Mindprint is a cognitive assessment developed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine that provides students, parents, and tutors with key insights into how each student learns in order to best help students succeed. This one hour online assessment of a student’s complex reasoning, executive functions, memory, and processing efficiency not only identifies a student’s cognitive strengths and learning challenges, but also provides specific recommendations to help students complete homework more efficiently, engage in learning at a higher level, and improve overall test performance. Mindprint is included with A+’s complete test prep program, but the insights and recommendations the assessment provides also extend to academic tutoring and executive function coaching. 
Academic Benefits
Students who take advantage of Mindprint will be able to share their Mindprint Profile with parents, teachers, and tutors. Each Mindprint Profile identifies a student’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses and suggests specific support strategies that complement his or her learning personality.
Mindprint also offers an Academic Profile that not only identifies specific learning facets to either support, watch, or nurture, but also suggests evidence-based strategies to address any inconsistencies between students’ actual performance and their predicted performance.
The Student Learner Profile is a two-page student-friendly document that lists a student’s strongest skills first and highlights his or her strongest category. The student-friendly report includes checklists that help students avoid “blockers” and focus on using their relative strengths (e.g. reasoning and memory). There are also additional checklists to support homework by subject.
Tutors can use Mindprint to set achievable goals and identify the most effective instructional strategies and study skills for their students. For example, a student with a strong visual memory could draw pictures to remember vocabulary words. Since everyone learns differently, Mindprint unlocks information about how the student’s brain works, so he or she can identify the most efficient ways to learn for the rest of his or her life.
Executive Functioning Benefits
Academic success, and indeed success in many aspects of life from hobbies to athletics, depends on your executive function skills, which are a set of skills that organize how one thinks and directs one how to act. Executive functions are linked to social emotional learning and abilities such as “purposeful goal-directed activity, paying attention, evaluating, decision-making, planning, organizing, implementing, and following through.”
Mindprint specifically assesses the executive functions of attention, working memory, and flexible thinking. If a student’s Mindprint results indicate attention is an area to support, it means he or she may not have the self-control and focus to pay attention to a topic that is not interesting for at least 20 to 30 minutes. Once an area to support is identified, Mindprint offers strategies that can compensate for it. Nancy Weinstein, the Founder and CEO of Mindprint, explains that “You’re not necessarily going to be improving the underlying way their mind works; it’s more like these are some things you can do to perform better.”
Test Prep Benefits
Beyond its general academic and executive functioning analysis, Mindprint also offers college admissions test insights. The objective data from a student’s Mindprint Profile is used to generate a Mindprint Test Report (ACT® Report or SAT Report) that identifies a student’s potential composite score and subscore ranges for the SAT and ACT® as well as practical study and strategy suggestions that can be as broad as recommending a particular test (e.g. ACT®) or as specific as recommending how to prioritize certain questions on a test.
In the event that a student is uncertain about whether to take the SAT or the ACT®,additional test prep support comes in the form of the SAT/ACT® Combo Report. This complements SAT and ACT® diagnostic tests by reflecting a student’s overall potential with a “standard amount of practice” rather than just offering a “snapshot” of how the student was doing on the days of the SAT and ACT® diagnostic tests. For example, if a student scores at approximately the same level on both SAT and ACT® diagnostic tests, the Combo Report can help determine if the student has an underlying higher potential on one of these tests that was just not visible on initial diagnostics. With the ability to make a better informed decision about which college admissions test to take and which study strategies will best help a student reach his or her goals, Mindprint can be an even more valuable resource.
The Mindprint Advantage
Knowledge is power. Whether students are seeking to improve their academic performance, their executive functioning skills, or their standardized test scores, the best way to start is to have a comprehensive and clear picture of how their unique brains work. Mindprint is an easy to complete cognitive assessment that provides its users with detailed yet accessible reports that help ensure that all stakeholders—students, parents, teachers, and tutors—are on the same page. A+ Test Prep and Tutoring is proud and excited to offer the amazing benefits of Mindprint to its clients.
At A+ Test Prep and Tutoring, our practices are based on the latest developments in educational theory and research. We have an excellent team of tutors who can help you with standardized testing, executive functioning, or achievement in any other school subject. If you want to find out more about our services, our Client Service Directors Susan Ware and Joelle Faucette can be reached at 215-886-9188.
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