As SATs come to a close AP exams lurk around the corner only two or so weeks away. AP exams are some of the most beneficial and important tests towards your college career, other than that SAT college entry test. The AP exams can help fast track your college career in a major way. Getting good scores on these exams makes you eligible for placement into courses that are more advanced.
Colleges only see your AP scores if you choose to send them. You can choose the option to send your exams to select schools you are applying to right away or you can choose to wait and send the scores when you are ready to apply.
Due to increased competition for college admission, admission officials are now increasingly looking at AP exam scores to make final decisions between two equal candidates. Most of the time, a strong AP score of four or five will boost a students application. Two students with equal SAT and GPA scores will be chosen between using their AP exam performance as a tie-breaker.
So, if you come from a region with considerable competition and are applying to the most selective schools, your chances of admission could be greatly affected by your AP exam scores.
Once accepted most colleges will grant college credit for AP credit giving you a jumpstart over most students. Receiving college credits from AP exams can expand the variety of classes in college or lighten your workload for a semester. Overall, the AP exams make the admissions counselors believe that you are ready for the college experience and are able to handle the course load.
Here at Study Hut we can help you prepare. Educated on all levels of subject testing, we gear students for the opportunity to succeed!
My favorite part of tutoring at Study Hut is working with the students. However, my second favorite thing is working with the other tutors. Knowledge and experience is integral to the job, but Rob and Sean only hire people who are friendly, positive, and play well with others. This is good for our students, but it’s also good for us – the same traits that make us good tutors also make us good friends and coworkers.
Once a week we all try to meet after work to play a few hands of poker. It’s a fun time with nice people, and some of these guys are pretty good at it, too. All that work that goes into teaching AP probabilities and statistics apparently lends itself really well to counting odds on the fly.
After awhile, we’re not just playing cards with our coworkers; we’re playing cards with our friends. And that means that we’re going to work with our friends, too. All this adds up to a learning environment that is vibrant, fun, and full of people who know and trust each other. We know implicitly that we can rely on one another to pick up the slack when needed, and together deal with the most challenging problems any school can possibly throw at us.
Well-roundedness—it seems like a harmless enough idea on paper, but the drive to become a “well-rounded” student is pushing today’s students to the limit.
Grades alone are no longer enough, so our kids are spreading themselves thin trying to be the combination of athlete, artist, musician and scholar that will catch a college’s attention. This is in addition to coping with being a teenager, which comes with its own slurry of issues.
Films like, “Race to Nowhere”, are bringing to light a problem that many parents and educators have been aware of for a while—our students have too many academic and extra-curricular responsibilities and not enough time for themselves. They spend so much time trying to be what colleges want that many don’t figure out what their own passions are, which leaves them vastly, and ironically, unprepared for college and the real world.
The Study Hut tutors, many not too far from our own high school experiences, understand the pressures that our students deal with inside and outside of the classroom. We know that our work is more than teaching academics and study skills. We take advantage of our positions as role models to help guide healthy emotional and social development, so when our students do decide where they want to go, they are able to get there.
Study Hut Tutoring is proud to announce its involvement in this year’s Scholar Quiz at Palos Verdes High School. As many people in the South Bay know, Study Hut has been sponsoring the Scholar Quiz at Mira Costa High School for several years now. And with our involvement level as high as it is with the Palos Verdes High School AVID program, it only makes sense that we are now sponsoring the PV High Scholar Quiz tournament.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Scholar Quiz, it is a fast-paced academic tournament in which students on teams of four are asked to answer questions as quickly as possible. It is a lot like Jeopardy, except students can stop the reader and answer the questions at any time.
Scholar Quiz represents all that is Study Hut. We love trivia, we love studying, and we love when students work hard and receive the recognition they deserve for all of their efforts. One of Study Hut’s founders, SP, made it to the semis at Mira Costa’s 2003 tourney. Today, many of our tutors volunteer as readers, timers, and scorekeepers for the Scholar Quiz at Mira Costa, and the Scholar Quiz at Manhattan Beach Middle School. MBMS’s Scholar Quiz is always fun, because oftentimes parents come to support their kids, and even students who are not signed up for the program still visit various teachers’ classrooms to root for their friends’ teams. Teachers are always excited to host all of the students in their classrooms, and some teachers get really into it, reading questions and facilitating the tournament in their classrooms like professional referees.
We are as excited as ever to be entering the Scholar Quiz season, and for those of you who go to Mira Costa or PV High, we hope you enjoy the t-shirts this yea.
Education reform is a hot topic in politics and our communities. With documentaries like Waiting for Superman and powerful people taking a stance in education, people are starting to realize that things need to change. Successful schools have proven that outstanding teachers, extra time spent on education and high expectations for all students are key to academic achievement. At Study Hut, our tutors put these educational goals into action have seen exceptional results in our students.
Why is it so important to have high expectations for students? High expectations show students that we believe that they are capable of achieving their full potential. This turns into motivation for students to prove to us and to themselves that they can do well in school. I often hear fellow tutors saying “you are going to do an awesome job on your test tomorrow!” Students leave knowing their tutors expect them to perform well. When students at Study Hut are as excited to come in and tell us about an A on a test as much as we are, we know we are doing our job.
