About Me, My Background, and My History in Test Prep
My recent feature on FOX Business
I've been in the test prep industry my entire professional career. Below, you'll find a description of my background and history as an educator. Click the highlighted links if you're looking to learn about my methods and tutoring policies.
In 2004, as a student at Phillips Andover Academy, I woke up to a horrible PSAT score. My mother sent me to 2 different SAT tutoring classes, but nothing "stuck." Finally, in desperation, she hired an extremely talented 1-on-1 tutor - someone with the teaching skills necessary to truly connect with me. When I took the real SAT, I ended up with a 99th percentile SAT score, and ended up at Columbia University. I've been a believer in one-on-one test prep ever since.
At Columbia, I immediately started working for one of the large, well-known SAT prep firms. However, despite the quality of their training, I quit within weeks of working with them - the inflexibility of their curriculum and teaching methods (and the bored look on my classroom students' faces) reminded me of precisely why I didn't enjoy my own classroom SAT experience.
By the start of my sophomore year, I was already tutoring students all over New York City one-on-one, the way that worked for me, and that I believe works best for any form of instruction. Over the course of the next 18 months, I worked with over 40 students 1-on-1, refining my teaching methods and SAT curriculum.
The start of my tutoring firm: My Junior year at Columbia, after taking some courses at Columbia Business School, I decided to launch my own tutoring firm. Metropolitan Tutors, later renamed to My Ivy Leaguer, was born. From 2008 through 2010, I hired and trained over 150 tutors to help students all over New York City to train for their SATs and ACTs. My time was split between crafting curriculum, training my tutors, helping my clients, and working with my own 1-on-1 clients to retain and improve my own SAT and ACT tutoring skills. During this time, I crafted one of the most successful SAT tutoring curriculums ever built (now The Green SAT System). However, after nearly three years of running My Ivy Leaguer, I came to a sudden realization: the one thing I truly loved about my job was tutoring the SAT 1-on-1. It's what I enjoyed most, and what I was best at. I sold the firm to a competing tutoring company and re-launched my private practice.
The re-launch of my private practice: In early 2011, I launched NewYorksBestSATtutor.com, re-focusing on my own private practice. Over the next year, I dedicated myself to doing nothing but tutoring 1-on-1, working with nearly 80 students that year. When I wasn't tutoring, I was spending all my time refining my curriculum, my strategies, and my tactics, using each student to observe the effects of my methods and improve them further. That year, my average student score improvement rose from ~290 points to over 350 points. I was thrilled with the progress, but there was one problem: my methods were limited to the few people I had the time to tutor 1-on-1. Because I was so busy, it took years to solve this problem. However, finally, in 2013, I finally found a way to give more "scale" to my knowledge and methods.
The Launch of the Green SAT System: In 2013, I worked with a team of programmers, designers, and curriculum efforts to turn my entire body of work into The Green SAT System. After working with over 325 students, I finally felt comfortable releasing my best strategies, tactics, and training procedures into an online, step-by-step program that any student could use, anywhere in the world, to improve his or her SAT scores. The average user of my software has an improvement of over 380 points, and, despite offering a 100%, no-questions-asked refund guarantee, fewer than 2% of my buyers have ever asked for a refund. Even more exciting - the students who used my online system, then worked with me personally, had an average score improvement of over 600 points, and my current students are improving by well over 430 points on average! Working on the software has helped me to hone my own personal tutoring skills by giving me more data points to work with, and my personal tutoring practice allows me to continue improving the software.
The Launch of the Green ACT System: After the success of the Green SAT System, many of my clients and subscribers started asking me when I'd turn my ACT curriculum into a similar program. After the enormous amount of effort expended on launching the Green SAT System, it took a while to regain my energy - but the crowd had spoken! In June of 2014, I launched the Green ACT System as well, and thus far, the results have been equally as impressive: the average user is improving by over 5 points! Also, now that I have both of my key tests covered, I can use both programs to improve the other - it's beautiful when all of your projects "play nice."
Moving Forward: Recently, I've been added to the board of CFY, an educational charity dedicated to providing the technology, training, and curriculum necessary to educate our nation's brightest students. I've also been offering my software free of charge to Eric Eisner's Young Eisner Scholars, another brilliant charity devoted to helping in-need students accomplish their educational goals. I've been covered in The New York Times, Slate, The Washington Post, FOX Business, Business Insider, CNN, The Robb Report, and Peterson's for my ability to raise my students' SAT scores, and it's an exciting time to be alive!
I continue to refine my training methods every day, and I'm thrilled that so many students are now benefitting from my methods.
