Private tutor starts online SAT prep course TestRocker to never turn away another student

TestRocker wants to help students ace their SAT.

What happens when you’re a sought after SAT tutor who has prepared over a thousand students from around the world?

While most would probably be content with turning away students or jacking up their fees, Suniti Mathur took a different tack: She transformed her one-woman operation into a scalable Ed Tech startup.

Suniti sought help from her two daughters, Sonali and Urvashi, and together they founded TestRocker, a Singapore-based startup offering online SAT preparation through the use of teaching videos complemented by online quizzes, as well as personalized curriculum.

To make it happen, they engaged New York design firm Barrel to create the website, and it shows.

The website has all the latest bells and whistles you would normally in Silicon Valley, making it a great introduction to what the trio calls the ‘TestRocker curriculum’.

The curriculum is based on Suniti’s method of teaching students how to maximize their SAT and ACT scores, refined from over a decade of experience. Lessons are delivered through 1,200 videos, all focused on the SAT. That’s like watching 11 movies back-to-back.

“To put this in perspective, Khan Academy — a company we admire — has about 3,800 videos covering K-12 math, biology, chemistry, physics and so on,” Sonali told SGE via email.

Besides interactive content, a key feature of TestRocker is personalization. Students who join the site for the first time can complete a 70 minutes diagnostic test or a quick checklist that would result in a customized study plan based on their strengths and weaknesses.

How TestRocker’s SAT prep course works:

According to Sonali, having a plan reduces students’ anxieties and boosts their confidence in answering questions. That’s because they would know that they’re adequately prepared.

While startups these days would typically offer a freemium service or a tiered subscriptions scheme, TestRocker has done away with the concept. It still offers the prerequisite free trial, although a six month access to the site will cost parents a one-time fee of USD 699.

The price is steep, which was why Sonali explained that it wasn’t an easy decision. But they went ahead with it because they didn’t want to distract students with payment reminders or shut down the service just because the credit card expired.