You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to do well on the GMAT or GRE. But if you were looking for one, Ilana took one semester of microrocketry long, long ago, and she even still remembers some of it. She’s gone on to obtain 99th-percentile scores on the GMAT and GRE (and a long-ago SAT). Ilana’s also a fully-licensed NYS Professional Engineer, because licensing exams are fun too. She sometimes thinks of taking the LSAT just because.

Ilana got her start tutoring in sixth grade, when a clever teacher determined that the best way to keep her from talking in class was to assign her a single person to talk to: a new immigrant classmate who didn’t speak any English. Since then, Ilana has taught and tutored children and adults of all ages in just about every subject you can think of, including more than a decade as a volunteer lecturer for an adult education program and a brief stint as a second grade language teacher. Her most memorable public speaking moment was when a steeple bell rang out at 11 a.m. as she stood before thousands of people giving her college valedictory address. Awkward pause follows here.

A native New Yorker, Ilana goes off to explore the world as often as possible, so as to see – and more importantly, to photograph – beautiful and interesting things. She always finds herself coming back home, though, where she can be found baking cookies, doing yoga, or working on her novel. She’ll let you know if that ever comes out.