John Cho—yes, he has the same first, last, and middle name as that guy from Harold and Kumar—decided not to take his first GRE exam the night before his official test date. He had originally planned on enrolling in a traditional graduate program in education, but now that he had gotten accepted into the Match Teacher Residency, he saw no need to take the exam. His mother insisted, however, that there could be some unforeseeable benefits from taking the test, and after landing a 99th-percentile score the next day and eventually landing a job with Manhattan Prep, he rightly concluded that heeding motherly wisdom pays huge dividends.

John’s obsession with standardized testing began when he was the only one in his high school to score an 800 on the SAT World History exam. At around the same time, he started to develop a passion for teaching, spending hours a week helping his friends learn everything from playing the drums to juggling to throat singing. It wasn’t long until he united his two passions and gained a certain notoriety for committing to, and succeeding at, increasing people’s SAT scores by hundreds of points all for free, just for the fun of it. Yes, total nerd. He just could not keep himself from the thrill of seeing both his own scores and those of others around him increase. Years later, John formalized this eccentric hobby into a teaching degree and classroom experience as an English teacher. He now brings this expertise to the students of Manhattan Prep.

John and his wife, who is also a teacher, live in Roslindale, MA. Aside from his work with Manhattan Prep, John is pursuing a Master of Divinity and loves eating dangerously spicy cuisine.