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How A Math Tutor Can Get Your Child Into Harvard Or Any Ivy League School
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Last Updated on Mar 2, 2021
When you dream of your child becoming highly successful in life, you hope that they are a good person and financially stable. You may also hope that they use their passion and money to make a difference in the world by becoming an innovator, creator, or leader.
If you look at the academic background of many millionaires and billionaires that have made incredible innovations, many attended an Ivy League School.
This is because they understood the importance of being in an environment that encourages a passion for learning and brilliance in its students. The campus and classroom environments at Ivy League schools cultivate inspiration in students to innovate and improve the world around them.
There are even those that didn’t graduate from an Ivy League school (or even college!) and still went on to do incredible things.
Take the example of Steve Jobs and his days at Reed College.
During his mere four semesters at Reed, a liberal arts college in Oregon, Jobs took a variety of courses — like Shakespearean studies and Calligraphy — that had little to do with tech. During a convocation speech in 1991, he referenced that although he never graduated, the school had a huge impact on his character. He shared that the courses he took and his experiences, “helped me in everything I’ve ever done, although I wouldn’t have guessed it at the time.”
Even millionaires and billionaires that did not attend an Ivy League school still possess the innate desire to innovate and improve. They surround themselves with people that challenge the norm and focus on solving world problems.
There are many skills a private math tutor can help your child develop. These skills help your child become highly successful and can get them into Harvard or any Ivy League School.
In this article, we are going to hone in on the ways that Thinkster math tutoring services can help your child build the necessary skills and experience to attend an excellent institute of higher learning. Of course, this includes math skills, but a great tutor also helps students better themselves in other ways that these schools look for.
We will cover not only the ways that Thinkster helps your child excel in their math, but also the other skills that they will build and develop. These skills are just as important – perhaps even more so – than pure knowledge and application of math. So read on if you want to know more about how our tutoring programs can help your child reach their ultimate goal.
Sure, solving 9 x 2^5 — (10x 3^2) in under five seconds may seem like a cool trick. But does having the math education to rapidly compute problems demonstrate the ability to think creatively and non-linearly?
Ivy League Schools’ admission panels review thousands and thousands of applications. So your child’s knowledge of calculus, algebra, or geometry might not be the only make or break factor.
They want an applicant that stands out from the others — not a student that thinks like a machine or human calculator. Math skills are important, but admissions officers are looking to see if the student has developed other very important skills.
After all, these schools are eager to find the very best and brightest students. They want students that possess an innate desire to improve the community and the world around them.
This means that your child can identify, think about, and propose new and innovative solutions to problems. Having strong problem-solving skills means that they can think through problems and test different strategies.
Your child also needs to be willing to challenge their own thinking or society’s collected expectations and solutions!
A letter written in 2017 by professors and scholars of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton encouraged students to think for themselves.
“Thinking for yourself means questioning dominant ideas even when others insist on their being treated as unquestionable. It means deciding what one believes not by conforming to fashionable opinions, but by taking the trouble to learn and honestly consider the strongest arguments to be advanced on both or all sides of a question.”
Your child should become comfortable challenging and re-examining ideas and beliefs that currently exist. The ability to do so is what leads to creating and innovating.
The first step for your child to become an amazing and impactful learner is to hone their analytical and critical thinking skills.
A math tutor can do this by helping your child understand how to use different problem-solving processes and strategies. They also encourage students to learn how to manipulate and solve problems by using different strategies.
Your child’s dedicated Thinkster Math tutor will give lots of practice with different types of problems to help develop strong conceptual thinking skills. They create a learning plan that is customized for your child and provide digital assignments from our world-class curriculum. The tutor also builds and develops your child’s critical thinking skills, which helps them develop the mindset to test new strategies and explore alternative solutions.
With Thinkster math tutoring, they will learn to approach problems in different ways. Through this, they will see that many real-life issues can be solved using different approaches. The idea is to give them the skills to think about a problem critically and understand that there is more than one approach to many situations.
