Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Marathon GMAT Tutoring Session

Very few students go for a three-hour-long tutoring session

Recently I had a marathon (three hours in a row) GMAT tutoring session, with a student who had only a short time to prepare for the test. The coffee shop we were sitting in closed at 8:30 pm so we had to move to another coffee place nearby to finish the session.
We went over exponents, roots, ratios, percentages, percent increases, decimals, inequalities, data sufficiency questions, area and circumference of a circle, averages, powers of 2, prime numbers, factoring, the Pythagorean theorem, special triangles, Venn diagrams, area of a trapezoid, task completion team time, probability, counting unordered pairs, counting with the multiplication principle, rolling two dice, word problem key words, approaching word problems, setting up tables, picking numbers, and a few other topics.
This is only the second time in three years a student has requested a three-hour-long tutoring session. Maybe not by coincidence, the previous time it was also for the GMAT.
I have had plenty of two-hour sessions, and 90-minute sessions too but in the last three years only two of my students have gone for a solid three hours in a row.
I have no problem with a three-hour session; I can go for longer than that. It is usually my students who limit their sessions to one hour. More often than not, after one hour my students clearly indicate they can use a break from math.

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