Organization – Tools of the Trade

by KC Wade

In her post, “Time Management,” Nina Bahadur offers tips on how to prioritize your assignments and make study schedules, which will set you on the path to studying more efficiently.

Maintaining momentum is equally important if you truly want to realize the benefits of time management. To get organized and stay organized, you should have the appropriate study materials and environment. The following four items are great basic tools for encouraging organization:

Expanding File Folder

Expanding file folders help to organize classwork. Each tab stands for a class, and class handouts go straight in the designated pocket. No need for three-hole punching, and you have the assurance that English papers will always be found under the English tab! File folders can also store handouts from extracurriculars like sports and clubs.

To prevent clutter, empty out your file folders at the end of each grading period. Keep notes you need for future midterms and exams and recycle the rest.

Some classes require you to keep separate binders, but I would stick with a central file folder as much as possible. Keeping track of one, large folder is easier than juggling 4-6 small binders, and it’s less weight to carry back and forth from school.

[Continue reading to learn about other organization tools]

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How to Improve Your Long-Term Memory: The Importance of Timing and Frequency

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by Kevin Wong

Technique Trumps Innate Ability

For those of you who may think, “Oh, I have a terrible memory. I could never retain all the stuff I need to remember for school”, think again. Memory is far more dependent on technique and habit than innate ability.

In 2003, Nature analyzed the cognitive abilities of eight people who finished near the top of the World Memory Championships and found that their natural memory abilities and brain anatomies were NO DIFFERENT from those of the common person.

A typical World Memory Championship competitor can easily memorize and recite, in order, an entire deck of playing cards in less than 2 minutes, and an ordered list of over 1000 random numbers in an hour. These memory athletes, using their very average memories, simply trained themselves to use powerful techniques that take advantage of the way the human brain encodes and stores information to accomplish impressive feats of memory.

Believe it or not, if you had the discipline to train your mind to commit information to memory in a new way, you too could accomplish extraordinary feats of memory as well.

[Continue reading to learn techniques you can use to improve retention]
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Princeton Tutoring Essay Competition

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Princeton Tutoring is sponsoring our first annual essay competition! (For additional competition details and rules, please visit http://www.princetontutoring.com/essay.html)

The underlying purpose of this year’s topics is to foster student self-awareness. Additionally, thinking about these types of questions will prepare students for the types of prompts they might encounter on their college applications.

High School Topic – Do you believe there are inherent conflicts between achieving both success and happiness?
Middle School Topic – Interview your family members and discover something about your family history that you might not have known before. Write about the significance of what you learned and what it means to you.

[Continue reading for additional thoughts on these topics] Continue reading →

Want to get better grades? Be an ACTIVE learner!

Time management

The College Essay: Be Yourself

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by David Kurz

Looking back on my 17-year old life, I remember feeling a mix of uncertainty and pressure when it came time to write the college essay. In my experience, the personal statement was uniquely difficult because – unlike SATs, GPA, AP scores, and academic achievements – it was subjective, biased, and supremely personal. My college essay sometimes seemed like a blank sheet staring me in the face, daring me to be creative, fluid, and self-revealing in the midst of a high-stakes application. The good news is that, eventually, I was able to turn this daunting undertaking into a fun exercise that let me express my personality better than any other piece of my application.

My Story

I remember deciding that I wanted my essay to capture something about me that spoke to how I was singular. Something that only Dave Kurz could write. I recall leaning back in my chair, looking around, and thinking to myself: “What makes me different?” What I settled on certainly wasn’t perfect, but it did fit the criterion I had laid out for myself; my essay literally could not have been written by anybody else because of the distinctive way only I could unite various aspects of my life story. In my case, this meant writing about everything from Hungarian history to Spanish classes to soccer to kayaking to jazz trumpet to faith, and how they had all come together to make me who I was. I also included some minor details about my life that weren’t important in their own right – for instance, my high school habit of grabbing frozen waffles while running out the door – but added a personal touch to the writing. The key was not really what I wrote about, but how my writing captured my personality.

[Continue reading for Dave’s advice, and additional tips and resources]

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SAT or ACT? Take advantage of diagnostic tests to help decide

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by Richard Pan

One of the tough decisions that a high school student has to make is whether to take the SAT or the ACT. Each has its advantages and disadvantages from the perspective of the test taker, but which one should you take? We will break things down into a few different considerations, but first, let’s take a look at the back-stories.

Background

Introduced in 1901, the SAT is the older of the two exams. It has gone through several iterations since its inception, from open-ended essay questions on a range of topics (including English, math, physics, chemistry, and foreign languages) to the current format of three multiple-choice sections on math, reading, and writing. The ACT was first administered in 1959, and in terms of subjects tested, the test has remained substantially unchanged through the years. An optional writing section was added in 2005 to the existing sections on English, math, reading, and science.

[Continue reading for a detailed comparison and our recommendation]

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Welcome to the Princeton Tutoring Blog!

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by Greg Wong and Kevin Wong

Who are we?

Welcome to Princeton Tutoring’s blog! We are an elite private tutoring company headquartered in Princeton, NJ. Since 2005 we have helped hundreds of students improve their confidence, increase grades, and gain admission into selective high schools and top colleges.

Our tutors are the nation’s highest performing college students and recent graduates. They are high school Valedictorians, National Merit Finalists, and National AP Scholars. They are Princeton Dean’s list recipients and published fiction, poetry, and academic journal writers. Outside of their work with Princeton Tutoring, they are teaching assistants, tennis coaches, and dance instructors. Extracurricularly, they are actively involved in community service, are varsity athlete team captains, and are accomplished Grammy-performing musicians.

What is the goal of this blog?

Over the past several years, clients and friends have turned to us for advice on a variety of topics – “How can my child improve his organizational skills?”, “Should my son take the SAT or the ACT?”, “Which extracurricular activities and how many should my daughter focus on?”, “What are some of our recommended methods for reducing test anxiety?”, and so on. In each case, we would respond by sending a carefully drafted response to a single person. What if we could share that information with a larger audience so more people could benefit?

Our goal with this blog is to address the most relevant academic (and occasionally non-academic) concerns of middle/ high school students and their parents by sharing tips and advice from the unique perspective of our tutors. You can also expect to see blog posts from teachers, college admissions counselors, and educators who are affiliated with Princeton Tutoring.

How is this blog organized?

The ultimate goal of many of our readers will be to gain admission into a top college of their choice. Therefore, we have organized our topics around the major components that will make you (or your child) an attractive college applicant:

General study tips (e.g. study techniques, time management, reading and writing tips)
Standardized tests (e.g. SAT/ACT, AP, SAT subject tests)
Extracurricular activities (e.g. summer, during the school year)
College admissions (e.g. essays, school selection, alumni interviews)

How to use this blog?

Looking for a specific topic? Try using the search function. Alternatively, click on any of the categories/tags listed on the right-hand-side of the page to view related groups of posts.

If you’d rather have automatic updates every time we submit a new post, you can subscribe by email. We are initially planning to update our blog a couple of times per month.

Contact us!

If you have any questions/comments or if there is a specific topic you’d like to see, feel free to contact us at greg [at] princetontutoring.com or kevin [at] princetontutoring.com.

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Please visit www.princetontutoring.com to learn more about our Company.

Happy reading!

About the authors: Greg and Kevin are brothers and Princeton University graduates. They have over 20 years of experience in the educational services industry as tutors, mentors, and coaches. After several years as private tutors, they founded Princeton Tutoring in 2005 to continue their passion for education on a larger scale and to help more students achieve their potential.. Please click here for more information about Greg and Kevin.