, and psychological factors that influence access to educational and, hence, socioeconomic opportunity in America. We seek individuals who not only have strong SAT skills but also, more importantly, are committed to the education and success of our students. We hope that you will join us in strengthening the support network around our students and launching them towards success.
SAT Classes: Volunteers teach either Math or Verbal one evening a week. Let’s Get Ready! provides a curriculum, but volunteers are responsible for preparing for each class (i.e., knowing what you will teach and how you will teach it). Volunteers also write quizzes on a rotating basis for other classes within their subject.
Mentoring: As part of the College Choice program, volunteers also serve as mentors to individual students, providing guidance on the college application process. Volunteers attend group activities and meet individually with their students during weekday session breaks and on their own to meet specific College Choice goals.
Reflection sessions: Volunteers participate in reflection sessions during which we discuss curriculum issues with other volunteers who teach the same subject, classroom and student issues, our experiences in the program, and the larger issues surrounding educational inequality. Reflection sessions are also a time for volunteers to get to know one another in a fun and informal setting.
[1] The College Board. High School and Beyond. 1980 High School Sophomore Cohort,
1980-1982.
[2] Fitzsimmons, William, Harvard University.
[3] Gladieux, Lawrence and Watson Scott Swail. The College Board Review. No.
185, Summer 1998.
[4] The College Board. 1997 Profile of College-Bound Seniors.
[5] Frontline. Secrets of the SAT. “The Test Score Gap.”
[6] Jenks, Christopher and Meredith Phillips. “The Black-White Test Score Gap.”
American Prospect. Issue 41. November, December 1998.
