Tutoring Services to Develop Smart Study Habits and Life Skills with Dedicated Coach

What Skills Will Your Dedicated Coach
Help My Child Develop?

Develop Time Management Skills

When students learn to manage their time, using our industry-leading, best practices-based approach, their stress levels go down, and they become happier & more confident about themselves.

Gain Smart Study Habits

Research clearly shows that highly successful students spend less time studying than their peers do — they just study more effectively. Complex and durable learning comes easily when students follow our research-based strategies that have been demonstrated to work.

Learn Goal Setting

Students need to learn how to set and measure learning goals. When they persist with their learning to achieve their stated goals, they feel more confident and can accomplish significantly more than their own imagined capacities

Develop Organizational Skills and Study Plans

Students should create study plans and develop habits to regularly check/monitor their study plans and track their actions against what they had planned. The result? They study less, but with greater intensity and focus (and without distractions from social media) they see high achievement gains.

Develop Grit

“Enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare.” - Well-known educator Angela Duckworth on developing grit. When students develop an academic mindset of dedication to stick to goals that they set and persevere in their efforts, their academic performance is boosted - and this holds throughout their lives.

Achieve Aspirational & Motivational Goals

Aspirational goals are closely tied to desire and wanting to achieve something great. Psychologists have proved that specific and ambitious goals can lead to a higher level of performance than easy or general goals.

Develop Concentration and Focus

Developing skills to improve concentration and focus allows students to accelerate learning and become efficient in how they learn & how much time they invest in learning. Students see an amplified impact on their reasoning and critical thinking skills.

Build Emotional and Social Wellbeing

Successful students understand and apply social-emotional wellness behaviors, such as coping, managing emotions through gratitude, or adjusting one’s mindset based on what one can control.

Develop Growth Mindset

Extensive psychological research studies have shown that those who believe they can develop their talents tend to achieve more than those who feel their abilities are innate and fixed. Those with a growth mindset see opportunities instead of obstacles, choosing to challenge themselves to learn more rather than sticking to their comfort zone.

Real straight-A students don’t study harder—they study smarter. Proven study secrets used by real straight-A students across the country reveal that successful students have the following habits nailed down to a science.

Goal setting
Time Management
Prioritization
Organizational Skills
Study habits

American Psychology Association Shares Decades of Research Proving Effectiveness of Studying Smarter

Comprehensive studies by psychologists and researchers at multiple universities have found that studying smarter has significant impact on accelerating learning curves. The research has clearly demonstrated that Spacing, Interweaving and Self-Testing - coupled with remarkable organizational skills - help students to learn more effectively.

They also have recognized that practicing these methods is hard work - and call these strategies as “desirable difficulties.” “In the short term it's easier not to use these strategies, but in the long term it pays off a thousand times over," says Professor and Psychologist, Nate Kornell, PhD.

Comprehensive Meta Analysis Study Finds Study Habits, Skills & Attitude Improved Academic Performance

In comprehensive research reported in the Journal of Perspectives on Psychological Science (Crede, 2008), study habits, skills, and attitude of the students were found to substantially predict improved cognitive ability and academic performance.

Good learning habits helps students organize their efforts to solve problems, develop skills, acquire knowledge and complete school obligations.

^*SHSA= Study Habits, Skills, and Attitudes

The Old Way

Students practiced study habits that included cramming at the last minute, re-reading text multiple times, underlining or highlighting text, or lack of practice of math problems.

The New Way

Students practice study habits that have been recommended based on best practices and research - including Spacing, Interweaving and Self-Testing.

The Old Result

You get frustrated that even though you studied hard, you were not getting the desired results.

The New Result

You feel confident, happy and inspired by your results given that you worked hard.

Research clearly shows that highly successful students actually spend less time studying than their peers do—they just study more effectively.

When students study less, but with greater intensity and focus consistently, and without distractions from social media, they make high achievement gains.

Time management and organizational skills provide the foundation for accelerated learning when coupled with great study habits.

Grit Matters to Achieve Higher Learning Outcomes

Students need to set and measure learning goals. When they persist with their learning to achieve their stated goals, their confidence increases and they are able to accomplish significantly more than their own imagined capacities.

Angela Duckworth is the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and in 2013 was named a MacArthur Fellow. Prior to her career in research, she was a math and science teacher at public schools in New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

Source: angeladuckworth.com

Why Grit & Effort Leads to Achievement

Why does effort matter so much?

talent x effort = skill
skill x effort = achievement

Talent equates to how quickly your skills improve when you apply effort.

Achievement is the result of using your skill and applying effort.

In other words, effort factors in twice - it increases talent, and then it increases the application of that talent to achieve learning outcomes.

Someone of lower talent can catch up in skill level by applying effort
Someone of lower talent can reach the same skill level but achieve more over time by applying the skill with more effort
Someone of higher talent can achieve less by putting in less effort

Grit + Self-Reflection + Mentor Support Critical to Personalize
Growth Achievement

Not all students can just have a growth mindset and achieve success. Students want personal proof that their efforts are leading to results. Reflection is a skill that requires practice and feedback, just like anything else. An independent assessment of regular student reflections showed that pupils improved significantly over the course of one semester, and that improvement led to significant growth in academic GPA.

A consistent routine for student reflections, giving timely feedback on them, and making sure they connect the dots between specific actions they are taking and growth, all year, helps students achieve success in their academic pursuits.

