Mock Business Proposal

Executive Summary

College Bound Prep offers free on site after school group and private tutoring courses. Our services will first be introduced to Baltimore City Public schools; Specifically Fredrick Douglass High School. We have plans of further expanding into other public schools in metropolitan areas that have struggling school systems. Our curriculum will thoroughly prepare students for standardized testing which are evaluated and colleges & universities; specifically SAT & ACT testing. College Bound Prep will offer workshops where students can get help with their classes and homework. College Bound Prep will also put an emphasis on science because that is one major skill which students today lack. College Bound Prep is intended to help High School juniors and seniors, but with time it will be available for more grades. We decided to become a Non-Profit organization because the average income rate of Baltimore City households is about 30,000 or less. This will allow students whose parents wouldn’t be able to afford private tutoring sessions elsewhere to have their child stay after school and get the appropriate help. College Bound Prep will build partnerships with colleges & universities on the Eastern coast with the potential to expand across the states. We will work closely with school counselors &students to help them through the college application process, fill out government aid forms and find scholarships/grants which they may be eligible for. We will hold college tours with our partnered schools to shows students the diversity of their options and help motivate. Because we offer our services to the students free of cost we will Charge a $30fee per tour which will cover their travel expenses. We plan to host around 3 tours a semester. There are numerous other companies such as Kaplan, Newton and Frog Tutoring which offer tutoring or SAT Prep classes, many of these programs which go to onsite locations. We will use an enhanced version of the current school’s curriculum, and using student feedback we can focus on what the students need. In the State less than 28% of students are proficient in Science when compared to the rest of the world, is below standards which show the lack of science education. With the launch of a new Company we run the several Risks and but the opportunities are quite appealing. Some of the risks which our company faces are the strong opposition which we will face from our competition. Many of our competitors have been in business for several years, and are quite credible. Another problem we will face is the current budget cuts to Baltimore’s public education. Being a non-profit organization we will require government funding we run the risk of not receiving necessary funding. While analyzing our current market we realized the opportunity based on the current rise in Graduation and College application rate from the Baltimore public schools. This shows the rise and interest of students wanting to graduate and further pursue their educational careers. The city of Baltimore has set a goal of raising the graduation rate to 90% by the year 2020. College Bound Prep sees this opportunity as a chance to work closely with the Baltimore City Public School program and help reach this goal. College Bound Prep will be ran by 5 College Graduates all with their own disciplines which together will contribute our skills, time and some personal funds. To start off the staff will be made up of paid seasoned/veteran math, science, history, and English teachers who share in our ideal to help troubled schools. We will recruit College students as interns to help as assistants to the tutors. Using interns will help cut back on pay roll and these College interns will hopefully be viewed as role models and representatives of what it is to be a college student. At start up each member will contribute $5000 of their own funds to add up to $25,000, along with an additional business loan of $25,000 we will have a total of 50,000 before any funding or aide. We will pay this debt of within the first 4 years of operation. With this 50,000 we will pay payroll, purchase books and material, and cover additional cost which we will occur.
Mission Statement
College Bound Prep is designed to help and motivate High School students in the Baltimore City School System to become independent learners and pursue advancement in their academic careers & educational opportunities beyond high school. Following the beliefs of the No Child Left behind Act we want to help any student who wants to go 2 college to get there and personally guide them there.
Company
Our Company College Bound Prep was founded July 24th, 2011 by five people who are willing to change the educational system in the Baltimore City Public School District. Our business is designed to help and protect the educational advancements of the Baltimore City School Youth. Also, our service most importantly, will help Baltimore City Schools raise their test scores in many subject areas that show they are deficient in such as Math, reading, writing, and other areas study. On the other hand, our company is a C-Corporation that will provide many tools and skills to students in the Baltimore City area so that they may have opportunities of advancement beyond high school.
Additionally, our corporation will be building partnerships with colleges within the state of Maryland and in the future attempt to expand to others on the east coast if business is very successful. Our principal office will be located at Frederick Douglass Senior High School, where we may have an agreement with the school and the Baltimore City School District Board to use classrooms or other lecture halls for our academic sessions. We will use Frederick Douglass Senior High School as our first location until we see that we are financially fit and our curriculum proves sufficient enough to expand to other schools within Baltimore City District and/or possibly obtain our own public location. Our main focus and priority is to start in a location where the school that needs the most assistance and attention. According to the Maryland State Department of Education, Frederick Douglass Senior High School is second to last in worst high schools in the state of Maryland in algebra and English. Our Corporation feels that we must begin where the majority of students are doing poorly in their test scores so that we

