SAN MATEO · SAT · ACT · PSAT TUTORING
SAT, ACT & PSAT Tutoring in San Mateo, CA
“I am one of those people who do practice tests perfectly but score badly on actual tests. On testing day I was unusually calm. In the end, I was able to score a 35 on the ACT stress-free.”
— Alex Novoselsky, San Mateo High School 2020
Why San Mateo Families Choose Mr. Test Prep
San Mateo County has the widest spread of any market Michael works in, and it hides inside single school districts.
Burlingame and Capuchino are both San Mateo Union high schools, eight miles apart on the same corridor, sharing a district office and a testing calendar. In SchoolDigger’s 2025 California rankings, built on state test data, Burlingame sits 73rd of 2,162 schools and Capuchino sits 609th. Carlmont and Sequoia are both Sequoia Union schools. Carlmont ranks 55th. Sequoia ranks 757th.
Nothing about the district tells you what a student needs here. That is the whole problem with prep programs sold by the district or the ZIP code — and it is why every engagement starts with two hours of diagnosis instead of a placement quiz.
The First Question: Do You Need a Score at All?
Most tutors will not open with this, because the honest answer costs them clients.
The University of California is test-blind. It does not consider SAT or ACT scores for admission, and it does not use them for its own scholarships. The California State University system went further: in March 2022 its Board of Trustees voted to remove the tests permanently, concluding they added negligible value to the admission process.
For a very large share of students on the Peninsula, UC and CSU are the list. San Francisco State, San Jose State, Cal Poly, the UCs, and a transfer path through College of San Mateo or Cañada. If that describes your student and nothing on the list is likely to change, a test score is not a requirement, and no one should sell you one.
The case for testing is narrower and more specific than the industry admits. It is real when the list reaches past California’s publics: the private universities that reinstated requirements, the out-of-state flagships, merit money at test-optional schools that still read a strong score favorably, or a student whose transcript undersells them and needs one number that argues back.
Sorting out which situation you are in takes about two hours. That is what the free trial is for, and there is no obligation attached to the answer.
The Guidance Gap Across Eight Miles
Crystal Springs Uplands, in Hillsborough, publishes its college counseling structure. Three full-time college counselors, all former admission officers, with an average caseload of about thirty students per graduating class. Their published timeline has students taking both an SAT and an ACT diagnostic the summer before senior year, specifically to determine which test is the better option for that student.
That is exactly right, and it is exactly what the free trial does.
Down the hill, a public school counselor is handling course scheduling, transcripts, student wellness and college advising for a caseload many times that size. Nationally the average was 372 students to one counselor in 2024–25, against a recommended 250. Those counselors are not the problem. The arithmetic is.
So two students eight miles apart apply to the same universities on the same test dates — and one of them has a former admissions officer walking her through a testing decision while the other is guessing. Closing that gap is most of what Michael does. The content is the easy part.
SAT or ACT? On the Peninsula It Is Genuinely Open
The two tests are no longer close cousins. The digital SAT is adaptive: the second module gets harder or easier based on the first, which means early accuracy compounds and a slow, careless start costs more than it used to. The Enhanced ACT runs faster, no longer counts Science toward the composite, and punishes short lapses in attention more than it punishes gaps in knowledge.
Those are different students. Some are a hundred points better on one than the other and have never found out, because the PSAT points everyone toward the SAT by default and nobody checks.
Michael does not assume. The trial includes work on both, and the recommendation that follows is based on what happened in the room, not on what the school does.
The Mr. Test Prep Method™ and A-Game Access™
The Mr. Test Prep Method™ teaches students how to approach the test. A-Game Access™ teaches them how to approach the moment. The goal of both is not to help students learn more — it is to help them get more out of what they already know.
That second part matters more here than almost anywhere. The most common story in Michael’s San Mateo County reviews is not a student who did not know the material. It is a student who knew it and could not reach it under pressure — the practice-test-perfect, real-test-panicked student. Alex Novoselsky scored a 35. Linda and Bob Abramovitz’s daughter had a GPA above 4.4 and could not test; her total came up more than 600 points.
Sessions run two hours on Zoom on official SAT and ACT material, with Michael coaching each student in real time as they work. The timed practice is often done alongside other students — nobody takes the real test alone in a quiet room.
There is no homework. A practice test taken alone gives a score; taken with Michael it also shows how the score happened — the pacing, the decisions, the nerve — while there is still time to change it.
