Strategy

My tutoring strategy is backed by cognitive science and continuous data and feedback from my students. Here is what works:

Representative Problems

The best way to prepare for the SAT is to take the SAT.

In general, tests don’t only serve as tools for assessment, but also as tools for learning. Studies consistently find testing to be the best form of studying for long-term retention, since it demands greater attention than textbooks, articles, or videos (even my own).

But not all practice problems are created equal. Studies have also proven the importance of transfer-appropriate processing, which states that you should study in the same way that you’ll be tested. Therefore, you want to solve problems that are either written by College Board, or are very closely related to official problems.

Official resources include the 6 Bluebook practice tests, 6 Linear practice tests, and the SAT Question Bank. CollegePanda’s questions are not official but closely resemble official problems.

Talking Through Your Work

In a tutoring session, when reviewing a problem the student missed, I start off by asking the student how they approached the problem.

If they weren’t even sure where to begin, we begin by defining terms. I may ask “when are exponential functions used?” or “what makes triangles similar?” to encourage students to think conceptually about the problem rather than procedurally.

If the student did attempt the problem, we walk through their work until we reach the step that led them to the wrong answer. Our focus is not on how to solve the problem correctly, but rather how to think about the problem correctly. It’s a conversation, not a lecture.

Concepts First

Especially on the DSAT, problems are becoming increasingly conceptual, so the focus of my tutoring is always on building understanding, not memorization.

And even when memorization is necessary, the best way to memorize formulas is to understand where they come from. For example, students often forget the distance formula and the circle formula, but these formulas are easy to remember if you learn that they’re just subtle rewritings of the pythagorean theorem!

I approach concepts from multiple angles. We may look at a concept algebraically, graphically, and in applications, until it finally clicks. The goal is that the student understands a concept well enough to teach it themselves.

Spaced Repetition

According to Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve and modern replications, people forget around 70% of learned material after a week.

To mitigate this, my students review each session’s problems at least 5 days after the session, using the framework below.

Not only are student teaching themselves the problems, but also creating variations of problems. This encourages lateral thinking, as students must think creatively about unfamiliar ways that CollegeBoard might test familiar concepts.

Optimization

Often times, there are many ways to solve an SAT problem, but only one optimal approach. An optimal approach is not necessarily the fastest, but rather the most accurate for the time allotted. For graphing problems, this usually involves DESMOS.

Optimizing your score also means avoiding small mistakes. It is technically possible to consistently get 800s on every test. You just need the right strategies to catch mistakes as you make them.

As students get close to a perfect score, we prioritize deep knowledge and quick creative thinking.

And finally, at any score level, I prescribe bigger picture test-taking strategies to experiment with while taking practice tests. Changing up time constraints, pacing, environment, or just mentality, can give unexpected insights about how to test better.