Public Service Initiatives

"From its pro bono tutoring and scholarship funding for needy students to its partnerships with organizations such as Prep For Prep and Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America, Advantage Testing’s commitment to excellence and social responsibility truly represents the very best our great City has to offer."
—Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Since its inception in 1986, Advantage Testing has provided educational opportunities to those who may not otherwise have been able to afford them. Our initiatives include:

pro bono tutoring
active financial aid
partnerships with public service organizations
scholarship funding

Along with our ongoing efforts, we are continually developing new programs to improve access to our services. We welcome any ideas from within and beyond our group that will help make Advantage Testing accessible to families of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

Pro Bono and Financial Assistance Programs

Our financial aid programs have enabled us to work with countless deserving students who might not otherwise have received tutoring in high school. The benefits of their hard work can spur these students to greater academic achievements often at the most competitive institutions of higher education and throughout their professional careers.

Our tutors volunteer to work with motivated students one-on-one on a pro bono basis.
We offer tuition grants to families who qualify for financial assistance.
We provide group instruction free of charge for those who qualify; we encourage our tutors to participate by compensating them at rates higher than their normal rates of compensation.
For local public high school students, we have conducted free lectures on the SAT and the college admissions process.
To encourage our own financial aid programs nationally, Advantage Testing New York, our company headquarters, doubles the dollar amount of financial aid grants given to families by every Advantage Testing location.
We donate free tutoring programs to charity benefits and school scholarship funds.

Partnerships with Public Service Organizations

Prep for Prep

Prep for Prep is a highly regarded and extremely successful 28-year-old public service program. Its mission is to help prepare talented minority students of disadvantaged backgrounds to make the transition first from New York City public schools to leading independent schools and later to selective institutions of higher education.

Our president and founder, Arun Alagappan, serves on the Board of Trustees at Prep for Prep.
As part of our ongoing partnership, Advantage Testing provides pro bono academic SAT and SAT Subject Test instruction to Prep for Prep students. Tutors meet with Prep students weekly.

Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America

Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA) is a non-profit organization committed to nurturing the leadership potential of exceptional public high-school students of socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds that are underrepresented at selective institutions of higher learning. In this aim, LEDA is strongly supported by Shirley Tilghman, President of Princeton University, and Freeman Hrabowski, President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, all of whom are also members of the LEDA Board.

Arun Alagappan is Vice President of the Board of Trustees at LEDA.
Our tutors provide pro bono SAT and SAT Subject Test preparation to LEDA students. In the spring of 2006, members of the first graduating class of 51 LEDA students received their college acceptance decisions. The results included 16 students admitted to Princeton, 10 into Amherst, 8 into MIT, 6 into Stanford, 5 into the University of California at Berkeley, 5 into Harvard, and 5 into Yale.
We support LEDA with financial donations.
The New York Daily News has written about the extraordinary success of LEDA graduates.

Princeton University Preparatory Program

Princeton University Preparatory Program (PUPP) is a Princeton-based organization that offers on-campus opportunities for academic and cultural enrichment to high-achieving, low-income students from Ewing, Princeton, and Trenton public high schools.

We have endowed the Advantage Testing Princeton University Academic Enrichment Fund in support of PUPP students.

Scholarship Funding

Emergency Medicine Initiatives

Advantage Testing has actively contributed to Emergency Medicine (EM) in Asia by establishing a series of research grants and awards for the use and development of indigenous resources to care for acutely ill patients.

Since 2002, we have supported young physician researchers at the annual International EM conferences held in India.
Some of the research projects supported by Advantage Testing have led to new ideas and procedures that have been adopted in many Asian countries and are now promoted by the American College of Emergency Physicians.

VASF

In 2004, Arun Alagappan and his siblings established the million-dollar Visalakshi Alagappan Scholarship Fund (VASF) in honor of their mother.

The VASF benefits needy scholarship students in the United States and in India. The mission of VASF is to help students of modest socioeconomic backgrounds advance their education.

Past Initiatives

In addition to our current efforts, we have also contributed our services and/or offered our financial support to:

Young Women's Leadership School

Since 1996, the Young Women's Leadership School in Harlem has been considered a landmark school. One of the few all-girls public schools in the nation, it is known for having an outstanding rate of college acceptances every year.

We have conducted SAT and SAT Subject Test instruction for students selected by the college counselor.

Bronx International High School

The Bronx International High School provides recent immigrant students with an intensive language development curriculum.

We have taught pro bono students who score at or below the 20th percentile on the Language Assessment Battery and have been in the U.S. for fewer than four years.
One of our senior tutors, Swati Khurana, received a New Visions Teachers Award for her work at Bronx International High School.

School for Human Rights

The School for Human Rights, one of the city's new small public schools, opened in September 2004 in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. This school for middle and high school students emphasizes human rights in both its curriculum and its community itself.

One of our senior tutors, Michelle Chasin, conducted a training session with teachers from the school to introduce the new SAT and potential ways to integrate relevant subject matter into their curricula.

Creative Arts Workshop

The Creative Arts Workshops for Kids (CAW), long the largest volunteer organization on behalf of homeless children in New York City, used the visual and performing arts to engage homeless, formerly homeless, and at-risk children in a comprehensive supportive and developmental program.

We provided pro bono individual SAT tutoring for several of CAWs teens.

National Adolescent Sexuality Program

The National Adolescent Sexuality Program of the Children's Aid Society, run by the highly regarded Dr. Michael Carrera, administers and supports teen pregnancy prevention programs at community centers across the country.

Over several years, Advantage Testing tutors provided instruction to 35 participants from 5 different sites in the New York City area. Most participants completed 24 weeks of instruction. The average score increase for this group was significant, allowing many to consider a wider range of college options.

International High School at Prospect Heights

Emphasizing language development through project-based learning, the International High School at Prospect Heights teaches newcomers to the United States.

One of our tutors, Swati Khurana, has served on the school's Planning Committee, addressing the incorporation of art into an interdisciplinary curriculum and developing college and standardized test preparation benchmarks.
Advantage Testing has hosted the planning committee meetings at its offices.