Excellent tutors at the Hut also add to students’ academic success. Students come to us because they need clarity, review and a fresh approach to teaching. If it takes a funny song to remember Spanish Vocabulary, we’ll make one up and sing it with our students. If history isn’t making sense, we will relate it to something relevant in a student’s life to show them the importance of a historical event. Thinking outside the box and connecting with students is a common method we share with schools in our community. The South Bay School Districts all have a mission to “strive for academic excellence by forming partnerships with the community.” Study Hut enjoys working with schools and students to be part of this partnership in promoting confidence and academic success in our schools.
Today’s students are expected to have a much more comprehensive understanding of their subject matter, especially in mathematics and science.
It’s not enough to know what the components of DNA are anymore. High school Biology students are expected to how the different building blocks fit together and why. For a lot of students, the sheer volume of information flying at them daily is more than overwhelming.
Study Hut helps students navigate these murky waters by providing the kind of thorough and interactive support that allows students to take control of their own learning.
“Give a man fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.” ~ Chinese Proverb
More than just providing what students need from day to day, our tutors teach their students both the skills to be self-sufficient and the confidence essential to managing those unavoidable high-stress situations.
We also help them develop study techniques that take advantage of their already sizeable knowledge base and learning strengths.
You like comic books? Let’s connect your vocabulary words to Marvel characters.
You like the ocean? Let’s relate that back to what you’re learning in Chemistry.
Everyone who comes in for tutoring at the Hut has the same goal: to do better academically. Of course, methods and results can vary drastically from person to person. So, a major question that everyone should ask themselves as they walk in here is this: “What can I do to make the most out of my Study Hut experience?”
Now, some people might think that the smartest students are automatically the ones who will do best. I am here to tell you, this is not the case. Natural intelligence is rare. The one common quality, or “common denominator” for you math fans out there, is attitude. All of the students who show the most improvement all have that in common: a great attitude. It doesn’t matter if you’re Albert Einstein; if you come in here with no interest in working, no desire to improve, and no excitement for the material, odds are you won’t make much progress. The students whose scores improve the most are the one’s who come in with the goal of doing BETTER. They may not understand the material well, or even at all, but they want that to change and are prepared to work for it. Some of our students come in knowing EXACTLY what they want to work on, have done the appropriate preparation, and eagerly accept the tutor’s help. Other students come in mumbling, having no prep work done, and couldn’t care less if they learn the material. I’ll give you one guess as to who has the more rewarding experience.
Attitude is what it comes down to. The one’s that want to learn, and are excited about learning are usually to one’s to excel. And they’re ALWAYS the one’s to appreciate the Hut the most.
Young children are often overlooked when it comes to the tutoring industry. At the high school level, parents work hard to motivate and challenge their children academically. They pressure their child to work hard and get good grades at the hopes of the acceptance into a prestigious and well renowned school. Why not start at a young age?
Learning good study habits is imperative to the success of a student; not only in the school setting, but outside as well. Children need to learn study skills, reading skills, and good work ethic from the beginning. In the primary grades, students’ brains are developing at such a rapid rate that this time period proves to be the most crucial in a student’s life. By setting that foundation, the student will have a more transparent view of how to be an outstanding scholar. At study hut, we provide tutoring to all ages. In the younger grades, a student’s academics are primarily focused on literacy. We cater to children by assisting them with fluency, comprehension, and accuracy. The extra practice allows them to feel more confident and motivated in the classroom which produces overall better grades. Needless to say, extra tutoring for young students in the primary grades is extremely beneficial and should not be dismissed.
There are two types of “New Clients” at Study Hut Tutoring. There are the clients who call us when something has gone wrong, such as a bad test grade or some missing assignments they need help with. The other type of client is the proactive type; this client calls the Hut way in advance, getting times with a tutor well before a big test or Final exam.
These proactive clients often cite “getting an edge” as the reason for calling. Whether they hear about it from a friend at Parras Middle School, or a counselor at RUHS, people are picking up on the buzz, and they are calling Study Hut in Redondo Beach to get the best local tutors available. These clients often call and request a tutor by name, because that is the type of reputation that the Hut has.
Often, groups of friends sign up at the same time. If a PV High Volleyball player calls to inquire about pricing and availability, it does not surprise us at all when two of her fellow Sea Kings call for tutoring later that afternoon. We have quite a few PV and Redondo athletes, including players from the football, basketball, gold, cross country, track, and water polo teams (and more, too!).
For older students the incentives are easier to see, better math skills lead to higher grades. For younger children the final incentives of productive studying are harder to see, which is why we sometimes need to provide an extra boost of encouraged learning with a small piece of candy for a correct answer. Getting students in the mood to learn, and to appreciate their education can be one of the hardest things to accomplish as a tutor.
When the students learn how useful math can be to them and how they can apply specific math skills to real-life situations, they work harder and perform better. Mathematics revolves our daily lives. Teaching kids about everyday uses of math helps them to better understand the real world around them. Some examples of everyday uses of math included: problem solving, budgeting money, time management, calculating tips and tax, memorizing important number data i.e. phone numbers and locker combinations, and estimating distances and weights. These real world skills have major benefits towards the academic success of an individual, and can lead to a greater success in careers that you might not expect to be math-intensive such as, agriculture, law, business, politics, psychology, and music.
Daily mental math exercises to help keep your brain active are a great way to stay on top of your mathematical game. Solving puzzles and exercises such as, suduku or homework problem sets, keeps your mind sharp and ready to tackle any challenge. Mathematics may seem to be an underrated subject, but it has lasting influences in our lives everyday. From the moment we wake up to check the clock, to the number of hours we work each day to make a living, we are constantly surrounded by numbers.
