Award-Winning ACT Reading Tutors
serving Portland, OR

I'm a strong believer that education can be fun, and address learning with a sense of humor and a positive attitude. My approach to learning tends to be very communication-based, and often driven by how the client I'm working with feels they learn best. As a result, I tend to provide structure and guidance in a more flexible learning environment.

Most ACT Reading mistakes come from mismanaging time across four dense passages, not from a lack of reading ability. Dylan teaches an active-reading method that prioritizes locating evidence quickly — tagging key claims, contrasts, and author tone as you go — so students aren't rereading entire paragraphs to answer detail questions. His 34 composite and 5.0 rating speak to how well this approach translates to real score gains.

Hi, I'm Nic :) I have a Masters in philosophy and a Bachelors in computer science. I've worked as an educator for over a decade, thoroughly enjoy tutoring high school students, and can't wait to start working with you (or your student) towards persistent academic success! Feel free to reach out with any questions, https://linktr.ee/nickhh

Scoring a 35 ACT composite means Heather knows how to move through dense passages quickly and accurately — especially the Reading section's mix of prose fiction, social science, and humanities texts. She teaches students to identify what each question is actually asking before hunting for evidence, a habit that eliminates the most common timing traps. Rated 5.0 by students.

I'm Owen! I was born and raised in Portland, OR, but I currently live in Rhode Island, where I'm working towards a Bachelor's Degree at Brown University. If there's one thing to know about me, it's that I love to learn, no matter the subject. Learning is a life-long process that can take you anywhere in life. But this doesn't mean it's always easy. It would be my privilege to help you overcome the obstacles you encounter on this journey.

Trained in philosophy at Reed College, Daniel reads dense, argument-heavy texts for a living — exactly the kind of material the ACT Reading section throws at students across its prose fiction, social science, humanities, and natural science passages. He teaches a question-first strategy that turns each passage into a targeted scavenger hunt rather than a slow, anxious read-through. Rated on a 33 ACT composite, his approach prioritizes efficiency without sacrificing comprehension.

The ACT Reading section gives students just over eight minutes per passage, which means raw comprehension isn't enough — you need a strategy for extracting answers quickly from dense prose. Marilyn, who reads voraciously across modern fiction and historical biography, teaches students to map each passage's argument structure before touching the questions. Her approach turns the dual-passage comparison questions from the section's biggest time sink into reliable points.

Before tackling any passage, Nikita teaches students to spend 30 seconds previewing the questions — flagging line references, "main purpose" prompts, and detail questions — so the first read-through becomes a targeted hunt instead of passive absorption. Her pre-med coursework at USC means she's comfortable with the natural science passages that trip up many test-takers, and she applies that same analytical rigor to prose fiction and humanities, where tracking an author's shifting tone paragraph by paragraph keeps inference questions from feeling like guesswork. Her 33 ACT composite and 5.0 student rating back up the strategy.

I am a soon-to-be college graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon! I will have a BA in English, with a minor in Theatre Studies. At Lewis & Clark, I have taken classes in Postcolonial Literature, Poetry Writing, Film & Literature, Milton, British Literature, & Modern American Literature. I am a candidate for Honors in the English department, and am finishing up my undergraduate thesis on Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison. I want to use my experience to help your student get excited about and engaged with literature! I love essay writing, and essay structure and editing is one of my favorite things to work on.

I am open to helping students practice speaking, reading, and writing without any judgment. I am open to helping you learn Chinese or Japanese no matter where you are in the learning process.

Most of ACT Reading comes down to time management: four passages in 35 minutes leaves almost no room for re-reading. Paul teaches a passage-mapping technique that identifies the main argument and key details on the first pass, so students spend their time answering questions instead of hunting for evidence they half-remember.

I am applying to medical schools to attend Fall 2016 and I like to play basketball, go backpacking and volunteer with youth in my free time.

I am a recent graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder. I received my Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Biological Engineering with a minor in French. During my time at CU, I studied abroad in Paris, as well as being a Teaching Assistant for Chemistry, Biology, and Fluid Mechanics for engineers and often helped my peers with homework. During the summer and fall I teach percussion for a local high school marching band. While I tutor a variety of math and science topics, my favorite subjects are chemistry and physics, as I love exploring the ways in which the world works. Education is of the highest importance to me, and I wish to share this passion with my students. In my spare time, I like to read suspense novels, play a variety of string instruments, and play Legend of Zelda.

