Location: London, UK
Starting SAT Score: 530M 590V
Final SAT Score: 650M, 730V
College: Princeton
Alex ranks as one of my best and most enthusiastic students of all time. The success of online SAT tutoring depends in large part on the level of motivation and focus of the student, and because Alex was so committed and so motivated, the online interaction that we had worked as brilliantly as it possibly could. Living in London, he knew very little about the SAT when we started the process, but he came to enjoy the test and studying for it, something that can certainly not be said for most students. Because he is extremely intelligent, his initial diagnostic was quite good, especially given that he really had no idea what he was throwing himself into. So that left slightly less room for improvement, but his enthusiasm and hard work paid off and he ultimately achieved a great score.
Alex is naturally more verbally inclined, so we spent a lot of time on Math. Like most students, he tended to think of the questions as Math questions not thinking or reasoning questions. This misjudgment was probably exacerbated by the British schools system in which he was educated, so we spent a lot of time getting him to approach the questions differently. He also had some content weaknesses, so that is something that we dealt with both inside and outside of the sessions.
On Alex’s first attempt at the SAT, he unfortunately fell far short of what he was capable of and of what he had scored on most practice tests. Sadly this extremely common, which is why so many students take the SAT and ACT multiple times. Even on his second try Alex did much better but still not quite as well as he could have so he ended up taking it three times and, again like many test takers, third time was a charm. In the end I expected that his Reading score would be higher because he really excelled at reading comprehension and had a very mature intellect, but in the end he was thrilled with the fantastic scores that he achieved and never thought that he would have the kind of increase that he ultimately had.