Why Race To The Top (RTT)?

Generally, students are taught a lot of materials at a shallow level with occasional rich discussions. We, on the other hand, teach at a much deeper level shaving off all the redundancies students can later on teach themselves if they want to.

According to Hanson [1], average college dropout rate for undergraduate students is 40%. 30% of it is coming from the freshman who are not ready for the challenges during their first year in college. Clearly college acceptance does not guarantee a college degree. We, at RTT, aim to solve this problem well before the high school graduation by starting to challenge students in earlier grades.

[1] Hanson, Melanie. “College Dropout Rates” EducationData.org, November 22, 2021, https://educationdata.org/college-dropout-rates

Competitive colleges seek individuals who challenge themselves beyond the limitations of their schools. Self-studying for an AP exam without taking the corresponding AP course at school is surely an indication of going above and beyond. The prep classes taken at RTT can be considered as a great alternative to ‘self-study’ because we aim to teach full curriculum. Keep in mind that the students who receive more than 5 passing exam scores with an average score of at least 3.5 are recognized with prestigious AP Scholar with Distinction. Based on the CollegeBoard 2021 data [2], only less than 5% of all participants qualify for this award.

[2] https://research.collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/participation/ap-2021

Some students may choose RTT as a supplement to their school. For example, if a student is already enrolled in an AP Calculus AB class in the school, the student can greatly benefit in attending RTT to get more diverse practice and extra instructional support from potentially different perspectives.