About Us

Why We Started

Pittsburgh Prep was originally founded in 2009 to better serve the small niche of students and parents who were looking to gain a score advantage for competitive university admissions.

Over the past two years, we have also strongly focused on becoming a socially conscious educational institution. Pittsburgh Prep also provides partial and full-tuition scholarships to all of our qualified students, based strictly on need. As of 2013, we have provided over $38,500 in scholarship to schools and students.

To this end, we consistently meet our goals: Our yearly audits have shown an increase of over 270 points in the SAT performance of our graduates.

How It Started

“What would you do if you couldn’t fail?”

As a former TFA school teacher in Texas, ex-Kaplan instructor, and a graduate from Harvard’s School of Education, Hoon Kim was frustrated with how the unregulated test prep industry took advantage of free market opportunities in the new accountability movement within education reform. New and old test prep companies continue to promise outrageous results without any repercussions for their guarantees. Almost all test prep companies fueled their monumental growth through heavy marketing, discounted pricing, disregard for teacher quality, and business focus.

Undaunted by the challenge of going head-to-head with the status quo, Pittsburgh Prep was founded with no outside investment and a lot of gumption. It started out with Hoon asking one simple question: “What would you do if you couldn’t fail?” If we couldn’t fail, we would institute a primary focus on student learning, not on unethical business practices. If we couldn’t fail, we would compile a research based effective curriculum, not just focus on mere nonsubstantive testing tricks. If we couldn’t fail, we would take the time to hire, train, and develop the highest caliber teachers. If we couldn’t fail, we would learn to differentiate our instruction so that students from all varying abilities would best learn in our environment.

Pittsburgh Prep has met these challenges, and is considered the most sought after-school college-readiness program in the region. By focusing on effective school correlates, Pittsburgh Prep has become a small but tight knit organization where close to 98% of our parents and graduates would highly recommend us to their peers. You may not find Pittsburgh Prep represented in every town in Pittsburgh and beyond, but that’s just fine with us. Our focus on our students’ performance is what drives our growth, not growth for growth’s sake.