Ben Purcell has more than 11 years of experience helping students raise their SAT/ACT exam scores and crafting application-enhancing college essays, working both independently and for major national/regional tutoring companies.

His students have gone on to win major scholarships and attend Ivy League schools. For 5 years, he lived and worked in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago, teaching test prep in private and public schools and working as a teaching/research assistant to a history department chair at Northwestern University. Ben is currently in his 6th year as a social studies teacher at Simon Youth Graduation Academy, an alternative high school within Indianapolis Public Schools for students facing challenging circumstances. He was awarded his school’s Teacher of the Year in 2022, 2023, and 2025 and was the only high school teacher selected as a district finalist in 2025. In 2024, he was awarded the IPS Change Makers Grant to improve literacy at his school and the Eli Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship Grant to travel to Greece and Turkey to study the impact of Ancient Greece on modern western education.

Ben graduated cum laude with a Bachelor’s Degree in History from the Honors College at Ball State University and was granted the school’s prestigious Whitinger Scholarship, awarded to only 10 students, for all four undergraduate years. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Teaching from Marian University.

In his free time, Ben enjoys reading about history, going on road trips, and spending time with his wife, Jenny, who is also the Office Manager at Step by Step Academics. He is expecting his first child in the fall.