UCMAS Abacus/iMaths

I found UCMAS Cambridge in a news article and as soon as I read about the wonderful couple (Naga and Laxmi Yaligar) who ran it, I had to meet them. They are kind, understanding and incredibly supportive. My daughter has not only become better at mental math but also become a more confident public speaker. As parents we are thrilled by our daughter’s advancement. We live in Kitchener but it’s definitely worth the drive. I highly recommend this particular school. Thank you very much Naga and Laxmi.Mr. and Mrs. Adasme-Da Silva

Our daughter has been attending our local UCMAS location for just over a year now. From additions to subtractions and multiplications, it made her a better student and her marks from school have certainly showed.Homework is not overwhelming but rather focused on her needs. More than anything else, she is becoming more independent and capable of doing math on her own.

I am a graduate at UCMAS Cambridge, when I first started Ucmas I was also going to Kumon in Preston as well. At Kumon I just felt invisible, they gave you your work and you had to do it people corrected it got a sticker and was given homework, if you didn't understand then well too bad. But at UCMAS I felt like an actual person. The staff are friendly and caring, you learn more because it's in classes of 8-10 students at most. I had Mrs. L as a teacher and I couldn't have asked for anything more. I was average in math at school, after a short period of time I became one of the best at mental math in my class. I was after given the choice of Kumon or UCMAS, I chose UCMAS. After 5 years of the program, and my graduation I volunteer weekly at the center. I just love it here, and without UCMAS I don't know where I would be today in math. I highly recommend this program for children 4-13. This program saved my math grades, and excel my mental capabilities and memory.

UCMAS is a great way to learn and improve math. When my daughter, Sarah first went there she was not very good at math, but when my friend Krishna Reddy referred me to UCMAS, my daughters math was great! At UCMAS you can and will learn, multiplication, division, square routes, addition, subtractions, BED-MAS, and much more. I highly recommend you to UCMAS your children's grades in math will go so high. Just like my daughter Sarah's. She has been going to UCMAS for 3-4 years. Me and my wife, Ritu have been seeing great improvements in our child. Your child gets to go to competitions, and win trophies if they do really good. my daughter Sarah won 2 trophies in her first performance, the second she didn't do so good but kept trying her best. I hope that after hearing this advice from me, you will possibly put your child or children in UCMAS!

Our daughter has been a student at UCMAS Cambridge for the past four years. We signed her up in the hopes of helping her to get ahead at school. She came excited to show us what she’d learned and hasn’t slowed down since.The teachers are enthusiastic, encouraging and worked with us to accommodate her learning disability. She looks forward to seeing her friends in class each week, and her confidence has soared after attending national competitions and receiving international certifications in abacus and mental math.As a mother who struggled with math, I am filled with pride to watch her finish her homework faster than I can grade it - without a calculator. She’ll be doing our taxes in no time! Her training at UCMAS has opened doors, allowing her to help lead her school’s math club and attend enrichment math classes at a prominent university. Not bad for a kid in grade four!Thanks, UCMAS. Anyone can teach skills, but getting students engaged and keeping them motivated is a huge achievement.

I had a very bad experience at this UCMAS location. I found the married couple running the centre to be very unprofessional and rude, and are only after money, and here is why:We signed up our son, who is in JK, in March 2018, and the husband told us that we were just in time because his group was starting the next day, which was Friday, and there were two Fridays left in March, so we paid $60 for the two classes in March. I took my son the next day; we drove from Kitchener after school. We hit some traffic on the way so we got there 5 minutes late. The husband greeted us and walked my son to the classroom, and then said out loud, “You are late today, but go ahead and take a seat”, verbatim. I was appalled by what he said and felt that that was so inappropriate. However, I didn’t say anything at that moment.When I went to pick up my son after the class was over, I didn’t find the husband there but found his wife instead. So politely and nicely, I spoke to her in private and expressed to her that I felt that what her husband said was totally inappropriate. She apologized and everything was okay. But then she said to me that they forgot to tell us that my son's group was going to start next week and not today. He was put with a very advanced group doing multiplication. At that point, I was like to myself, what do you mean your forgot? We were here just yesterday. How can you forget? This meant that my son was actually a week early and not 5 minutes late.Fast forward to next week, same issue. The group they put my son with was too advanced. It sounded like most of the kids in his group were in Grades 4 and 5, which the wife unintentionally said. And the wife told me that there was going to be an orientation and that I would get to sit in the classroom to watch my son and what they do. None of that happened and I was asked to leave the classroom.I definitely wouldn’t recommend this centre to anyone. The married couple were super rude and unprofessional and looked like they were only after money.

