Kweller Prep Expands in Forest Hills

A Forest Hills test prep center that focuses on placing students in the city’s top high schools as well as colleges has expanded its site on Queens Boulevard.

Kweller Prep, located at 104-40 Queens Blvd., Suites 1C-1D in the Parker Towers, opened its expanded space on Nov. 1 that can now accommodate as many as 100 students between the ages of 12 and 17 years.

“We make our own practice exams by hand for each school,” said Frances Kweller, the test prep center’s owner. “They’re homemade. We design the tests with the parents in mind. Parents understand the value of our testing because we use the best material.”

The center, which has been in the community for five years, assists youths with a number of subjects, including English writing and math, and prepares them for a variety of tests, such as the English Language Arts (ELA), math state exams, TerraNova test, high school entrance exams and the Baccalaureate test.

Tuition varies per student, based on the type of instruction they receive and the amount of time during which they participate in the program.

“Kids come as early as fifth or sixth grade and stay through their senior year,” Kweller said. “This is a second home for some kids.”

The prep center’s classrooms accommodate eight to 10 students at a time. Kweller said the small class sizes allows for more individual attention.

The site focuses heavily on testing, which Kweller said has paid off for its students.

“Each student will take about 15 to 20 practice tests for the SAT,” she said. “Hunter High School typically only takes five percent of applicants. But 30 percent of our students get into that high school.”

She said a majority of the tutors at the center attended Ivy League schools.

“Most of them were the first in their family to go to an Ivy,” she said. “We’ll show our students what a Yale acceptance letter looks like because we want them to have high goals.”

Now that the center has expanded, Kweller said she would be able to triple the number of students that the site can accommodate.

“We sell out very quickly,” she said of Kweller’s classes, which begin earlier than typical SAT prep courses. “We recommend early testing, so that we can identify students’ weak areas.”