AJ Tutoring may be best known for its work with high school students, but that’s certainly not the extent of our competency! We work with students of all ages, and some of our most exciting work is done with clients looking to further their education beyond the undergraduate level.
We work with many students who are looking to obtain degrees in law, business, medicine, or an academic subject. Admission to these programs is driven by some of the most challenging (yet coachable!) exams out there, and AJ Tutoring is unique in its level of experience and expertise in these tests.
Please find a link to our graduate school entrance exam tutoring page here, or read on to find a breakdown of our approach to the GRE, GMAT, LSAT, and MCAT.
If you’d like to discuss your specific needs and how AJ Tutoring can help, please contact us!
GRE/GMAT
The most common kind of work AJ Tutoring does beyond the undergraduate level is preparation for the GRE, the most common entrance exam for MA and PhD programs. There are three major portions of the test – Math, Verbal, and Essays. The math often causes students particular stress because of it’s infamous ‘quantitative comparisons’ section, which many students have no experience with; fortunately, that’s also the section we’ve found most dramatically impacted by having a solid strategy and a little practice! We have taken the strongest parts of our SAT program: breaking the test into question types, working on specific strategies for each question type, reviewing the most common content, and combining tutoring time with homework and practice tests―and applied them to the GRE.
Our GRE program is fully customizable; we generally meet students for 10 sessions, but can do more or fewer and still get great results! Most students come to use needing to review a few math concepts, especially the quantitative comparisons, as well as to get some guidance on a good approach to the verbal sections. We also have found great success with the essays, helping students work on brainstorming strong ideas quickly, organizing them in a logical fashion, and turning them into powerful thesis statements, all in limited time!
The GMAT is a similar test specifically designed for entering MBA programs. However, more and more business schools are accepting the GRE as well as the GMAT, and our experience has been that the GRE is generally more coachable and easier to achieve score improvements on, so we generally suggest that students who are ready to do tutoring focus on the GRE unless their schools require the GMAT.
LSAT
The LSAT is the test taken by prospective law school candidates to gain admission to law school. Although it is considered by many to be a very challenging exam, it is highly coachable. Preparation typically consists of 10 tutoring sessions, with the first 6 sessions consisting of learning and honing strategies for attacking all sections of the test (logical reasoning, analytical reasoning, and reading comprehension). The remaining 4 sessions are spent reviewing practice tests taken as homework. All practice tests and other materials are included in the cost of tutoring. As with all test preparation at AJ, our LSAT curriculum is customized for each student’s needs, and those who have already completed some preparation can choose how many sessions they would like to have and what sections to focus on in those sessions.
MCAT
The MCAT is taken by applicants to MD and DO programs, and a student’s score on the MCAT represents an important portion of their application. The MCAT is an often-feared assessment due to its depth and breadth: it covers several years of college-level science curricula, and reading comprehension and analytical skills. Since students start their MCAT preparation from a wide variety of backgrounds, we first help students create a customized approach for independent content review. Throughout the preparation, we hold students accountable for their content review and answer necessary questions about key concepts. The focus of most tutoring sessions, however, is on the best practice materials available―those from AAMC, the writers of the MCAT. By diving into detailed analyses of these question packs and full-length practice tests, our students make good strides in understanding difficult material and using solid test-taking techniques. Unlike most MCAT tutoring services, AJ Tutoring supports each student with a single MCAT expert. This allows the tutor to gain a thorough understanding of a student’s thought processes, and help them efficiently and effectively on all portions of the exam. We recommend 12-16 tutoring sessions spread over 3-5 months to complete a full prep for the MCAT. However, we understand that not all students’ schedules or needs fit a single package, and we’re happy to make adjustments to the number and focus of sessions on an individual basis.
Career Advancement
AJ Tutoring also has experience in helping our clients prepare for difficult interviews, especially interviews that involve quantitative calculations or estimation, working through case studies, or other performance based interviews. We are also always adding to the list of professional exams we can assist with! If we have the qualified staff, we will work with clients to create prep plans that help them maximize their chances of getting the job or promotion they are looking for!
