Tutoring For All Ages

Abacus has been helping students learn to love learning since 2001. Whether you're looking for general subject tutoring, standardized test prep, or both, look no further.

Below you will find news updates as well as articles on test preparation and general study tips. To the right, browse our offerings and other information, like our two Word of the Day feeds.

And if you have any questions, please feel free to use the page at right to contact us.

This time of year, most high school students are glancing impatiently at their calendars, looking forward to a well-earned summer vacation.

But there are still hurdles to clear before the summer starts in earnest. AP tests are ongoing and require intense study. SAT scores from the May test are due back soon, and there’s still another test before the summer break. So how best to get through this time, when all you want to do is pack away your textbooks and sleep in until noon? Read the rest of this entry »

Mid-April is a stressful time for adults and teenagers alike.  Parents are digging up receipts and tax forms, and seniors in high school are obsessively checking their mailboxes and online admissions pages.

Here at Abacus, we just have to sit and wait for the news to come in.  It looks like it’s going to be a good year for our students.  Their SAT scores increased by an average of 100 points, and so far they’ve been accepted to Georgetown, GW, Emory, Northwestern, and Dartmouth.  Congratulations — you know who you are! And for those of our students waiting for envelopes, we’re keeping our fingers crossed and we know there will be good news in the near future.

We’re coming into a bit of a “dead time” for the SSAT and ISEE. Most students take these tests in the fall and early winter, and that seems very far away right about now.

Still, there are some relatively easy things that you can do to prepare yourself for the test, if you’re planning to take it next fall. If you start them now, you’ll be practically an expert by the time you actually take the test! Read the rest of this entry »

This time of year, one of our most frequently-asked questions is, “My student is already taking the SAT. Should s/he take the ACT as well? Or instead?” Our answer is that we evaluate each student individually, making recommendations based on their own strengths and weaknesses, but we also thought we’d answer the question more generally here.

First, the tests are in many ways “the same, but different.” They cover mostly the same material, but have different approaches. The math on the ACT can be a bit harder, but the questions are typically more straightforward — meaning, fewer tricks than the SAT. The reading comprehension section is more predictable on the ACT, but not necessarily easier. The “English” section on the ACT is very similar to the multiple-choice “Writing” sections on the SAT. And the ACT’s essay is optional and not included in the composite score, though it is about the same length as the SAT essay.

But that’s where the similarities end. Read the rest of this entry »

A student at an Ivy League university is taking a final exam in an advanced Astrophysics course. She reads a problem similar to the following:

What is the mean free path of a photon through a cloud with optical depth T = 1, electron number density D = 10¹⁶ cm^-3, and scattering cross-section s = 0.6 ×10^-24 cm²?

A sense of panic comes over her as she realizes that, for all her studying, she has no idea how to do this problem. She reads it once more and notes that if she just multiplies the numbers together and takes the reciprocal, the units work out so that the answer has the unit of length, which is what she knows the unit of the answer should be. Knowing that time is running out and she still has to do other problems on the final, she multiplies the numbers (showing her work) and writes down the answer.

Two weeks later, she gets her final exam back and sees that she earned full credit for the problem.

The moral of the story: units are a powerful problem-solving tool. Use them. Units are your friend.