“I went to Elite for 8 weeks, and I didn’t improve at all! Then, one of my church friends recommended me to Decoded Prep, and I was fortunate to have Jennifer and Leon as my SAT tutor. Both of them have helped me so much that in two months, my SAT score dramatically improved by 150 points. In the beginning, I had a difficult time with SAT grammar, SAT reading (especially on the double passages), and SAT advanced math problems. However, with Jennifer and Leon’s help and patience, I gradually familiarized myself and learned how to tackle my weakness. Later on, Jennifer had helped me on my college applications, and she was very resourceful. I can’t wait to receive my acceptance letter in March!

I am incredibly happy to meet them, and I highly recommend both Jennifer and Leon because they both truly care about helping their students reach their full potential.”

“I used to have a bad impression of tutors, since most of my experiences were negative and unhelpful.

Yet I had the good fortune of having Jennifer and Leon as my tutor. They established something no other tutor had been able to do before: trust. They had me engaged in my studies, and were able to balance personality with focus. It was easy to talk about generic things like school, life, and the future, yet both of them ensured I stayed on task.

When it came to SAT prep, I went over hundreds of new vocab words every session. Jennifer would even have me write essays IN SESSION, go over it and then have me write AGAIN within the same session. Along with the constant practice, the feedback and explanations she provided me were clear and provided structure, ensuring I fixed my bad habits and performed consistently well. With Leon, what helped most was clarifying difficult concepts and having a peer who understood how challenging the subject could be. His explanations made me enjoy math, no small feat, since historically I detested the subject.

The results were immediate: My Sat essay improved tremendously, with a perfect score of 12/12! Even the best students at my high school scored less than me. I saw huge improvements in SAT Math and Calculus at school. And the lessons continued to help throughout my college career. Wherever you go, I guarantee you will not find a better mentor than Jennifer and Leon.”

“My brother and I owe a huge thanks to Jennifer, who had been our tutor for several years and an integral part of our academic successes. I can honestly say that she has taught me more than I’ve learned from any of my English classes and that she is an extremely qualified tutor. Jennifer started tutoring me when I was in 4th grade and had helped improve my reading comprehension and analytical writing skills ever since. She also helped my brother and I with SAT prep, AP English exams, and college applications. Ultimately, my brother got a 2360 on the SAT and I got a 2250 (I was also a National Merit Commended Student, as I received a 218 on the PSAT). My brother is currently attending UC Berkeley and I will be attending UC San Diego in the fall.

I’ve also had the privilege of being tutored by Jennifer’s brother, Leon, who helped me with my AP Calculus AB class. He gave me in-depth lessons on topics that I didn’t understand and worked with me step-by-step on the problems I struggled with. After Leon started tutoring me, I actually felt prepared for my math tests because I finally understood the material.

Both Jennifer and Leon are incredibly nice and sincere people who dedicate so much time to helping students succeed. They are very organized and professional tutors and will always greet you with a friendly smile. My brother and I are very fond of Jennifer and definitely recommend her to anyone in need of tutoring. Leon is also very understanding and never made me feel dumb for not understanding math (I found this to be quite important because my brother always made me feel dumb for not understanding math). Jennifer and Leon are phenomenal tutors and I’m so thankful to have had them! :)”

“Jennifer: Jennifer has been my English tutor since the 3rd grade (I am now in 10th grade). Her teaching style had a way of making even the dullest of topics shine like a very shiny object that’s indescribable. Time after time again, she helped me through roadblocks in essay writing, coming in like a wrecking ball. Her incredible arsenal of literary knowledge never ceased to amaze me. She knew every trick in the book, partly because she wrote some! Her famed “grammar notes” covered every single possible grammar dilemma one could face on the test. She’s a magical grammar guru! In addition to having the best grammar notes I’ve ever seen, Jennifer is well versed in the realms of literature.We studied writing pieces from authors ranging from the gloomy Ernest Hemingway to the eloquent and well-spoken Shakespeare. She was even acquainted with the esoteric Mahabharata, something that’s rarely even taught at the college level! Not only that, Jennifer is also an exceptional essay grader, dissecting my ham-handed attempts at writing with ease and identifying what I could do better in an instant. Her guidance helped me improve my writing and fix my essay structure. Rather than holding my hand throughout the entirety of the curriculum, she instead taught me different approaches and solutions to problems in with SAT questions. Then she explained to me how to apply them rather than telling me how to solve each individual problem. Not only that, Jennifer weaves in references to pop culture and real life events in order to give her students actual representations of mechanics rather than spewing out information without showing us how it’s used well in practice. An example of this is when she told me to make a deliberately over-the-top argument in a story sound like a our current political debate to elucidate that contentions in the past still hold true today. Picture Jane and Rochester of Jane Eyre vs. Clinton and Trump, minus the romance. Even in normal day-to-day conversation, she weaves in literary devices!

Leon: I first met Leon when I was prepping for the AMC (American Mathematics Competition) Test of 7th grade. The AMC is a test that goes above and beyond a school’s curriculum and throws a hodgepodge of problem solving and devilish logic based problems at a test taker. The problems that I encountered were weird, wacky, and completely foreign to me. However, Leon came to my rescue. Not only did he show me the mechanics and methods needed to solve the problems, he explained where these problems would be used in real life, not just in the abstract. This had the effect of making me actually understand the information, rather than just him talking at a wall. He then pulled up related problems that I could do in order to make me apply the concepts he had just taught me. He taught me so well that I managed to get first in my grade for the AMC of my freshman year of high school.”