Brian McElroy's Tutoring Blog

Understanding the Order of Difficulty on the SAT, How to Pace Yourself, and why the SAT is like an Apple-Picking Contest (seriously!)

Posted 2021-07-11

In a future blog posting, I will explain the details of the SAT scoring system, and why it is important to understand that GUESSING DOES NOT HURT YOUR SCORE.However, this does not mean that you should try to answer all of the questions on each section. In fact, this will often work against you. NEARLY ALL STUDENTS SHOULD SKIP SOME QUESTIONS ON THE SAT. Why? Well, because although guessing in itself doesn't hurt you, SPENDING TOO MUCH OF YOUR TIME ON THE WRONG TYPES OF PRO... Keep Reading

SAT vs. ACT (comparison and score conversions..)

Posted 2021-07-11

SAT vs. ACT considerations. Keep Reading

SAT Math - Page 411 number 14

Posted 2021-07-11

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The following is an example of the notes I provide for my private tutoring students (my students' names will always be blocked out for privacy). This is an explanation of problem number 14 from page 411 of the Official SAT Study Guide (which I classify as an "Arrangement" problem), along with an additional lesson on Groupings. I will start posting more of these written lessons for free, along with recorded audio explanations (looking at the explanat... Keep Reading

SAT Writing Error #4: Subject-Verb Agreement, Prepositional Phrases and Appositives

Posted 2021-07-11

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The Good News Keeps Rolling In - McElroy Tutoring's first Harvard Admit, Highest SAT Scorer

Posted 2024-01-25

In the last two weeks McElroy Tutoring has had one student admitted to Harvard, and another scored 2370 on the SAT. Keep Reading

SAT Math - Page 412 Number 18

Posted 2021-07-11

Here is an example of the future of tutoring — real-time SAT preparation over the internet! The following image was taken from one of my online SAT tutoring sessions using a virtual chalkboard. Did you get this problem right? It’s the hardest one on this entire section…so don’t feel bad if you missed it!
p.s. For extra credit, tell me what the grammatical error in my 2nd sentence is…... Keep Reading

May SAT scores now available online / Summer is Almost Upon Us

Posted 2021-07-11

Hello everyone, Wow, it’s been a long, eventful and exhilarating school year! When I first started tutoring the SAT 10 years ago, people thought of tutoring as a job for college kids looking for some extra pizza money, something you did to help your kid get his or her homework done more quickly. But over time, the tutoring profession is quickly becoming more and more respected as someting much more than that; it is now an essential part of the college-prep process. Parents finally seem to ... Keep Reading

More Free SAT Notes 9/11/07

Posted 2021-07-11

I’ve been receiving very positive feedback from those of you who are downloading and studying my free SAT notes…thanks for the encouragement. It makes me want to keep giving them away!
As always, all explanations correspond to problems from the Official Guide to the SAT.
-Brian
mcelroytutoring_satnotes_091107.pdf... Keep Reading

SAT Math - Page 463 number 17

Posted 2021-07-11

Another function problem (funny symbols like this are nothing but disguised functions). As you should with any function problem, remember to take this ONE STEP AT A TIME, to RE-WRITE THE DEFINITION OF THE FUNCTION and to STACK THE ACTUAL VALUES UNDERNEATH ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE EQUATION, following the model on the right side.
The goal of any “funny symbol problem” is to get rid of the funny symbols, ONE AT A TIME, so don’t set “1 arrow 2” equal to &l... Keep Reading

Blog Posts 171 to 180 of 180

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