If you'd like to work with me personally, please click the "Book Me" button below. You can also learn about my methods and training techniques and online courses.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read my lengthy autobiography!
In 2004, as a student at Phillips Andover Academy, I woke up to a horrible PSAT score. My mother sent me to 2 different SAT tutoring classes, but nothing "stuck." Finally, in desperation, she hired an extremely talented 1-on-1 tutor - someone with the teaching skills necessary to truly connect with me. When I took the real SAT, I ended up with a 99th percentile SAT score, and ended up at Columbia University. I've been a believer in one-on-one test prep ever since.
At Columbia, I immediately started working for one of the large, well-known SAT prep firms. However, despite the quality of their training, I quit within weeks of working with them - the inflexibility of their curriculum and teaching methods (and the bored look on my classroom students' faces) reminded me of precisely why I didn't enjoy my own classroom SAT experience.
By the start of my sophomore year, I was already tutoring students all over New York City one-on-one, the way that worked for me, and that I believe works best for any form of instruction. Over the course of the next 18 months, I worked with over 40 students 1-on-1, refining my teaching methods and SAT curriculum.
The start of my tutoring firm: My Junior year at Columbia, after taking some courses at Columbia Business School, I decided to launch my own tutoring firm. Metropolitan Tutors, later renamed to My Ivy Leaguer, was born. From 2008 through 2010, I hired and trained over 150 tutors to help students all over New York City to train for their SATs and ACTs. My time was split between crafting curriculum, training my tutors, helping my clients, and working with my own 1-on-1 clients to retain and improve my own SAT and ACT tutoring skills. During this time, I crafted one of the most successful SAT tutoring curriculums ever built (now The Green SAT System). However, after nearly three years of running My Ivy Leaguer, I came to a sudden realization: the one thing I truly loved about my job was tutoring the SAT 1-on-1. It's what I enjoyed most, and what I was best at. I sold the firm to a competing tutoring company and re-launched my private practice.
The re-launch of my private practice: In early 2011, I launched NewYorksBestSATtutor.com, re-focusing on my own private practice. Over the next year, I dedicated myself to doing nothing but tutoring 1-on-1, working with nearly 80 students that year. When I wasn't tutoring, I was spending all my time refining my curriculum, my strategies, and my tactics, using each student to observe the effects of my methods and improve them further. That year, my average student score improvement rose from ~290 points to over 350 points. I was thrilled with the progress, but there was one problem: my methods were limited to the few people I had the time to tutor 1-on-1. Because I was so busy, it took years to solve this problem. However, finally, in 2013, I finally found a way to give more "scale" to my knowledge and methods.
The Launch of the Green SAT System: In 2013, I worked with a team of programmers, designers, and curriculum efforts to turn my entire body of work into The Green SAT System. After working with over 325 students, I finally felt comfortable releasing my best strategies, tactics, and training procedures into an online, step-by-step program that any student could use, anywhere in the world, to improve his or her SAT scores. The average user of my software has an improvement of over 380 points, and, despite offering a 100%, no-questions-asked refund guarantee, fewer than 2% of my buyers have ever asked for a refund. Even more exciting - the students who used my online system, then worked with me personally, had an average score improvement of over 600 points, and my current students are improving by well over 430 points on average! Working on the software has helped me to hone my own personal tutoring skills by giving me more data points to work with, and my personal tutoring practice allows me to continue improving the software.
The Launch of the Green ACT System: After the success of the Green SAT System, many of my clients and subscribers started asking me when I'd turn my ACT curriculum into a similar program. After the enormous amount of effort expended on launching the Green SAT System, it took a while to regain my energy - but the crowd had spoken! In June of 2014, I launched the Green ACT System as well, and thus far, the results have been equally as impressive: the average user is improving by over 5 points! Also, now that I have both of my key tests covered, I can use both programs to improve the other - it's beautiful when all of your projects "play nice."
Moving Forward: Recently, I've been added to the board of CFY, an educational charity dedicated to providing the technology, training, and curriculum necessary to educate our nation's brightest students. I've also been offering my software free of charge to Eric Eisner's Young Eisner Scholars, another brilliant charity devoted to helping in-need students accomplish their educational goals. I've been covered in The New York Times, Slate, The Washington Post, FOX Business, Business Insider, CNN, The Robb Report, and Peterson's for my ability to raise my students' SAT scores, and it's an exciting time to be alive!
I continue to refine my training methods every day, and I'm thrilled that so many students are now benefitting from my methods.
If you'd like to work with me personally, please click the "Book Me" button below. You can also learn about my methods and training techniques and online courses.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read my lengthy autobiography!