Oliver Tan

Biography

As a bay area native and with my dad being a passionate mathematician himself, I was exposed to mathematics and fascinated by intricate concepts from a young age. This fascination continued throughout my childhood, being my favorite subject in middle school and high school. It was no surprise that I chose to major in math for college. In 2024, I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and minor in computer science.

Having tutored at Los Altos High School and supported my peers in college in the past, I hope to continue helping students master math subjects and their SAT tests at AJ Tutoring. Nothing is more rewarding to me than knowing I’ve helped a student ace an assignment, exam, or class. I hope to foster an environment in which students feel they can take as long as they need to understand a topic, and minimize the stress and pressure of oftentimes demanding classes. Having majored in mathematics, I understand common struggles in learning math and hope to build students’ mathematical intuition.

A philosophy I have is that learning math is like learning a language – the best way to learn it is to do it. While you can memorize equations and formulas, you won’t truly be familiar with a mathematical concept until you’ve applied it in a variety of scenarios. As a tutor, I will guide students in solving multiple different problems until they have a solid understanding of the underlying mathematical concepts.

Outside of tutoring, I spend time honing my programming skills by developing various apps. I am also a Rubik’s cube speed solver and love to travel with my family around the world.