Ivy League Schools look for this type of innovative and creative thinking in their students.
Another important skill that a math tutor can help develop is self-awareness.
It’s important to begin developing self-awareness at a young age because “it helps students become more efficient at focusing on what they still need to learn.”
The first step for your child on their path to self-awareness is the ability to identify their own proficiencies. They should be able to identify what skills and concepts they are weak in. Once they can examine and determine these areas, they are then able to reconcile those weaknesses.
They should also learn that failure is a good thing and that it leads to big learning moments. To get to this mindset, they need to learn to disassociate failure and negativity.
Your child’s Thinkster tutor helps with your child’s perception of failure. They treat Cs or Ds on assignments not as a sign of failure, but as an opportunity for learning and growth.
To help your child learn to examine their own proficiencies, they can refer to their dynamic Progress Matrix. The Progress Matrix displays the concepts and topics that your child needs to know. A color-coded system shows your child’s mastery and proficiency levels.
This helps your child learn how to identify and visualize their own strengths and weaknesses, which is a great first step to developing self-awareness.
The idea with this type of thinking is to reframe “weakness” and “failure” as natural steps in learning. Everyone is bad at something before they are good. If math students are able to see that, then it is easier for them to understand how they can master a topic. An added benefit is that they will be more likely to take this approach to many areas of life as well!
Ivy League students are also able to create a routine and possess the self-discipline and drive to follow that routine. Students have a big course load and there are very high expectations, so Ivy League admission panels look for individuals who are able to handle high academic pressure.
You can start introducing and developing organizational skills and self-discipline learning now. Often, it’s a matter of habit building, which is why your child needs to start learning this incredibly useful skill and use it in their daily routine.
When it comes to organizational skills, there are many ways that a math tutor can help!
Our Thinkster Mathematics tutors work with your child to establish a learning plan and set clear expectations on digital assignment completion. The app suggests and tracks the amount of time your child spends on an assignment. This helps your child learn how to manage their time carefully as they work on organizing their learning to remain productive.
Their math tutor also discusses how to prioritize tasks and organize a routine that includes independent practice, review, and reflection.
In doing so, your child understands how to organize their priorities and tasks based on importance, time, and the amount of effort required.
This is a skill incredibly useful for Ivy League students who juggle the demands of their classes! Helping your child learn to prioritize their tasks and activities ensures that when more is on their plates, they are able to truly learn to balance and prioritize their tasks.
After all, a demanding workload is not so daunting if you are able to organize your time effectively. With these organizational skills taught by our expert tutors, students will be able to approach and overcome a busy schedule more efficiently. This allows them to focus the appropriate amount of time on each task, and get more important things done as a priority before moving on to other lower priority tasks.
You can check out more on the other ways a Thinkster Math tutor helps your child develop organizational skills in this blog post.
Another thing that Ivy League admission panels look for in applicants is students that stand out from others.
Highly creative and motivated students gain the attention of admission panels. These are the types of students that are going to have a profound impact and improve the campus, community, and world around them.
Now is the perfect time to start encouraging your child to make a difference in the world.
One thing to keep in mind is that Ivy League schools also aren’t looking for students with many different extracurriculars and volunteer work.
Kate Cohen, the founder of IvyWise, shared with USA TODAY that students should, “Focus on what they love instead of joining a bunch of random clubs that they don’t care about because admissions readers see right through that.”
Ivy League schools look for, “Students who have shown in-depth passion in an activity, ideally over a number of years, because it represents genuine commitment and offers insight into what the student may pursue on their campuses.” (Harvard Graduate, Jon G.)
A typical math tutoring center may not focus on long-term goals or instilling the passion and motivation needed to make a difference in the world. This is because the goal of a math tutor is often to help your child increase their grades over a short time period or semester. These math tutoring programs are good for learning concepts, but tend not to extend beyond that.
Instead, look for a math tutor and company that encourages your child to become an authentic, engaged, and impactful individual.
Thinkster Math tutors are passionate about helping students become incredible learners, thinkers, and future innovators, creators, and leaders.
