Eric MacDonald, 16, shook his head, stumped by the equation before him and three other students in the school’s math club. He took an orange rag dinged with marker stains and wiped the desk to make room for another challenge.
Math isn’t MacDonald’s primary passion. But the skills he hones in the club do tie into his love for computer science.
And the hit app he’s created shows it may be paying off.
MacDonald, a sophomore at the Tampa charter school, is the creator of Aceit, a digital SAT prep app.
Although he has never taken the SAT, MacDonald developed and released Aceit in November after seeing a gap in the market.
“Current SAT study tools online don’t really provide the necessary resources that could actually help students grow,” he said. “SAT books are pretty bad and not very adaptive. SAT tutors sometimes have a group of five to 10 students they teach and can’t get an exact pinpoint on where you are.”
The cost of preparing for the SAT was also top of mind for him. According to a recent study, a majority of families spend $1,500 to more than $6,000 for SAT preparation, while some tutors can exceed $12,000.
His app, though, follows a “freemium” model, offering a free version and a premium version for $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year.
Frank Gilmore, Patel High’s math and computer science facilitator and math club sponsor, said that while there are many resources out there, paying “top dollar” is the normal.
“This app being free gives more opportunity for lower-income families, lower-income kids (to) at least get their foot in the door, where they might not be able to because of a paywall,” Gilmore said.
The lower a family’s median income, the lower the student’s SAT score, according to 2025 figures from College Board, the organization that administers the test. The total score for students with the lowest family income averages 264 points below those from the opposite side of the spectrum, a nearly 26 percent difference.
“Giving them a free resource can really let these kids who would excel (and) might be our next doctors or our next lawyers or our next teachers or next whatevers, get to those spots, or at least, get their foot in the door,” Gilmore said.
MacDonald created the outline to his app using a collaborative interface design tool. Once done, he translated his visual conception into code and added back-end information, such as user signups (like when you sign into applications with your Google account).
This is where MacDonald turned to ChatGPT. The AI program worked with the code he created after prompting it to behave like “the world’s best SAT tutor,” and built on algorithms gathered by user data collected when participants install the app, such as previous SAT scores and future SAT goals. He also added an AI chatbot to help with on-the-fly learning.
”Once you finish adding it, it gives users a rundown of questions you missed, how you lacked and how you could use your time better,” MacDonald said. “All this comes together to provide questions that actually adapt to the user and help them grow.”
THE PLIGHT TO ACEIT
Aceit was not the start of MacDonald’s coding journey. That dates back to a Nintendo Wii memory card his friend brought over when he was 9.
The card, loaded with “Mario cheats” to get every power up to finish a particular game with ease, was the catalyst that sparked his interest in game development.
“It kind of fascinated me,” he said. “It kind of all burgeoned in from there.”
Roblox game development was his next self-imposed challenge, before his parents realized his skills needed watering.
“It really blew my mind when he started developing these games on Mario,” said his father Paul MacDonald, a cybersecurity consultant. “Then my wife came across theCoderSchool, and (it) seemed like that was right up his alley.”
At the New Tampa after-school program, MacDonald started learning web application development, competed in high school competitions and even built websites for local businesses before he was 13.
He published his first app, an AI image and video generator, in late 2024, followed by another that optimized PDFs for smartwatches and another that serves as a stubborn alarm clock.
Aceit is his fourth app, and his most successful to date. With more than 10,000 downloads and 150 five-star reviews, the app has become popular with his classmates.
Mason Moore, a sophomore at Patel and math club member, said his PSAT score went up about 50 points after using Aceit consistently.
“It’s surprisingly easy to use,” Moore, 16, said. “It’s definitely catered towards teenagers.”
When the app launched, Eric asked teachers to help spread the word, and even offered schoolmates the premium version for free.
“He doesn’t get any money from anyone at Patel, and I feel like that was a really cool thing for him to do,” Moore said. “Instead of it just being a cash grab, he is genuinely interested in helping out the kids that go to Patel.”
Entrepreneurship is MacDonald’s long-term goal, he said, after hopefully getting into a top 20 university. He said working for another company “doesn’t really fit what he believes in.”
The rise of AI does scare the young coder, but he’s excited about the new opportunities there may be to manage it, which he thinks he will be qualified to do.
“I think what I love about him and this app is that I don’t think many others could do it,” said Gilmore, his teacher. “You can’t just not have the foundational layers to computer science and then make up some prompts to the AI ... If you don’t have that foundational layer, then you cannot fake your way into an app like this.”
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