Teaching to maximize retention through mastery learning

Making people learn is tough. I’ve taught classrooms ranging from 1 person to around 3000 (through an online course), and the gap between what I teach and what students learn has always been present. This is true for all teachers, of course, but I think I’ve felt it more than most. As someone who’s self-employed …

Why Internet arguments go in circles, according to Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce is one of my favorite unknown philosophers. Although problematic (i.e. virulently racist) and a bit difficult to read, he was brilliant, and wrote on a wide range of topics in an insightful way. One of my favorite ideas of his (and likely one of his most accessible) was his idea of truth. …

Levels to it: wrestling and learning

Kendrick Lamar once rapped, “It’s levels to it, you and I know,” while surrounded by many bald black men. I was thinking about that recently after an interesting conversation I had with a friend and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training partner. A 200 pound former Penn State wrestler and a Harvard Chemistry PhD to be, he …

How to study effectively on the LSAT

I work with a lot of LSAT clients who have struggled for a long time on the LSAT. In fact, that’s my main type of client: I’m rarely someone’s first port of call on their LSAT journey. Often, their scores have increased a bit over a long period of time (like a 145 to a …

Just because you finished a practice test does not mean you’re done with it.

Attention Redditors, my students, blog readers, and everyone else: just because you finished a practice test does not mean you’re done with it!  You are done with a practice test when you can not only do, but explain, every single question on that practice test. You can explain, at the drop of a hat, why …

Teaching the unteachable: my experience teaching adults who never learned math

About a year and a half ago, I had a GRE tutoring client who had a reasonably important political job. She was in her mid 30s, sharp (and sometimes cutting), and had appeared in the news quite a few times. She was also absolutely terrible at math. I mean really, really terrible. She didn’t know …

How do I improve my GMAT score?

This post written by Kiran Nasim, with editing by Trevor Klee. How to improve GMAT score from 550 to 700 Improve your GMAT foundation When you score in 500s, the good news is that you have a lot of margin for improvement. The bad news is that you’re probably severely lacking in foundation. To get …

Is my GMAT score good enough for business school?

  What is an average GMAT score? The current average combined GMAT score is a 561.27; Despite the above, it is necessary to emphasize that this is not a good enough score to get you into a good MBA program. To get an idea of what sort of score you’d need to get into the …

How do I get a good GRE score for graduate school?

This post authored by Punsala Navaratna. Ah, grad school. If you have aspirations of getting into graduate school, we know how daunting the application process can be. A big part of the grad school application process is crossing the GRE mountain – a long, frustrating, and somewhat perplexing journey for most. A typical GRE candidate …

How to use UWorld to study for the MCAT

UWorld is a terrific resource for the MCAT, but you can’t just use it blindly. UWorld’s value is in its explanations. It’s a teaching tool, but it’s not imitative of the MCAT. In other words, you can’t get MCAT experience just from UWorld. So how should you use UWorld? As part of a plan, but …