need help T_T

[kutu_suci]

what worked for them can help you get into the college of your choice

im a little bit confused with this sentence
1.) does the "worked" represent adjective ? and if it's an adjective, why it doesn't use "to be"
2.) is it "verb" ? if it's a verb why the "work" is in past tense and the rest are in present tense ? can i use it like this : what work for them can help you get . . . do they have different meaning ?

[Nina01]

what worked for them can help you get into the college of your choice . This means what worked for them in the past can help you in the present.

im a little bit confused with this sentence
1.) does the "worked" represent adjective ? and if it's an adjective, why it doesn't use "to be"
2.) is it "verb" ? if it's a verb why the "work" is in past tense and the rest are in present tense ? can i use it like this : what work for them can help you get . . . do they have different meaning ? close. you can say: what works for them can help you...

What worked for them means in the past like a month or year ago.

What works for them: means what works in the present

[aggelos]

No, you can't use it like this.

'What worked for them' means '(all) the thing(s)/way(s) that helped them succeed'. So 'worked' is a verb in the past tense. It is in the past tense because this happened in the past. 'Can' is in the present tense because it speaks about the future.

Note that 'what works for them...' would mean that there's something that still helps them succeed every time they try.

By the way, 'what' here is not a question word, it's a relative pronoun meaning 'that which' (also explained above).