| Faculty Info |
| Arthur Ahn |
| "I can recite players' names from almost every Mets team of the past 30 years. The 1986 World Series was the first event I ever saw on television, so my loyalty runs deep." |
| "I won a school spelling bee in the fifth grade, and came in second in the seventh grade. I lost on the word 'plateau,' which I will never spell incorrectly again!" |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| I find teaching to be genuinely fun—it's great to see students "get" concepts and realize they are more capable than maybe they thought they were. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment |
| No one is born a test-prep genius, just as no one is born to hit a home run or discover a cure for a disease. It takes time and effort to succeed. |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes |
| Baseball statistics. |
| Amber Swain |
| What's your best advice for students: Progress is about patience and making actual change. Student scores stall when they revert to old ways of doing things because they seem faster. Trust the process... timing improves after mastering new methods. Also, ask questions along the way. I'm here to help. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment: I really like to give students the imagery that the writers of LSAT Logical Reading questions are people who ooze arrogance but not intelligence (think of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast). Students usually start out really intimidated by the writing on the test, so making them caricaturize the writers as not-so-smart gives them confidence and helps them spot patterns quicker. Once they realize that virtually every LSAT argument is flawed, they have the key to unlocking the section. |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes: How to identify at least 20 Monster Jam trucks (I have two little boys) |
| Steve Ferges |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Treat the test like a fun, puzzle game you are determined to figure out. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment. |
| The old carpenter's adage: Measure twice, cut once. In other words, do it right the first time and you don't have to repeat your efforts |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes. |
| Let's talk growth mindset! Change the internal language for best results. |
| Boris Dvorkin |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| When you screw up, don't beat yourself up. Nothing bad will happen if you get a problem wrong in practice, and it reduces your likelihood of making the same mistake on test day. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment. |
| The test makers are like Professor Snape. At first, they seem like the bad guys, with their challenging problems, strict time limits, and traps. But in the end, they turn out to be your allies. If the test were easy, then people who didn't work as hard as you did would still do well. |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes. |
| How to play the hit filler board game For Sale. |
| Gordon Spector |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Be patient with yourself. Embrace your mistakes for the learning opportunities they are, and realize that test preparation is a matter of learning specific skills. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an "aha!" moment. |
| If you played a game of tennis against Serena Williams, she'd destroy you. On the other hand, if you'd been taking tennis lessons for 5 years and it was Serena's very first time ever on a tennis court, you'd destroy her. Mastery isn't about some magical talent; it's about learnable skills. |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes. |
| How to grill a steak to perfection. |
| Josh Ragan |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Be willing to learn and put forth the effort, and you can trust that you will see improvement. Remember that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and proceeds forward one step at a time, so focus on each step as you move forward, and it's only a matter of time until you reach your goal! |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment. |
| Learning the skills you need to excel within any test is the same as learning any new skill - at the start, you'll need to take the time to focus on solidifying the fundamentals, and from there you'll get progressively faster at making further improvement. Just like when a baby learns to walk, at the start there is a lot of falling down, figuring out what works and what doesn't, getting all of the muscle coordination together, etc., but there quickly comes the point when you no longer need to focus on how to walk to do so effectively and you can then start running, jumping, skipping, and all of the more advanced movements that build on learning to walk - the same process occurs when learning the skills to succeed academically :). |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes. |
| How to find the comfortable balance point when hanging out upside down on an inversion stand. |
| Stephen Snyder |
| Elon University, Bachelor of Arts: English and Philosophy Brooklyn College, Master of Fine Arts: Fiction |
| Stephen began teaching with Kaplan after earning a 99th percentile score on the LSAT exam. He quickly found that teaching was more of his passion than law and has been helping students achieve their score goals ever since. He particularly enjoys demonstrating the habits and mindsets that allow his students to make progress, not only on standardized tests, but in any areas in which they wish to improve. When not rocking standardized tests, Stephen is busy writing a YA sci-fi novel and playing Magic: The Gathering. |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Learning new content is only half the battle. You also have to retain what you've learned and store it in long-term memory. That's the real secret to success on test day. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment |
| Mastering a skill in test prep is like learning how to play a scale on the piano: you have to start out slowly, really concentrating on what you're doing, but with enough repetition you can eventually get it to be automatic. |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes |
| The complete history of the X-men (abridged). |
