SM East offered four 45-minute tutoring sessions during late-start on Thursdays from Sept. 18 to Oct. 9, to prepare students for the upcoming Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test this Thursday.
Counselor and PSAT coordinator Susan Fritzemeier, Gifted Facilitator Mary Holsworth and math teacher Neeta Mandsager led the sessions. The sessions were offered to 60 juniors with the highest scores on the practice PSAT/NMSQT from sophomore year, according to Fritzemeier.
Aiming to boost test readiness, principal Jason Peres modeled the sessions after other districts, such as Blue Valley, which, according to the Johnson County Post, had 51 National Merit Semi-Finalists this year compared to Shawnee Mission’s six.
“Our hope is that by doing these brief sessions, students will just be wiser with their testing practices and know some of the explicit content that they're going to see,” Peres said. “In essence, it’s us giving them an opportunity to practice right before they take the test.”
Scoring above a certain Selection Index — which varies based on the previous class in each state and is calculated by doubling the reading score, adding the math score and dividing by 10
— on the PSAT/NMSQT qualifies students as National Merit Semi-Finalists. Then, after achieving a comparable PSAT or ACT score and an additional application containing an essay, students become finalists.
Being both a semi-finalist and a finalist makes students eligible for certain college scholarships, and finalists are considered for a National Merit Scholarship award, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Other than being a semi-finalist or finalist, scoring in the 3-4% of test-takers qualifies students to be a National Merit Commended Scholar.
This year’s selection score for the graduating class of 2026 was 216, one to two points higher than the past four years, according to multiple articles by the Johnson County Post.
“There are all these students at East who are really close, but just not in that top one-half of the 1%,” Fritzemeier said. “And this year is kind of a pilot year [for the tutoring sessions], like a little soft opening of a store, and we just wanted to get some resources out and provide a few prep sessions.”
Planning for the sessions was a collaborative effort, with Mandsager teaching the first two sessions, Fritzemeier teaching the third and Holsworth teaching the last.
Mandsager guided around 10 juniors through 30 math practice questions during the 45-minute classes, asking each student what strategy they used for every question and how confident they were.
“I was really, really surprised, because [the students] were into it,” Mandsager said. “Most of them take practice tests and also study at night, which I don't see in my regular teaching. It's nice to see that with the PSAT, they really spend some time studying.”
Junior Halima Talbi attended three of the sessions and has been studying for the PSAT/NMSQT since July, taking SAT practice tests on Bluebook whenever she has a free day or evening. Since outside private tutoring has an average cost of $70 per hour according to Tutors.com, Talbi appreciated how the sessions were free and also enjoyed being taught by Mandsager, whom she had as a math teacher last year.
“I loved how open [the classes] were,” Talbi said. “We all could talk, and it didn't feel like a classroom. It felt like we were all giving each other advice.”
As this is the first year East has offered these sessions, Fritzemeier plans to send out a Google form for students to give feedback. She wants to know if students would prefer the sessions during late start or in the evening, and if there are improvements that should be made.
Additionally, Fritzemeier would like to offer one to two more sessions next year and is considering applying for an East Fund grant to bring in an outside test-prep expert to teach the classes.
“We just want to keep doors open,” Fritzemeier said. “I really look at it from the perspective of, there are so many students achieving, especially at the 95th to 98th percentile here, and if we can just help people get that boost, then that’s our goal.”
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