Speed is what makes ACT Reading hard — four dense passages in 35 minutes means students can't afford to reread. Laura teaches active-reading shortcuts like annotation strategies and question-type triage that cut down on wasted time without sacrificing comprehension. Her 32 ACT composite and 5.0 rating speak to how well the method translates to real score gains.

Having studied political science at the University of Chicago — where the Core Curriculum demands rapid synthesis of dense, argument-heavy readings across disciplines — Asta built the exact close-reading stamina the ACT Reading section punishes students for lacking. She teaches students to identify an author's central claim and track how supporting evidence is layered through each paragraph, which turns detail and inference questions into targeted lookups rather than full re-reads. Her 35 ACT composite and 5.0 student rating speak for themselves.

Scoring a 36 ACT composite means Talia knows exactly how the Reading section tries to trip students up — from conflicting-viewpoints passages to inference questions that hinge on a single word. She teaches a pacing strategy that prioritizes passage types based on each student's strengths, so no one runs out of time on the questions they'd otherwise get right. Rated 5.0 by students.

I am available to tutor a range of middle school and high school subjects, but I am most excited about tutoring test prep. I remember how stressful preparing for college can be and I am eager to do my part in helping students fulfill their college goals. I believe that learning is a collaborative process and I am committed to being as actively involved in the student's learning as I can. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, going to the movies (I try to see each Oscar nominee before the ceremony every year.), and am a huge Michigan sports fan.

Reading dense, unfamiliar passages under time pressure is where most ACT Reading scores stall out. Austin's background in Classics and Philosophy means he spent years doing exactly that — pulling arguments from ancient texts and evaluating how authors build their claims. He teaches students to map passage structure before touching the questions, turning a 35-minute sprint into a manageable process.

I am a 2023 graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a Finance/Economics major and a minor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I am a passionate student in the math and business realms, as I enjoy the intuitiveness of the former and the real-world potential of the latter. During classes in middle and high school, I developed a reputation of being a good source of help within my classes in a non-tutor capacity, and grew that into a peer tutor role a couple times a week during lunch my senior year of high school. What I hope to accomplish with my tutoring is ensure that you not only achieve your desired grade/score, but see how the different concepts relate to each other in the bigger picture. The more important part is to critically think about the subject matter in other, more unfamiliar contexts. Also, in my math subjects, I seek to provide personal secrets in realms including quicker computation strategies, unique acronyms for certain rules, and other intuitive shortcuts.

The ACT Reading section isn't really about comprehension — it's about extracting specific evidence under a brutal time constraint. Benjamin scored a 36 composite and applies the close-reading skills from his Columbia English program to teach students how to identify what each question is actually asking, locate proof in the passage quickly, and eliminate trap answers with confidence.

I am a Yale graduate with over 8 years experience tutoring students from a variety of backgrounds. I recently graduated from the Yale School of Public Health with a MPH concentrating in Epidemiology and Global Health. I also received my B.S. from Yale with a double major in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and French. I have experience both leading group classes and working with students one on one. I will respond to a student's strengths, weaknesses, and learning style in order to help them succeed and make the most of our time together. I earned a perfect score of 36 on the ACT, 2280 on the SAT, and qualified as a National Merit Scholar on the PSAT. I look forward to working with you!

Most ACT Reading mistakes happen not because students misunderstand the passage but because they misread what the question is actually asking — "main idea" vs. "the author suggests" require completely different retrieval strategies. Eileen, a Vanderbilt neuroscience major who scored a 36 composite, walks students through a passage-mapping technique that cuts rereading time dramatically and keeps evidence-based answers distinct from inference questions.

Ryne earned a perfect 36 ACT composite, which means he knows firsthand how to handle the Reading section's brutal pacing — 40 questions in 35 minutes with no room for second-guessing. His political science training built a habit of quickly dissecting competing claims in dense texts, and he applies that to teaching students how dual passages and paired questions try to blur the line between an author's actual position and a tempting distortion. Rated 4.9 by students.

Reading four dense passages in 35 minutes forces a different kind of reading than most students are used to. Sugi's cognitive science training at Rice gives her a framework for teaching active reading strategies — how to map an argument's structure on a first pass so that inference and tone questions become straightforward rather than agonizing. She holds a perfect 36 ACT composite and a 5.0 tutoring rating.

Scoring a perfect 36 ACT composite means Max has firsthand experience with the Reading section's tightest time pressure — 35 minutes across four passages with no room for re-reading. His biology research background, which involves digesting dense ecological studies and isolating specific claims from surrounding data, trained him to do exactly what the natural science and social science passages demand: separate what the author actually states from what the surrounding context merely suggests. Rated 5.0 by students.

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