Attending Wake Forest
Chose: Wake Forest University
Skylar’s main problem on the ACT wasn’t content. It was anxiety.
That’s the kind of obstacle a lot of generic prep programs don’t actually solve. They’ll tell a student to “breathe” or “stay positive” or hand her a stack of practice tests and hope familiarity does the work. Most of those approaches either don’t move the needle or actively make the anxiety worse by piling on hours of stressful drilling.
Skylar already understood something important: the only thing that was actually going to combat the anxiety was being prepared. Not pep talks, not breathing exercises—real, specific, knowing-the-answer preparation.
So we built the program around that, with one constraint: she didn’t have a lot of weekly time to give it. Her schedule was full. Heavy daily prep would have undone the whole point.
What an hour a day looked like
Seven weeks. About an hour a day of focused work, built entirely around the specific question types where Skylar was still losing points.
The short daily window forced ruthless prioritization. Nothing generic, nothing she’d already mastered. Just the small set of recurring mistake patterns that were keeping her in the high 20s, drilled until they stopped happening.
The anxiety piece worked itself out as a byproduct. Skylar wasn’t being told to feel less anxious. She was being shown, week over week, that the questions she used to freeze on were now ones she could solve quickly. The familiarity built confidence, and the confidence cooled the anxiety. The order matters.
Superscore strategy
Skylar’s improvement also leaned on the superscore strategy. We didn’t try to nail every section on a single test date. Across her test attempts, we focused different windows of prep on different sections, knowing colleges would superscore the highest section results.
The final superscore breakdown:
- Reading: 36
- English: 35
- Science: 34
- Math: 33
- Composite (superscore): 35
A 35 superscore, built on roughly an hour a day for seven weeks—and a small amount of weekly coaching to keep the plan tuned.
What the 35 unlocked
Skylar ended up attending Wake Forest University.
In her own words:
“It’s completely a weight off my back.”
What Skylar’s story shows
Two things, both worth pulling apart.
The first is test anxiety. It almost never gets fixed in the abstract. It gets fixed by removing the underlying cause—not knowing exactly what to do when a question shows up. That’s a knowledge and pattern problem, and it’s coachable.
The second is that the time commitment doesn’t have to be enormous to produce a real result. About an hour a day, for seven weeks, was enough. The shape of the work matters more than the total hours logged.
If your student has test anxiety, or just doesn’t have the bandwidth for a 10-hour-a-week prep program, this is what a tighter version of the path looks like.
"It's completely a weight off my back."
— Skylar
What we did differently
- Treated the test anxiety as the actual barrier—not as a side issue.
- Kept the daily workload light enough that the prep itself didn't compound the stress—about an hour a day.
- Built familiarity with the test through targeted practice instead of generic confidence-building.
- Pursued the superscore strategy—used both test attempts to lock in different sections.
- Maintained balance with her busy schedule; the prep didn't take over her life.
Coached by
Boosted Brains coaching team
Every Boosted Brains coach has a perfect or near-perfect ACT score and has been personally trained by Carson Weekley (perfect 36) and Martin (Head of Student Success).