can show the public that we are serious company promoting change in the Baltimore City Public School District.
Business
College Bound Prep provides many services to students in the Baltimore City area an opportunity to seek assistance from us in the college application process so that they can fully comprehend the process of applying to college. Furthermore, specifically, we will assist and guide them in the understanding of the fine print of these college applications. Also, we plan to provide Inner Baltimore City Youth and Parents an opportunity to visit colleges in the state of Maryland so that they can get some real life experience on a college campus. Our College Tours will visit a variety of schools such as Towson, University of Maryland, Morgan State University, Coppin State University, UMBC, St. Mary’s College, Salisbury University, Maryland Easter Shore, Baltimore City Community College, and The Community College of Baltimore County. College Bound Prep is at the seed stage of the business venture, having just developed idea that would attract us to have different and unique services that many other educational enhancement corporations don’t have. Recently, we have hired three student tutors from the Towson University and two students’ tutors from Morgan State University. Additionally, we have come to an agreement with Frederick Douglass Senior High School as our first location to conduct our tutoring sessions and are in the talking agreement process with Harbor City High School in the Baltimore City Public School District.

Our Corporation is expected to achieve at least 3600 dollars in sales from College Tours every semester from the academic sessions being held at our school locations. We can achieve this because the funds will allow us to market our company in the Baltimore City Public School Newsletters, allow ads to be admitted in the Baltimore Sun newspapers, allow us to put flyers out on billboards at all the Public High schools in Baltimore, and maybe allow our company to have television ads on the local Baltimore stations. Also, with the funding, we may be able to expand to our own location or expand to facilities where we may be able to rent rooms that are large enough to accommodate large amounts of students. Furthermore, we feel that our company will be able to hire the best tutors in the area so that we can give a young child an equal opportunity to further advance their education.
Product/Service:
College Bound Prep will deliver personalized tutoring to students at Frederick Douglass Senior High School. Tutoring will cover commonly tested areas such as Math, English, and Science. Tutoring in these specific areas is set to improve the test scores with confidence and with hopes of bringing Baltimore City’s school systems higher in ranking. College Bound Prep’s smaller group size will also enhance the student’s ability to receive information better and also increase confidence and encourage students in being more proactive in the learning process. Each subject will have an individual break down in terms of the style of teaching to the students. College Bound Prep will be stepping outside of the traditional teaching style and will involve the students in hands-on and personal experience learning. Each subject would offer its own curriculum that is different from the other.

Math will involve physical construction of word problems which include having the students make drawings and illustrations of what they have read to demonstrate their comprehension, hands-on activities for areas in math such as Geometry, and computer labs held for areas in math such as Algebra, graphs, and other areas that require any data input and graphical depictions. Students will be able to apply what they learned from the textbook in science by actually applying it. Science will allow students to participate in classroom labs, textbook lab work, and working on designing their own experimental projects to test their own hypothesizes.
English will involve the students having required texts to read, journals to document events in their daily lives, book reports to show their understanding of the books they have read, and peer grading with any reports or presentations done to test and increase their knowledge of writing. College Bound Prep does not only offer services to high school students in need but to college students seeking teaching experience, especially Morgan State University students. Undergraduate students majoring in Business, Engineering, and other studies, more specifically Education are offered paid internships to have the opportunity to work with the youth at Frederick Douglass High school. These student interns will have the opportunity to experience a non-traditional form of teaching and apply it to their future endeavors. The interns will also be given the opportunity to develop curriculum for their students to eliminate repetition in teaching and to improve on previous and current teaching outlines.
There is no doubt that College Bound Prep can improve Frederick Douglass Senior High School’s scores. To further spark the student’s interest in wanting to succeed in obtaining passing test scores, College Bound Prep will host college tours two to three times a year. These

college tours will visit all colleges and universities in the state of Maryland, including community colleges in the Baltimore area. By establishing College Bound Prep’s name in most of the colleges and university, we will have personal relationships with most of the colleges and universities admissions offices. This will provide an advantage to any of the students interested in applying to the schools visited during the tour. An added incentive to students who take the tutoring sessions seriously and improve and advance in their test scores will receive scholarships. These scholarships would pertain to college acceptance students from the College Bound Prep program and would range from covering books to covering tuition between one to four years. Presently, College Bound Prep is in the introductory stage. We plan to follow our many services with extensions to our program which includes becoming more mobile in terms of expanding sessions to other high schools in the Baltimore City and County area, and even to other states. College Bound Prep will even offer possible online sessions. College Bound Prep is unique in the sense of our dedication to provide non-traditional, personalized attention and teaching and offering a variety of opportunities for the students receiving tutoring as they progress in much needed test score improvements and also to college students seeking internships for experience.
Market
College Bound Prep’s target market is Baltimore City Youth from 14-18, but mainly juniors and seniors in high school. We will focus on Baltimore City schools that have low test scores. Low income families with high school age students who may not be able to get the help that their children need are also part of our focus. As a tutoring company in Baltimore, we compete with a lot of other companies that have the same goals that we have. There are many

