Klaudia’s career in education began after she graduated from the George Washington University with a BA in Developmental Psychology. Klaudia knew that she wanted to work in a setting where she could explore the biological, psychological and emotional bases of learning and testing in children/young adults. To that end, Klaudia applied and was accepted to the highly selective Teach for America program. Thus began her love affair with teaching, which continued to grow as she taught general and special education mathematics courses in a Manhattan public high school. Even while earning an M.A. degree in Education, Klaudia took on many roles as a mathematics teacher, a special education coordinator and individual tutor to offer her students (who could not afford private tutoring) a leg up to prepare for the mathematics portion of the New York and National standardized tests.

Having worked in a large test prep company during her undergraduate years, Klaudia found that test prep “strategies” were ineffective for students who were lacking a conceptual understanding of math. Her own unique method of teaching and relating math concepts to prior knowledge and incorporating test strategies as part of the test prep process became core principles of what is now Top Tier Test Prep. She found that this approach could achieve incredible scores even with the most disadvantaged students, who had never been taught the fundamentals.

To her initial shock, Klaudia found that no matter the student’s previous experience, educational background and family income level, many students have the same difficulties when it comes to standardized test prep. She became a firm believer that learning the content is key and that you can’t “wing” the SAT/ACT by just learning test prep strategies. Her method of thinking through mathematics problems in a very specific manner enables students to use quantitative reasoning and logic to solve problems beyond the SAT/ACT and become better problem solvers. Klaudia has spent thousands of hours testing, reformulating and perfecting this method, enabling students to achieve their highest scores possible on standardized tests.

As her Teach for America assignment ended, Klaudia partnered with Alyssa Petrone to form Top Tier Test Prep which services a global and truly diverse clientele. Students from around the world fill – and are sometimes wait listed for – Klaudia’s mathematics remote and/or in person test prep slots. She continues to broaden her understanding of test preparation in mathematics and is planning to pursue a second masters degree in Cognitive Studies in Education, which will further her understanding and knowledge of the role of outside guided preparation (private tutoring) in the standardized test preparation and college acceptance process.