Right after finals in June this year, The Free State of Jones came out in movie theaters. It stars Matthew McConaughey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Mahershala Ali, and tells the story of a white man, Newton Knight, who leads a counterrevolution during the Civil War. He argues that he will not fight for something, slavery, he… Read more »

Each year in January, The Bay Area Tutoring Centers proctors about one hundred practice ACT tests at Monte Vista High School in Danville, CA. Shortly thereafter, we return the tests and present information about the test itself, content, scoring, etc., some quick strategies to improve scores, and some basic information about what we at the… Read more »

It’s only October and you are already exhausted, only getting five hours of sleep a night, falling behind in some, or all, of your classes, and have been getting some grades on tests that aren’t your best. If none of the above applies to you, and you are confident that it will not happen in… Read more »

“Writing is like Math.” I have said this to many students, and I always get the same look of bewilderment. Yes, writing is like math. In both the upper case sense and the lower case. Writing, capital W, the classes we find in academia, and here in the Bay Area Tutoring Center for the SAT,… Read more »

It’s called close reading. Nobody tells you about this. It is like a hidden secret that would be so incredibly helpful to know, but with so much to cover and so little time to cover it in, teachers rarely get the opportunity to dig down deep into each individual line of text and explore its… Read more »