Sam Ashworth

We found 23 articles

From Writing MFA Skeptic to the Belly of the Beast
Confused about MFAs? You’re not alone. I graduated from college in 2009, and immediately set about the business of becoming a writer. I wrote a novel. I rewrote it. I landed an agent. I rewrote the novel two more times. I found consistent work, first as a bartender (every writer needs a trade), then as a college admissions coach and writing tutor ...
The GRE Tutor: What Happens When a Tutor Takes the Test?
GRE
Want to do well on the GRE? Rock your body as if Backstreet were back. A few weeks ago, I very suddenly made the decision to apply to graduate school. The swiftness of my decision surprised me, but not as much as my realization that because I was about to leave the country, I had exactly three days to prepare for the GRE. I was pretty cocky, ...
SAT Tutor: why you should wear a bathrobe on test day
What to wear on Test Day? What kind of question is that? What on earth could clothing have to do with taking standardized tests?
SAT Tutor: What Is SAT Score Choice, and Should I Get It?
SAT
At Cambridge Coaching, our SAT tutors in Boston and New York get the “What is Score Choice” question a lot, so today, we are offering our faithful readers a friendly PSA. Score Choice is an option the College Board makes available to its test-takers. The basic idea behind it is that if students take the SAT or SAT Subject Tests multiple times, ...
Standardized Test Prep: How to Keep Test Day Stress at Bay
Just like home, only the exact opposite in every way.
College Admissions Guidance: What Does "Leadership" Actually Mean?
Now is the time that seniors in high school should start moving into leadership positions in clubs...but what does "leadership" mean? Today Sam, one of our expert online college application consultants, explains.
Academic Tutor: The Perks of Being an English Major (and a Drawback)
Here at Cambridge Coaching (a company entirely run by former English or Comp Lit majors), we take a very dim view of the “good luck landing a job with that degree” brigade. You know who I mean: people who cannot so much as carry on a conversation with an English, History, Philosophy, or Psychology major, etc., without saying something like, “so ...
College Admissions Guide: The Art of Making the Reader Happy
Consider the college application reader. She might be an admissions officer, but she might also be a well-meaning, well-trained volunteer who teaches for the college. On November 2, she is delivered a towering, wobbly stack of colored folders containing the collected dreams of hundreds of applicants. Over the next month or two she will spend ...
The 'why do you want to apply to our college?' admissions essay
One of the great (and few) advantages that applicants today have over their predecessors is the near-universal acceptance of the Common Application. Instead of having to grimly grind out a dozen colelge essays on a multitude of head-numbing topics, applicants can now take the time to polish their main essay to a high shine. The unacknowledged side ...
Cracking the SAT Essay: Breaking Down the Prompt
On Test Day, the SAT essay prompt is the very first thing you see when you open up your test booklet—and a dismal sight it is. 25 minutes to answer a deliberately and often irritatingly simplistic question (“is good moral character essential for sound leadership?” What are you going to say? “Nah?”). But the secret of the SAT essay is that with a ...
What's Better, a Writing Tutor or a Writing Textbook?
Back when I was in high school, I was lucky enough to have an English teacher so dedicated to making sure his students would not go forth into the wild and merciless world without good grammar that, along with a colleague, he wrote an entire textbook and filled it with the most entertaining, memorable sentences he could devise. Why go to all this ...
How to rewrite an essay without losing your sanity
The secret to good writing isn't fancy vocabulary or acrobatic syntax--it's good editing. All writers, even the most confessional, verbose, and conversational, spend immense amounts of time rewriting, honing, cutting, and polishing their work. This holds doubly true for academic essays. The best writers live by a simple truth: first drafts are not ...
Three Things Every Student Should Know About the SAT Reading Comprehension
SAT
Having been an SAT tutor for the better part of a decade, I have taught numberless dozens of students, and the one thing they have all had in common, almost without exception, is that they have hated the SAT Reading Comprehension section. And why shouldn't they? The Reading Comprehension makes up the bulk of an already painful test. It consists of ...
Learning to Love Standardized Tests: Preparing for Test Day
Lost in the whirlwind of test-taking strategies and practice problems that make up the bulk of test prep is the simple fact that there is an immense psychological component to any test as critical as the SAT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT, or MCAT.
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