Experience The Higher Scores Difference
The journey of planning for and taking the ACT & SAT can be overwhelming.
Especially now, when it feels like testing expectations completely change every few months: Tests are optional, then they’re required; they're preferred by admissions but still optional, or they're truly optional; they're required for some scholarships; they're optional for others.
It can be hard to keep up!
During our combined 27 years of test prep, teaching, and admissions counseling experience, we have seen so many iterations of test prep changes, and every time the same things have remained true:
- Colleges continue to rely on SAT and ACT scores (to greater or lesser degrees) to make more informed admissions decisions by comparing applicants to national standards.
- With the increase in higher GPAs, SAT and ACT scores can help admissions differentiate one student's straight As from another.
- Scholarships and financial aid and are still often awarded based on SAT or ACT scores, in combination with other factors.
- Standardized tests continue to be inadequate representations of students’ intelligence or potential and instead simply measure their abilities to take highly specific tests.
Higher Scores was created to help families deal with the tension between these four facts, and to support them with the stressful time, energy, and monetary costs of test prep.
If you’re here to find the most direct path to affordable higher education for you or your student, you’re in the right place! And we’re excited to be your guides.
Let's meet the team!
Kat Clowes
CEO | College consultant
Kat originally fell in love with the college admissions journey after completing high school a year early and navigating the ins and outs of the process with her dad. (She and her dad still marvel at all the things they wish they would have known about admissions before applying).
After completing her Bachelors in Communications at Santa Clara University, she began working in Hollywood (on the business side) before landing a job at a community college as a costume designer. It was there that she remembered her love of the admissions process again as she helped her transfer students navigate their own admissions journey.
Kat completed her Master's in Business Administration with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship from Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles and her postgraduate certificate in Educational Consulting from the University of California, Irvine. She started her own firm, March Consulting, to help families like her own navigate the admissions process. In the past 10 years, she has helped hundreds of families earn thousands in scholarships and advance to the colleges of their dreams.
Christina Friedman
Math Specialist
Christina brings 10 years in high school level math education to Higher Scores. She has been tutoring students privately in both subject specific content and test prep for over a decade.
With patience, humor, and the ability to quickly assess and accommodate students' needs, she prepares her students for not only their next math class, but for concrete application of important mathematical concepts. Christina knew instantly that Higher Scores was the way to reach more students and to help them earn higher scores.
Christina Friedman holds bachelors degrees in both Mathematics and Economics as well as her California teaching credential. She is trained specifically in educational technology as well as Math Mindset, which helps students develop mathematical confidence in addition to understanding. She has contributed to various district curriculum committees, charged with the development of activities and assessments for use in classrooms across districts.
Julia Clausen
Director of programs
Over the last decade of SAT/ACT/AP test prep tutoring, through different formats and platforms and curricula, Julia has worked with so many students for whom standardized testing was one of the biggest barriers to their future success. She joined Higher Scores to develop comprehensive, accessible test prep curriculum that shows students how to make the test work for them, not the other way around.
She has a BA in English from University of California, Irvine and an MSc in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the oldest university in Belgium and consistently ranked in the top 100 globally.
