The hidden costs of hourly coaching

We once partnered with a test prep company. Our team can do test prep, but we thought outsourcing this narrow slice of the process would help families. We were wrong.

Their business model depended on anxiety. There was always one more drill, one more retake, one more student “just doing a bit more.” It ran counter to how we serve underserved students.

Underserved students are already in a perpetual anxious state due to their positioning in schools.

At Navega, our strategy is grounded in research on stereotype threat, imposter syndrome, and PVEST (Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory). That may sound academic for a pricing and curriculum decision, until you see the real costs families pay when incentives reward more hours instead of better outcomes.

REad time 6 minutes. If you prefer the TL;DR, jump to the 6-step checklist at the end.

Stereotype threat and imposter dynamics are a constant “not enough yet” messaging. These messages confirm negative identity cues, lowering performance under pressure. Imagine if you are always told that you are not good enough, that your group’s success is due to policies and not hard work, that you are intellectually inferior. Students fear small behaviors such as raising their hand when they have a question for fear that they will confirm negative thoughts about themselves. They fear taking academic risks. And they are more susceptible to marketing tools that confirm that they are not good enough and the previous courses didn’t land.

One more prep session. One more coaching session. And maybe this time, you’ll actually get it.

PVEST argues that when stressors pile up without resources, students adapt by narrowing goals or disengaging. When you always have one more thing to do and nothing is holding, you’re increasing the chances of disengaging from everything, be that the college admissions process or schooling altogether.

This means that the prep that we’re adding, especially if that prep is not addressing the core issue, will likely mean that the student disengages from the entire process.

For our clients who worked with the test prep company, we found that they were less likely to complete their applications, almost never completed the applications to reach schools that would fund them, and needed more coaching to raise their self esteem. And their test scores did not see a significant increase.

what actually drives outcomes

Match First:

This might surprise the reader, but there are more than 40 colleges in the US. And if you include the colleges that graduate students on-time and fund students who need the money, there are about 400 colleges. We match students to these 400 colleges.

Students have difficulty with funding, admissions, and timely graduation when they attempt to attend schools that are not a good fit. I think of it like trying to be a

Proprietary Prep:

We started doing our own test prep that stressed confidence-building. And we do one session for 11th graders at the same time every year. One.

Even though everyone on the team has years of experiences as a teacher and teaching credentials, we remind students that we’re here to jog their memories, not reteach them four years of high school math and English.

And we increased SAT scores by 200 points, on average.

We use this same approach for all of our sessions. We’re not reteaching or holding back prime advice. By charging in bulk, we aren’t limiting when students can ask questions, or how long they have to understand something.

Ask what you need to ask and we have all the time in the world to get you there.

Focus on Graduation:

Includes all the things that systemically get in the way of timely graduation

Application Integrity: