• Coronavirus update - The coronavirus epidemic affects us all in multiple ways. Some of us are more vulnerable or nervous or skeptical than others. I believe in respecting your choices while explaining mine. My personal choice was to limit all unnecessary interpersonal contact while any locality that I live in has more than a 1% active infection rate. [...]
  • “How much will I improve” on the SAT / ACT / GRE / LSAT / GMAT? - When you first start preparing for a standardized exam, you usually take an entrance test.  It’s usually lower than what you had hoped for, and then you wonder, “How many points can I expect to gain?”  That is a very good question, and also a complicated one.  It doesn’t make sense to measure improvement in [...]
  • An ACT Essay Prompt Simulacrum - The ACT changed its essay format last year.  It is difficult to get much practice for this essay, because so far the ACT has only published two samples:  Intelligent Machines and Public Health and Individual Freedom (p. 54).  Here I provide a simulacrum, an unofficial sample prompt.  I made every effort to write this simulacrum [...]
  • And you thought the LSAT was hard! Logic problems involving others’ minds - This Christmas vacation, don’t ask me how, but at one point our dinner discussion turned to a logic problem.  It’s an interesting puzzle, because it requires thinking about what other people do or do not know, and what they can or can not figure out based on their knowledge.  I realize that this problem has [...]
  • GRE course: Prepayment, commitment, refund - I understand that large programs like Kaplan and Manhattan Prep. may offer you the chance to audit a class, i.e. to sit in on one session before committing to the full program. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to offer that option. These days, my classes are usually right at the minimum level of [...]
  • Why my 6-week classes cost less, and why that’s good - As a small, local test-prep company, one of my business strategies is to be a price leader.  To take a GRE class at a major test-prep company like Kaplan, Princeton Review, Manhattan, or Blueprint, you can expect to pay anywhere from $900 to $1,800.  You can take an equivalent class at Nth Degree for $600, including [...]
  • Tests for Divisibility by 4 or 8 - There are many occasions in math problems when it is useful to know if one number is divisible by another.  For example, if you can tell at a glance that 3,521 is not divisible by 11, then you will not waste your time trying to divide 3,521 by 11!  Or if you need to reduce [...]
  • Welcome to Scot’s Blog! - This is the first post in the Blog.  Newer posts will appear above.  Thanks for visiting!