I’m Alvaro Valle, a Tutor and Admissions Advisor who is passionate about helping students understand the world around them.

Qualifications

AB in Chemistry & Physics, Harvard

MS in Chemistry, UC Berkeley

ACT: 36 | SAT: 2340 (1580 using current scoring) | GRE Quantitative: 170 | GRE Verbal: 170 | Scored 5 on twelve AP exams

Eight years of tutoring and advising experience

Tutoring

I’m an enthusiastic student of liberal arts and am comfortable tutoring any high school course in math, science, English, and the social sciences. Math and the physical sciences are areas of particular expertise which I also tutor at the undergraduate level, but part of what I enjoy most about tutoring is the variety of topics I work on with students. I try to emphasize each topic’s relevance to a student’s life and suffuse all my teaching with the joy I get from learning.

Standardized Test Prep

I have been tutoring the SAT and ACT since my own senior year of high school and am extremely familiar with these exams. I have tutored for ten different AP exams; the majority of my clients have scored 5, and none have scored below 4. I also tutor the GRE for students pursuing graduate admissions. Standardized tests are not fun for anyone, so I endeavor to make the experience as painless and low stress as possible while assisting the student to reach their target score.

Admissions Advising

I have advised about a dozen students over the past three admissions cycles on undergraduate applications and slightly fewer than that on graduate admissions. While I do not have a long track record, my mentees have enjoyed remarkable success, having earned admission to universities such as Columbia, UC Berkeley, UPenn, Cornell, NYU, and Duke. Keeping a small stable of advisees also allows me to give each student the close attention needed to best tell their story. I have worked with a handful of international applicants to US undergraduate and graduate programs and am happy to help more international students navigate the US admissions system.