Tutoring For All Ages

I get calls every year from parents who want their children to start studying as soon as possible for their college entrance examinations. Occasionally, I also come across an exceptionally motivated student who is willing to spend years studying and practicing for the SAT. Since nowadays most sophomores take the PSAT as a kind of rehearsal for the real thing the following year, many of those assiduous students feel their 10th-grade PSAT is a natural place to start.

Recently, a sophomore from Ohio posted a question to this effect on the Yahoo! Answers boards. Here is what I wrote in response:
(more…)

Interview fashion is one of the most frequently-asked questions I get as a tutor of both college and prep school hopefuls. I’m not sure whether it’s because many of my students are used to worrying about clothing choices or because they just want every detail of the admissions process to be perfect, but I get so many questions about the interview that it seems prudent to write down a few answers here.

Silly fashion shows aside, my advice about interview attire is very simple: be yourself, and show respect.

(more…)

So, it’s the middle of December, and you’ve got a pile of blank applications staring you in the face. All that mostly-white paper is begging you for answers, and you aren’t really sure what you’re going to say. The pressure to dazzle is overwhelming, and you sit for hours at your computer, staring at a blank screen with a blinking cursor. How to break this applicant’s block?

Conventional wisdom for breaking writer’s block is to just write something, anything, and keep writing until the creative juices are flowing and the real answers you seek come naturally. But we’ve learned over the years to question this wisdom, or at least to recognize that there are other ways to really get started, ways that work better for some students.  (more…)

Around this time of year, we start getting a lot of questions about the January SAT, mostly from high-school juniors. Should I take it? Should I wait? My school is making me take it and is that okay?

Quite honestly, it’s a bit of an awkward time to take the test. Some students haven’t been exposed to all the material they’ll need to know for the test by January of their junior year. For those students, it might be better to wait until the spring or even next fall to take the test.

But for those students who have covered the math on the test and are relatively confident in their verbal skills, the idea of getting the test over with in January is quite alluring.

Be careful, though, about over-preparing for this test. Unless you are a very rare person, you will probably end up taking the test again, perhaps more than once. So you will end up preparing for the test several times. And it is possible to overdo it and burn out. The last thing you need is to take the test again and have your score go down because your performance peaked too early.

If you do decide to take the January test as a junior, we generally recommend that you only do some light preparation specific to standardized tests. If you want to do some intense studying over the holidays, we recommend that you do two things: work on your vocab, and read. Reading and improving your vocabulary are the most important things you can do to improve your verbal test scores.

Need some suggestions? Check this list.

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? (more…)