“I’ve always been good at tests, but I think it was what I learned in 6th grade that helped me the most”.

Since 2004 Mark has been running a test prep tutoring business in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Mark was born in the Anordiacks about 2 hours south of Canada. Mark attended Hunter College in search of something cheap and in the city. While at college, Mark was asked by one of his friends for help with studying for the GREs, and to his surprise he realized the test was shockingly similar to the SAT he had taken a few years beforehand in high school. Mark got a 1520 on the test when he took it, a remarkably good score at the time. He claims that his skills, randomly enough, were developed largely by his sixth-grade math teacher. His teacher, Mr. Mills finished the regular school curriculum in January and proceeded to teach his sixth graders test-taking strategies for the rest of the year, in ways more sophisticated than Mark understood at the time. They would go over dental exams, and history exams where although they were not well versed in the material, Mr. Mils taught them the strategies to take the test. After Mark’s friend’s success with the GREs, she recommended him to her little brother, who needed help with the ISEEs. Mark was again a success and the mom of that child recommended him to 40 other people. It was at this point that Mark realized that he didn’t need to go to graduate school and had found a career right there and that he couldn’t throw it away.

For the remainder of college Mark tutored 30 hours a week while trying to get his diploma. By chance, after a student skipped one of his tutoring classes, Mark had to reach out to the parents to let them know of their child’s actions. After explaining the situation, it turned out the parent owned an after-school tutoring business, Kumon, and offered Mark to open up some classes there. Mark offers classes outside of just the Kumon space though, and has expanded his business to seven different schools and nationwide online tutoring (although he doesn’t like the conglomerate feel to that).

Mark doesn’t particularly love tutoring but claims that this same disapproval is what makes him so good at it. Mark says that he loves to read and would rather just do that all day, but no one would ever pay him to. His love for reading started when his dad, an English professor, would pay Mark to do the boring task of grading his students' essays for him (which was also when he realized he didn’t want to be an English professor). From tutoring, although feeling unqualified, Mark was offered a job to teach at Baruch College and garnered some legibility from that job that helped him launch his tutoring business. Mark loves the cold and rational numbers aspect of his job, “I don’t have to teach somebody to love the violin, I don’t have to teach somebody to love a language they don’t speak. I’m only working on a test.” But he also loves building relationships with families over time. Mark has been working with some families for over 10 years and feels so rewarded when a student gets into a competitive school. However, Mark doesn’t even love the job, but it pays the bills and he wouldn’t rather live anywhere else. He even hates the tests that he teaches as they have enormous flaws and he has to shut up and teach his way around them.

Over the course of the last 19 years, Mark has learned how to deal with angry parents and how much parents care about their kids. At first, he didn’t realize that telling a parent that their kid is bad at grammar was a big deal, but slowly “they would be offended in an almost spiritual way” and that parents get irrational when talking about their children. Mark has also learned how to get to know the children themselves rather than what the parents say cause they might not always know their kids as well as they think. Mark has been surprised at how well his business has sustained itself and he's realized that a large conglomerate will not be able to take over the tutoring business in the same way a car company like Toyota can. Mark views his demographic as one that is already bonded on the value of education, the community has learned that the harder you try to educate yourself the more results you will see.

In 10 years Mark imagines the business shifting away from testing and towards places where they prioritize helping students be dynamic applicants as opposed to just good test takers.