Tutoring For All Ages

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.

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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…)

We recently got a panicked e-mail from a parent:

Mary [name changed] is really upset by her scores. She always gets grades at the top of her class, but she got a 68% overall on the SSAT. How bad is this?

It’s such a common question that we thought we’d print it here. We’ve covered it before: for a detailed description, check our post entitled “What’s a good SSAT/ISEE score?”

Don’t worry, Mary: you didn’t fail the test. Of course there’s room to improve, but you’re well above the average score among other students like you. So you’re above average even for the good students!

The results are in, and this year’s SSAT students have done exceptionally well. We’ve seen score increases across the board. Some of our students succeeded in nudging their scores up into the 90′s, and others have improved their scores by double-digit percentiles. One student’s overall percentile went up by over 40 points, and we had two perfect verbal scores! I guess we must be doing something right, but most of the credit is certainly due to those students’ diligent work preparing for the test. Congratulations to all of you, and best of luck with this year’s admissions!

Online resources for the SAT and PSAT abound, but free, easy-to-access help for students taking the SSAT and ISEE is not as readily available. To help remedy this, we have launched a Podcast devoted to helping students improve their SSAT and ISEE scores.

The podcast, entitled “SSAT and ISEE Lessons from Abacus,” is listed on iTunes: subscribe by clicking here. If you do not have iTunes or if that link does not work, you can manually subscribe to the URL
http://www.abacuslearning.com/podcast/SSAT_ISEE_podcast.rss .

It is our hope that through this podcast we will be able to help students we would not otherwise meet due to geographical or budgetary concerns. However, if you live in Southern California and would like to arrange a meeting or if you would like to arrange a long-distance phone/video session, please contact us so that we can arrange a time. Or, contact us if you have a question that you’d like our next podcast to answer!