I am a current industrial engineering student at Northwestern University (ranked 9th in the US by US News and in the top 30 universities worldwide by most rankings). I scored 1590/1600 on the SAT (a score above 1550 is typically in the top 1% of test-takers), a 1500/1520 on the PSAT (a preliminary version of the SAT for which I achieved National Merit Finalist, an achievement only 15,000 students from each grade in the US achieve), and 36s on official ACT tests (a perfect score). I have worked as a standardized test tutor for the past 4 years, freelance, at small companies in the US, and at larger companies like Kaplan and PrepExpert. I have helped dozens of students achieve excellent results, including an improvement from 1200/1600 to 1490/1600 on the SAT over the course of 15 hours of tutoring and from 32/36 to 36/36 on the ACT after 20 hours of tutoring. I have worked as a college admissions consultant for the past 2 years and have helped students with applications that have gotten them admitted into the top 20 universities in the US, including Northwestern University, UCLA and Cornell University. I believe that there are no “bad test takers” and that anyone can succeed with sufficient understanding of their exam. I work to not only teach the content on standardized tests but to make sure students understand how the test works and find strategies for the student. For any given question, I both explain why the right answer is correct and offer several approaches that make it easier and faster to find. I try to give my students a “toolbox” of strategies for them to employ so that they never feel lost on a given question.

Prior to the SAT’s shift toward digital testing, I’d instructed over 100 students on all sections of not only the SAT, ACT, and PSAT, but also the HSPT, ISEE, and Chicago Selective Enrollment exam, primarily online but also in person. For the SAT and ACT (my specialties), I’d completed the 15 most recent officially released exams of each test and prepared explanations for my students. I knew the tests inside and out and had developed dozens of strategies for their questions. In addition to having perfect knowledge of and ability to teach the content on each exam, I’ve always been very gifted at standardized tests specifically. I’ve had an ability to see the right answer based purely on phrasing and context clues, without needing to deeply analyze the problem. Over the course of my years working with students, I’ve been able to identify and teach various red and green flags in questions that allow the test-taker to immediately and accurately eliminate or home in on answer choices. Due to my international background, I had several international students who had their first digital SAT in March 2023, a year earlier than domestic students. Wanting to teach them to the best of my ability and capitalize on this shift, I went through all of College Board's official practice materials several times, in addition to unofficial material from Manhattan Review, Kaplan, and others. I identified new trends on the digital SAT, was able to rework past (paper) official problems as supplementary material, and devise strategies for the exam. Though my educational background in regard to mathematics and English may be less impressive than some other tutors, I’m confident that for a given problem (especially in sections other than mathematics), none would be able to offer a student as in-depth of an explanation for a missed question with as many varied, consistent strategies to find the correct answer as I could.