I am a higher level Ucmas student. I have been here for more than 4 years. I have had hard times calculating questions in the past but Ucmas has changed those problems. They've taught me how to do these complicated questions in my head which helped with getting answers faster. Like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. With the homework they give there is always time to practice your skills. Getting to the last level is a good demonstration of what an academic student can do. Being in the last level can show others that anybody can have a superhuman mind. You do questions like 4508 divided by 27 and that is not a hard question when you have Ucmas by your side.

My son and daughter are both attending UCMAS in Cambridge for the past 3 years. Since attending, their confidence in their abilities has grown with respect to their fundamental mathematical skills. In addition, they are often the first to solve questions in their regular schooling when being asked to do mental math.Both Laksmi and Naga (the owners) are invested in the growth of the children in the classroom. Having tried Kumon before, the difference is in the quality. It does not feel like they are running a business, rather they are partners in ensuring that our children have a bright future ahead of them. They make learning fun for the children and help build their confidence and desire to push themselves further. It's amazing to see how my kids don't even mind spending 2 hours in the evening once a week to go to the class - in fact, they look forward to it.Overall, I can't give enough accolades to this program and the genuine effort that Laksmi and Naga put into the students. Don't think twice about registering your kids - you will see a positive difference in them once they begin this amazing program.

The Cambridge Ucmas center is the best. I am a student at the Ucmas Cambridge center. I started the program when I was in grade 1 and I kept improving my learning skills day by day since then. Ucmas helped me improve in school a lot, all the kids in my class asked me how I am so good in math. my answer was that I go to Ucmas. After I started Ucmas I could see that my grades were improving. Whenever I got stuck on something or I wasn't understanding my instructors helped me realize and fix my mistakes. At Ucmas Cambridge my instructors are Mrs. L and Mr. N. There are many different levels,in total there are 8. The levels got harder level by level but due to the encouragement and the push from my instructors to keep on going I enhanced my learning abilities. Overall Ucmas helps me a lot. Thank you Ucmas!

We live in Guelph. We had two children enrolled in the Cambridge centre aged 8 and 12. When we joined the UCMas program our expectations of the program were as advertised on the web and we were recommended by a family friend in Mississauga. When we joined this UCMas program the owner of the institute came out as a very friendly and co-operative person. Right from the get-go we clarified to the owner that we want to be very involved in their education, if something is not working we need to be told right away and we would help to rectify the situation. There were a lot of red flags but we ignored them thinking that that is what the normal UCMas program is like. Again, at the beginning of the program we wanted to know more about how long the course takes and how the different grades are divvied up. We were given the information which was neither here nor there. During the second year our elder son even won a merit award in the international competition. However, our younger son wasn’t doing that well and we went over and talked to the owner and finally he started giving us information after more than an hour and a half of discussion. We were shocked to see that UCMas has a very well defined process and grading system and that information was never shared with us. Our younger son had lagged behind and nothing was being done to rectify the situation. At that point we gave them a notice of 2 months and told them that if we don’t see any progress that would be the end of it. Instead of progress they started bringing their daughter in to teach the classes, who to the best of my information/knowledge/belief is not a certified/qualified UCMas teacher. Even now he would not take our children out of his school and he threatened that he would continue to take payments out of my bank account.We were committed to the UCMas program in itself so we went ahead and had our kids join the Kitchener UCMas location. OH MY GOD, what a huge difference we saw at the new location. The lady (Leeza) is extremely organized, has all of the preparations done before the class, doesn’t start ten minutes late and stop ten minutes early or give long breaks in the middle. Our children are progressing very well (we have been going there for about two months) at this point we realized a few crucial differences between the two locations:1) Our older son who won the award in the previous year was enrolled in a lower category than he should have been in– that I call cheating the system by Cambridge UCMas. Giving a false sense of achievement to my son that he is doing very well where he might not have been doing very well and this is also the Cambridge center owner’s way of gaining false publicity for his institute.2) You can contact Ms. Leeza anytime, for anything and she responds within hours (compare this to the Cambridge UCMas where you would leave a message and sometimes not hear from them for weeks).3) Ms. Leeza offered to help one of my sons with some study material that they were having difficulty with over Whatsapp. Living in Guelph it is inconvenient and sometimes just painful to drive to Kitchener vs. driving to Cambridge but at least we have the satisfaction that our kids are at least getting the education that we are paying for. She (Ms. Leeza, UCMas Kitchener) has gone through painful exercises of creating flash cards and creating procedures so that your kids can get a little more time and you get a little more bang for your buck.