other tutoring companies in the area that are trying to appeal to the same students and parents that we are trying to reach. Part of our plan is to go to open houses and back to school nights at local schools in order to advertise our services. These are places where a lot of parents will come to see how their children are doing in school and to also seek further help for them. These are our best opportunities to let these parennn ts know about the type of tutoring that we offer.
Competition
There are many other prominent and lesser known tutoring services in the area that we are in direct competition with. These companies include: Kaplan, Newton, Huntington, Innovational Educational Programs, Frog Tutoring and Sylvan Learning Center. We also have to compete with the after school programs that the schools implement such as sports, cheerleading, yearbook clubs, etc. The reason why we are in competition with these after school programs is because they are held at the same time that we plan to offer tutoring. If the students that need extra help in school are involved in other after school programs, it will be a challenge to get them to come to our tutoring program. One of the problems that we may encounter in our market is the fact that a lot of parents are not financially able to send their kids to tutoring. This is a very strong possibility because the students that we are trying to attract to our tutoring program come from poor backgrounds in the inner city. We can combat this by offering funding provided by the government for students that come from families that cannot afford tutoring. By doing this, we will be able to accommodate a lot more students in our program.

We have implemented a lot of different services in our company that we believe will set us apart from other tutoring companies in the area. Our goal is to be able to go to the schools that the students attend to conduct the tutoring sessions. This will set us apart from other tutoring programs where the students have to go to a specified place to receive the tutoring. That can be a major problem because a lot of students don’t have transportation to get there. A lot of students have to use public transportation to get to school and it would cost them extra money to have to take public transportation to get to a tutoring site. By meeting the students at their respective schools, we eliminate this burden on the students. Another thing that College Bound Prep does that other tutoring services don’t do is, we use credible tutors, college juniors or seniors, and graduate level interns from neighboring colleges to tutor the students. This is a very smart and cost effective way to tutor the students as opposed to using retired teachers that may only be tutoring just to receive some extra money. By using college juniors and seniors seeking internships in the education field, and graduate level interns, we will be able to use people that are enthusiastic about working with students and people that are eager to do whatever is required of them.
Our company also offers incentives for students that show vast improvement in their grades. These incentives include a deduction in the rate for tutoring, as well as free school supplies and girt cards for places such as Barnes & Noble and Chegg.com where they can get books to read as well as textbooks for their college courses in the future. Part of our tutoring

program involves preparing students to take the SAT examination and taking them on college tours. There are not currently any other tutoring programs in the area that offer these services. Preparing students for college is the main way that we differ from other tutoring services in the Baltimore area. Most tutoring services focus on helping students with their students to improve their grades in their current classes, but we plan to be different by helping them in their classes now and helping them to prepare to attend college.
The main focus of College Bound Prep is to prepare high school students for college. We plan to place students that are currently struggling in their classes, on the right path and encourage them to pursue higher education. By assisting students make the choice to pursue college education; this will eventually help to improve the communities. Having more educated people in any particular area will help to decrease the poverty and eventually decrease the crime rate.

Risk & Opportunity Being that we are a new business we have to carefully weigh out our risk and opportunities. We know that in the Baltimore area there are several credible competitors such as Kaplan, Sylvan Learning Centers, and Frog Tutoring. Along with these programs universities such as John Hopkins and UMBC offer Sat Prep and tutoring for high school students. We offer a free alternative which will already be at the school ready for students to finish class. We will offer and enhanced version of the curriculum which will also focus on science. Another risk we face is the fact this year Baltimore City has cut funding to education. This limits our funding due to the fact we hope to get government and city aide to progress and grow. Thought there are budget cuts over the past four to five years the graduation rate of students in the Baltimore city school system have been on the increase. This opportunity shows us that more students are taking graduating more seriously. With this increase in graduation there has also been a rise in college applicants coming from the Baltimore area. The city of Baltimore has stated that by the year 2020 it would like to have the graduation rate to 90% for Baltimore city public schools. We intend on being the aide to help them reach that goal.

Works Cited Page http://www.schooldigger.com/go/MD/schoolrank.aspx?pagetype=bottom10&level=3 http://www.schooldigger.com/go/MD/districtrank.aspx http://www.areavibes.com/baltimore-md/employment/ http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-03-28/news/bs-ed-graduation-20110328_1_graduation-rates-baltimore-educators-percentage-points

Cited: Page http://www.schooldigger.com/go/MD/schoolrank.aspx?pagetype=bottom10&level=3 http://www.schooldigger.com/go/MD/districtrank.aspx http://www.areavibes.com/baltimore-md/employment/ http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-03-28/news/bs-ed-graduation-20110328_1_graduation-rates-baltimore-educators-percentage-points