With years of experience, I have been striving to create the ideal online tutoring experience for my students. This resulted in numerous happy students and great exam scores. On this page, I will summarize the reasons why I think it is a great idea to prepare for your AP exams with my help.
(After I created this page, I created another one specifically for testimonials. If you’re more interested in reading testimonials, feel free to explore this page first.)
(The content of the video below is almost identical to the content of the article on this page. You may prefer to watch the video or read the page. But if you do both, it may feel a bit repetitive.)
Reason #1: Feedback from Hundreds of Other Students
I have accumulated plenty of positive reviews on various online tutoring marketplaces (If you’d like to see links to my profile pages on those marketplaces, you can drop me an email or text/WhatsApp message.) All these 5-star reviews are from students like you, who found my online tutoring effective.
In addition, I taught various physics classes for many semesters at UC Berkeley. At the end of my first semester of teaching, I got an outstanding instructor award (A one-time award given to top graduate student instructors based on the end-of-semester reviews from students). Note that the students who gave this encouraging feedback that led to the award were not a random group of students: They were some of the top STEM undergraduates in the US pursuing their degrees at UC Berkeley.
I think this is the most compelling argument in favor of the effectiveness of my tutoring: Hundreds of students loved it and found it helpful.
Reason #2: I am a Tutor and an Exam Prep Coach
Public perception of tutoring sometimes involves merely the tutor solving the problems the student is struggling with, and that’s all. Proper tutoring provides much more. My goal is not only solving the problems you could not solve, rather, it is to help you learn the topics and eventually get a great score on your AP exam. To achieve this goal, we will holistically use any tools available in our belt.
If a student is interested in preparing for the AP exams together, then:
- I share advice and send guides on how she can effectively study herself.
- I provide resources for exam prep (Videos, textbooks, etc). In addition to classic homework problems, I assign online tests and quizzes, some of which I create myself. I track their results to gauge the student’s understanding of individual topics.
- I share exam-specific advice and guide the student about what to study and when.
In essence, I assume the role of a friend/older brother who is genuinely devoted to helping you succeed, by using any means available.
Of course, some students are only interested in getting the problems they struggle with solved, and not more. Needless to say, I provide this narrower type of tutoring as well. But if you are interested in the “full exam prep experience” I will be more than happy to coach you in your AP prep journey as explained above.
Reason #3: I Utilize Technology to Provide a Great Tutoring Experience
As a full-time online tutor, I am always looking for ways to improve the tutoring I provide. Over the years, I crafted a great online tutoring setup both in terms of hardware and software.
- I write my notes using a drawing tablet. Then I convert all my session notes to PDFs and send them. Everything I write during a session turns into a permanent PDF, and nothing gets lost. You can see some sample screenshots from my notes below, click on them to enlarge. As you can see, I can handwrite, copy materials from textbooks, type text, etc to create notes with rich content.
- Many in the education industry think that for instructional videos, audio quality is even more important than video quality (Source). I use a studio-grade microphone. In a typical session, I am looking at three screens. If the students prefer to keep their video on (which is optional), I pin their video on one of the screens to track their facial expressions. This allows me to figure out if a student looks confused or bored, and I can offer help in real-time. This is as close as we can get to in-person tutoring with the technology available today.
I won’t explain all the tech I use in my sessions because I don’t want my article to sound like a nerdy tech article. Still, let me briefly mention some of the software I utilize:
- I use plenty of premium software in my tutoring to provide the best learning experience. Wolfram Mathematica is great when teaching both calculus and physics. My subscription to Adobe creative cloud helps me create great notes and exercises. My Calendly subscription allows my students to book sessions without back-and-forth messaging with me, and so on.
To recap, I am always looking for ways to provide a better online tutoring experience. My effective use of technology in terms of both hardware and software is one of the reasons many students find my tutoring 5-star.
Reason #4: I am a Full-Time Online Tutor
I am a full-time online tutor, so I design my life by prioritizing the tutoring of my students.
- I am available to tutor six days a week. My off day is Friday, the day on which the students are least interested in doing sessions.
- I arrange my travel or vacation schedule based on my students’ schedules. If I travel, it most likely happens over the Christmas break or after the AP exams. This way we ensure that your tutor does not disappear at a critical time of the year.
I do some academic stuff as well, but I do it on my own time. Thus formally the only professional obligation I have in my life is my tutoring, and naturally it gets the top priority.
Reason #5: Online Tutors are (Technically) Replaceable
This next reason is good news for students and good online tutors, but bad news for not-so-good online tutors. In a sense, you are at the same distance from any online tutor on the planet. You Google “AP online tutor” and immediately find thousands of people to potentially study with. And typically, online tutoring sessions are pay-as-you-go.
If you decide to study with me, you won’t be making any long-term financial commitments or bulk payments. You will only pay for the sessions that we did up to that point. Thus, if for some reason your experience differs from my other students’ experiences in a negative way and you decide that it was not a good match, you can simply change to another online tutor.
I admit that changing tutors mid-year is not completely without consequences. There is limited time until the exam and who you study with matters. But my point is, changing tutors (if needed) is a process that is way easier compared to, say, changing colleges or school teachers. Thus you can have peace of mind when testing the waters with online tutoring.
Conclusion
In this article I summarized the 5 reasons why I think it is a good idea to prepare for your AP exams with my help. If you are interested, feel free to contact me by using the contact info here. Thank you!