FAQs
- What types of customers have you worked with?
By far, SAT preparation is the most requested work, and, of course, high school juniors and seniors predominate that population. My first step is ascertaining how the student has been scoring on practice exams, and finding where he or she is weakest and strongest. Almost all students hope to improve on the essay in the English section, and I have a standard technique of preparing essays before the student ever takes the actual exam. This is very possible, given the nature of the test and the questions asked repeatedly by the College Board. By researching evidence PRIOR to the test and by choosing examples that have broad and varied applications, the student learns to adapt his or her pre-written essay to any number of actual test topics. It sounds convoluted, perhaps impossible, but it works every time. I will show you how. Different students have different learning needs. I tailor lessons and assignments to remedy those deficits. Sometimes a student needs to review subject matter (a grammar rule, or a math fact), but I teach all students strategies for getting to the correct answer choice for every type of question. My goal is NOT to have the student become a math wiz or an English expert; my only goal is to maximize the student's SAT scores by guiding him or her to choose the right answer choice. The fundamental calculus is simple: fill in more correct ovals and your score improves, whether you start at the 50th or 95th percentile. Success is not easy, but current investment results in future rewards every time.
- What advice would you give a customer looking to hire a provider in your area of work?
I suggest that parents and adult students consider the tutoring experience to be one naturally and organically of short duration, intense and focused, rather than an ongoing crutch or long term relationship. Thus, the tutor is best viewed as a surgical specialist correcting a specific defect rather than a regularly relied upon family doctor. Parents should interview the tutor extensively and should trust their impressions and instancts. Most importantly, parents must understand that no tutor can or wants to be assigned the fundamental parental responsibility for overseeing a student's academic progress; rather, the tutor is best understood as a private educator whose success should be evaluated solely on the academic development his student enjoys under his guidance. Parents should understand the cost of top-end, private tutoring as nothing less than an investment in their child's future success.