Award-Winning Private HSPT Tutoring in Garden Grove, CA

"The student did very well in her first placement exam prep session. We started by going over general info about the test, emphasizing the need to respond to every question and the importance of identifying questions she can answer quickly. She informed me that the verbal section gave her the most difficulty. We went over the different question types and useful strategies for answering these. She did well on the logic questions and analogies, applying the strategies well and making strong connections between words. She needed help with synonym and antonym questions. We went over different ways of identifying meaning and "mood" of a word. I also gave her a list of root words, prefixes, and suffixes that she can go over to help her recognition of novel words. We discussed the various question types on the quantitative section. She had little trouble with algebraic word problems, and she understands to work on these and series questions first as they take less time. Her biggest problem is timing, so we went over some estimation strategies in order to reduce the amount of time she spends on calculations. If possible, she knows to complete some practice problems I gave her before our next meeting. In our next session, we will review our strategies and begin practicing the other 3 sections of the test."

"The student and I worked on math most of the session. I'm still trying to get her to default to writing her math rather than leave it trapped in her head! My goal is to open up the concept of averages problems to allow her to generalize with it. To that end, she'll work on an averages problem and a few others past it for Monday's session."

"I went over the homework I had assigned her initially and noted that she needs some improvement on verbal. When it came to math, I noted significant improvement. I assigned her some more homework. She has definitely been improving over time, and I look forward to her improving in verbal these next couple of days."