I’ve been working with middle and high school students on high stakes standardized tests for 26 years. How did I find my way into this? What were the challenges along the journey, and what sustains me? What insights have I come up with, and where do I see this going? 

I was always a good student. I graduated 6th in my high school class and was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania, where I was recruited by the swim coach. I majored in French (I studied abroad for one semester) and minored in Theater, all the while doing my pre-med courses, acting in some plays, and swimming on the team, where I earned Freshman of the Year. Upon graduation, I was Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, and ready to start medical school at the University of South Florida. 

However, my life did not move in a straight line from there…

Before attending medical school, I decided to take a year off. I travelled to France where I worked as a waiter during the summer of 1999, then to Israel where I lived on a Kibbutz for 10 months, and finally to India where i backpacked for 7 weeks. 

I returned to the US and began my medical studies. It quickly became clear to me that the only specialty that attracted me was Psychiatry. I was very interested in the mind and human behavior. After 2 years of medical study I transitioned to a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology at The Pacifica Graduate Institute in Southern California. 

It was at this time that I began my test prep work. I was hired by a local Tampa expert who was all the rage. His name was Ed Black and I could tell you some stories that would make you laugh or cringe, but however strange the man was, he was the top tutor in the Tampa Bay area and all the parents were clamoring to get on his schedule. I quickly became his second in command, and for four years I drove around the Greater Bay area in my green Nissan, going from home to home to tutor teens. I felt like the family doctor in the old days, except instead of a briefcase I carried with me a big old red SAT book.

After I received my MA, I moved to NYC. I had been hired by a top Manhattan firm, and of course, where else does one move with dreams of becoming a professional actor? 

I spent four years working at Veritas, and I learned priceless lessons in the most competitive tutoring market in the country. (For more on my time with Veritas, see my Letter to Parents). 

In 2010 I decided to start my own company. I had already been tutoring big standardized tests for 9 years. Working as an employee of another company, I had to fit myself into their methodology. Now I was free to work the way I wanted to, to develop my own methods, which I continue to refine and update to this day. 

Every time I sit down with a student, I know that I am encountering a whole human being. Whatever subject I am teaching, whether it be Advanced Algebra on the SAT or ACT Grammar, SSAT Analogies or Reading Comprehension for a generation that is very reading challenged, I am carrying all of myself into the session: My decades of tutoring, my degree in Counseling, my younger years as a competitive athlete, my ongoing experiences acting on Stage and TV, and more recently as a produced playwright. 

The pressures on all of us have certainly increased over the years. I believe that all of the experiences I have had along the path continue to sustain me and give me the confidence to project calmness and focus and, hopefully, to share that basic competence and sanity with my students and their parents as they navigate their own academic roads. 

And so to answer the question I posed at the start of this little note: Why do I keep doing this? What sustains me? I could not have continued doing test prep for 26 years if I didn’t truly enjoy it. In particular, I really like working with this particular age group. Teens are at that special age when they are no longer kids but not yet adults. They are finding their way toward personal responsibility, figuring out what works for them as well as what they like. How lucky I am to meet them at this moment of their lives and help them achieve a very concrete and meaningful goal that requires them to bring their full intelligence and full efforts to the table!

Hi, I’m Andrew.