| Steve Cisar |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Standardized tests can't be mastered by memorizing a bunch of things; they're really about reasoning, If you show a willingness to look at the test in new ways you'll find that even the most daunting problems are solvable. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment |
| You can't learn a new piece of music by just playing through it several times. Rather, you need to break it down and play through parts slowly, all while making and correcting mistakes along the way. Prepping for a test is the same way. All of the practice tests in the world won't help if you don't break thing down and make adjustments along the way. |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes |
| How to beat in 3 with one hand while beating in 4 with the other. Yes, math will in fact play a role! |
| Hannah Gist |
| Hillsdale College 2007, History & Sociology |
| Hannah has been teaching and tutoring for Kaplan since 2009. She has coached more than 10,000 students to help them earn their goal scores—everything from the 50th percentile to the 99th percentile. Hannah has worked with Kaplan’s curriculum development teams and served as a peer mentor for other tutors. Her students most often praise the clarity of her explanations, her belief in every student's ability to succeed, and her talent for tailoring each student's experience to their needs. |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Don't be too quick to define yourself as a person who "isn't good at standardized tests;" or "skips questions;" or "has no confidence." Too often, these self-definitions become self-fulfilling prophecies. Instead, maintain your focus on the future vision of yourself who is better than the current version of yourself. You'll be much more likely to succeed. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment |
| You know when you go to the store before dinner, hungry, without a list, and all kinds of unhealthy food makes its way into your cart? Predicting an answer on the LSAT is like making a shopping list when you go to the grocery store. You know exactly what you need in a right answer, so you can find it quickly. And, you're much less likely to be tempted by the "unhealthy" answer choices. In my classes, we made up a hashtag for this. #noOreos |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes |
| I can teach you how to make a really great cup of pour-over coffee! |
| Nick Nguyen |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Take things one SMALL step at a time. It can be easy to be so fixated on the myriad of things you need to do that you get overwhelmed. The key to multi-tasking and achieving success is to build your confidence with a myriad of essential accomplishments. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment. |
| Just coming to class is not enough. That would be like learning how to drive stick shift or ride a bike by watching a youtube video. You need to practice and do work outside of class or a disaster will happen. |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes. |
| How to introduce yourself in French. |
| Sasha Fawaz |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Know your WHY - a goal score without a purpose is empty. Your goal score is achievable, but not without a lot of work. What will having that higher score mean for you? For your future? Your family? To reach your goal, you're going to need skills, content knowledge, and MOTIVATION. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment. |
| You want to take any practice tests you do seriously even though they aren't your 'official score.' Imagine if we were to co-plan a running schedule to get you prepared for a marathon. On the first day, I ask you to run as far as you can, but because it's just practice, you only run around the block rather than truly push yourself. We are going to come up with a plan for someone who can only run around the block! Without those accurate progress checks, we won't be able to plan and get you on track to reaching your ultimate goal. |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes. |
| I could probably teach you all the algorithms needed to solve a Rubix cube in under a minute in about 5 minutes, but it would, unfortunately, take longer to memorize them all. |
| Jen Fletcher |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Carve out the time to take full advantage of your Kaplan resources. You don't HAVE to do this homework - you GET to do this homework, and you deserve the score increases that come with being able to use most or all of your Kaplan materials. |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment. |
| The test-maker rewards us for being able to adjust the appearance of the information without actually changing the value, so be ready to think flexibly about numbers. If your answer on scratch paper says 3/10, the correct answer might read as 30%. Same dog, new outfit :) |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes. |
| How to quickly get through international security if you're about to miss your connecting flight. |
| Cailin Emmett |
| What's your best advice for students? |
| Attack the test strategically - don't just follow where the LSAT leads you. Every question on the LSAT is worth the same amount, and there's a huge amount of power in that. Every question, every passage, every game, every section is a brand new day with no mistakes in it. If something's not working, or starting to bog you down, guess, flag it, then let it go and go find your points elsewhere - and there *are* always points elsewhere! You take the test, the test does not take you! |
| Explain an analogy you use to create an aha moment |
| The process of prepping for the LSAT is a lot like playing a new video game. First you just hit buttons and die a lot. Then you learn the mechanics of the game - how to jump, how to kick, how to throw a fireball - but you're still not very good or very fast at the game! Then - you play! You play, and you play, and you play until the mechanics of the game become habit - you don't think about what your hands are doing, they just do it. This lessens your cognitive load, letting you focus on other things, like patterns in the game, or opportunities for extra points. That's when you can start finding secret passages and getting to the bonus level and saving the princess! The LSAT works the same way - first you have to invest in learning the mechanics of the test - then you can start getting those points! |
| Tell us something fun you can teach in 5 minutes |
| How to make an origami star. |