“I thought I could get better if I kept working at it. Maybe this just isn’t for me?”Source: EdSurge, 2018, Growth Mindset

The Old Way

Students developed a fixed mindset. Students thought that they either were good in math or bad in math. They thought that this was an inherent natural fact that could not be changed.

The New Way

Students develop a growth mindset. The growth mindset believes trouble is just important feedback in the learning process.

The Old Result

In a fixed mindset, it’s all about the outcome. If you fail, you think all effort was wasted.

The New Result

Your flaws are just a TO-DO list of things to improve.

The way to guarantee progress with your time is to conduct deliberate practice.

When you have a structured, disciplined way to put in deliberate practice and time, you WILL MAKE guaranteed progress and get the RESULTS you seek.

Deliberate practice consists of 4 steps:

Set a stretch goal. Focus on a narrow aspect that you want to improve. Set a reach goal that you can’t meet yet.
Apply full concentration and effort. Many greats do this in isolation, by themselves.
Receive immediate and informative feedback. Focus on what you can improve.
Repeat with reflection and refinement. Keep working until you meet that stretch goal. And when you meet it, choose a new stretch goal.

Source: Carol Dweck, Growth Mindset

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Raj Valli and I founded Thinkster. I am a data and statistics guy at heart. As a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, I helped multi-billion dollar companies save money by making sure that their products and services will be of the highest quality. Six Sigma means having less than 3.4 defects per 1 million pieces of anything you produce - engines, coffee cups, your shirt...tutoring….anything! That’s outstanding almost defect-free quality!

I have worked for major multi-billion dollar corporations leading functional areas in marketing, finance, operations, strategy, and M&A, across Aerospace, Automotive, Life Sciences, Chemicals, Materials, Pharmaceuticals, Industrial Controls, BioTech, Services, and Software.

I have spent 20+ years volunteering my time to help provide basic education for underprivileged children.

Several years ago, my daughters were using a worksheets based math learning program (like Kumon, Mathnasium) to help accelerate their math learning.

I was frustrated by the lack of progress they were having in truly understanding math concepts. They were getting really good in the process of solving math problems in a very formulaic way without really understanding why they were doing what they were doing.

I looked everywhere for a math program that would let my daughter’s learn math for life and not just for a test or completing homework. I wanted a guaranteed approach to learning math. Not hope. But GUARANTEED! Like, Six-Sigma defect-free! I knew that if they had a real strong foundation in math, it would take them places. I found nothing other than a few books on the topic or needed to hire an excellent math tutor for $100/hour.

I decided to take matters into my own hands and looked for efficient and fool-proof ways of getting students to learn not only math, but develop a strong foundation in problem solving skills but also help them improve their critical thinking and logical reasoning skills. In short, I wanted them to develop the capacity to unpack and solve ANY problems in life - not just math problems.

My strategy worked so well, that it got my daughters to ace math in middle and high school and eventually also got them into the top Ivy League school and University.

I had other friends who were in a similar situation and were looking for a better math learning program.

So we decided to join hands and start Thinkster to help others with the method and now we service thousands of customers in 30+ countries.

Successful Students
Study Smarter and Not Harder

What Skills Will Your Dedicated Coach
Help My Child Develop?

Develop Time Management Skills

Gain Smart Study Habits

Learn Goal Setting

Develop Organizational Skills and Study Plans

Develop Grit

Achieve Aspirational & Motivational Goals

Develop Concentration and Focus

Build Emotional and Social Wellbeing

Develop Growth Mindset

How Does It Work?

American Psychology Association Shares Decades of Research Proving Effectiveness of Studying Smarter

Comprehensive Meta Analysis Study Finds Study Habits, Skills & Attitude Improved Academic Performance

The Old Way

The New Way

The Old Result

The New Result

Grit Matters to Achieve Higher Learning Outcomes

Why Grit & Effort Leads to Achievement

Grit + Self-Reflection + Mentor Support Critical to Personalize
Growth Achievement

The Old Way

The New Way

The Old Result

The New Result

Make Guaranteed Progress and Get the Results You Want

Choose Your Plan or Add This
On To Your Other Existing Plans With Us

Quarterly

Annual

Quarterly

Annual

Successful Students Study Smarter and Not Harder

What Skills Will Your Dedicated Coach Help My Child Develop?

Develop Time Management Skills

Gain Smart Study Habits

Learn Goal Setting

Develop Organizational Skills and Study Plans

Develop Grit

Achieve Aspirational & Motivational Goals

Develop Concentration and Focus

Build Emotional and Social Wellbeing

Develop Growth Mindset

How Does It Work?

American Psychology Association Shares Decades of Research Proving Effectiveness of Studying Smarter

Comprehensive Meta Analysis Study Finds Study Habits, Skills & Attitude Improved Academic Performance

The Old Way

The New Way

The Old Result

The New Result

Grit Matters to Achieve Higher Learning Outcomes

Why Grit & Effort Leads to Achievement

Grit + Self-Reflection + Mentor Support Critical to Personalize Growth Achievement

The Old Way

The New Way

The Old Result

The New Result

Make Guaranteed Progress and Get the Results You Want

Choose Your Plan or Add This On To Your Other Existing Plans With Us

Quarterly

Annual

Quarterly

Annual

Successful Students
Study Smarter and Not Harder

What Skills Will Your Dedicated Coach
Help My Child Develop?

Grit + Self-Reflection + Mentor Support Critical to Personalize
Growth Achievement

Choose Your Plan or Add This
On To Your Other Existing Plans With Us