What It Costs and Where It Stops
Sessions are $400 each, pay-as-you-go. No prepayment, no packages, no long-term commitment before the trial.
The agreed session count is a cap on what you pay: reach the goal sooner and the paid sessions stop there; need more than the cap and those are free, until the student is satisfied or has used every remaining test date.
On a page that opens by telling some families they may not need a test score, that guarantee is the other half of the same idea. Michael is not trying to sell the longest possible engagement. He is trying to get the student to a number they can stop thinking about.
Schools We Serve Across San Mateo and the Peninsula
San Mateo Union High School District
- Aragon High School — San Mateo; 77th of 2,162 California high schools in SchoolDigger’s 2025 rankings, with about 1,660 students.
- San Mateo High School — the city’s namesake campus, and the source of one of the strongest ACT results in Michael’s files.
- Burlingame High School — the district’s highest-ranked campus in 2025, at 73rd in the state.
- Hillsdale High School — San Mateo; students move through small learning communities named for medieval centers of learning, staying with one set of core teachers for two years at a time.
- Mills High School — Millbrae; the smallest of the district’s comprehensive campuses and consistently among the state’s top hundred.
- Capuchino High School — San Bruno; the district’s most economically varied campus, where the UC and CSU question below matters most.
Sequoia Union High School District
- Carlmont High School — Belmont; 55th in California in 2025 and the largest school on this list at roughly 2,360 students.
- Sequoia High School — Redwood City; an authorized International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme school, and one of the widest college ranges on this list.
- Woodside High School — Woodside; Mr. Test Prep students here span the classes of 2008 through 2021, with results at Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego.
Independent and Catholic schools
- Crystal Springs Uplands School — Hillsborough; three full-time college counselors, all former admission officers, and a published testing timeline that starts with diagnostics on both tests.
- The Nueva School — San Mateo; a school for gifted students that gives no letter grades and offers no AP courses, which quietly makes a test score one of the few standardized numbers on the application.
- Notre Dame High School, Belmont — all-girls Catholic school of about 445 students, founded 1851 and in Belmont since 1923.
- Mercy High School, Burlingame — all-girls Catholic school founded 1931, in the Kohl Mansion; shares Tri-School classes with Notre Dame and Serra.
- Woodside Priory School — Portola Valley; Benedictine, boarding and day, with a documented record of Mr. Test Prep students reaching Brown, Stanford and Claremont McKenna.
What Peninsula Families Are Saying
“Under his guidance I was able to see a drastic improvement with not only my ACT — my 32 became a 35 — but also my attitude towards learning and the future. As someone who struggles with anxiety, and who especially dreaded these lengthy tests, I was extremely grateful.”
Edward Newell · Woodside High School 2021
“He genuinely wishes to establish an understanding of what will work best for you as a student while also connecting with you as an individual. I struggled the most with the reading section, so his guidance heavily focused on improving my approach and interpretation of the text.”
Emma Nguyen · Notre Dame High School, Belmont 2023 · UC Santa Barbara 2027
“He doesn’t merely teach the right answers, rather he provides his students with the mental tools and strategies necessary to think critically. One of the most important tools he focuses on is confidence.”
Daisy Alvarado-Muñoz · Woodside Priory School 2013 · Brown University 2017
“David had a history of good grades but mediocre performance on standardized testing. Mike succeeded in getting David to be comfortable coping with the pressure and walk into the test room with confidence. He improved his ACT from the 91st percentile to the 96th, and his Reading score from 25 to 35.”
Richard Beleson · Parent of a Woodside Priory Student, Portola Valley ’11 · Stanford ’15
“With the rigorous academics and extracurriculars, and knowing my son had no extra time to add yet another homework assignment, Michael’s program seemed like just what we were looking for. His classes were structured and rigorous, simulating a real test environment, focusing on speed and skill.”
Prahba Szaboky · Parent of a Burlingame High School Student ’13 · UC Santa Barbara ’17
“He truly makes an effort to get to know each of his students, and even requested that I bring my horse to test prep one day. From working with him, I was able to reach my goal for the ACT. Math has always been one of my weaker subjects.”
Julia Melmon · Sequoia High School ’13 · Cal Poly ’17
Start With the Free Trial
Two hours on Zoom. A diagnostic across both tests, a read on where the student actually loses points, and a straight recommendation — including, when it applies, the recommendation not to bother.
Free. No commitment. Michael follows up with the parent and the student afterward either way.