We define our company culture around the traits that we encourage and develop in our students, such as respectfulness, optimism, authenticity, and innovativeness. You can read more about us and our culture and why we want our students to become impactful individuals.
There are many things that you can do as a parent to also help inspire and motivate your child to become compassionate and eager to improve the world around them.
You can take your child to an orphanage, shelter, soup kitchen, or food bank where they can donate items or volunteer their time.
You can also travel to a country or city with a greater proportion of their population having low socioeconomic status. Then visit a place with a higher proportion of their population with higher socioeconomic status. Doing so introduces your child to the dichotomy in the world and opens them to be receptive to discussing the contrasts in the lives of people across zip codes.
If your child is not aware of the problems and inequalities that exist around the world, then how can they possibly make improvements?
Start planting inspirational seeds in your child so that they are motivated to create new things and improve the world around them.
Be sure to also look for a math tutor that inspires your child to learn to think for themselves. As mentioned earlier, Ivy League schools are interested in students with strong thinking skills. Students that think outside of the box stand out.
While your child should organize their learning systematically, this does not mean that they should think procedurally. They should be open to trying new steps, approaches, strategies, and challenging what already exists.
This helps their mind open up to the possibilities of innovation and creation.
We have provided, throughout this article, all the beneficial aspects of Thinkster that will increase your child’s chances of being accepted by a top-tier academic institution. However, there is one more huge related benefit you will get – your child will gain the confidence necessary to succeed after joining Thinkster.
So much of achievement begins with the simple belief that you can do it, When your child develops all the skills mentioned above, you will notice that he/she will end up with something much more than just the sum of the specific benefits. This is the belief and confidence that they are able to succeed in any of their pursuits.
With a well-rounded skill-set and continuous learning and achievement, your child will stop seeing that getting into Harvard or any Ivy League school is no longer a dream. They will be able to envision this as a realistic and achievable goal for themselves. They will quickly realize that they are able to excel at things that they commit to, both inside and outside of school.
They will have the tools necessary to organize and dedicate their time and effort to turn their weaknesses into strengths. And if they have the confidence to do this in any situation, they will quickly see that there are no limits to their potential.
A great math tutor will instill more than just math knowledge; they give students the skills necessary to apply to other areas of life. This is exactly the type of confidence boost your child can receive from a Thinkster education.
Providing your child with a high-quality tutoring experience can help them develop various skills that will help put them on the track to success.
Typically, not tutoring services provide an elite approach. For example, if looking into private tutoring, the instructor likely focuses on math homework help or test prep, to give you child assistance with school-related topics.
Instead, look for an expert math tutor that goes provides this and additional support!
Our Thinkster tutors provide assistance in these areas during a tutoring session, but there’s so much more!
We provide an exclusive and elite white-glove service program for motivated parents and students.
The Thinkster Diamond plan users our data and behavioral science approach to help accelerate learning outcomes. Not only will your child get four tutoring sessions per week with a dedicated math teacher, but they will also get a monthly behavioral coaching session.
The purpose of this session is not teaching math topics and concepts. The lesson focuses on developing organizational skills and helping your child learn how to prioritize activities and work productively. When your child learns how to study smarter, not harder, they are building valuable skills that Ivy League students possess!
Click to learn more our this elite Diamond plan tutoring service.
While your child may get the grades or SAT scores that other Ivy League school applicants have, there are other skills and traits that an admission panel looks for.
A math tutor can help your child nurture and develop:
As a parent, there are experiences – like volunteering or traveling – that you can do with your child to ensure they become a compassionate thinker. Encourage and motivate your child to improve the world and address the dichotomy that exists.
When searching for a math tutor, find one that helps your child improve on a variety of skills that can help them become incredibly successful in life.
Our Thinkster tutors have helped thousands of students around the world. We’re excited to help your child too and develop skills that lead to future academic and life success.
Learn more about what makes our tutors rockstars. Enroll your child as a Thinkster so that they matched to an awesome math tutor today!
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