In the summer after his sophomore year of high school, John developed an inexplicable and neurotic obsession with standardized tests. For three weeks, John did nothing but eat, sleep, and study. His reward was being the sole 800 scorer in his school on the SAT World History subject test. He was immediately hooked, eventually going on to score 99th-percentile marks on the SAT, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT exams.

Throughout his high school years, John also acquired a more productive hobby: he taught the people around him whatever skills he had mastered himself, just for the satisfaction of seeing others improve. He taught people how to play the drums and guitar. He taught people how to juggle and throat sing. And of course, he taught people how to increase their test scores. He gained notoriety for helping his friends improve their SAT scores by hundreds of points “for the fun of it.”

His hobby became a way of life. He took on various teacher assistant posts for his undergraduate logic and Spanish courses. He designed curricula for summer youth camps in North Philadelphia. He tutored at-risk youth through Holyoke’s El Arco Iris. He interned as an instructor with Breakthrough Collaborative. Upon graduating college, he joined the Match Teacher Residency, tutoring and teaching geometry, English, and Spanish. In 2014, he jumped at the opportunity to unite his love for both the classroom and standardized tests. He has been teaching at Manhattan Prep ever since.

John and his wife, who is also a teacher, live in Hyde Park, MA. They serve on the leadership of Hilltop Church in Cambridge, MA. John’s students often ask him whether he has used any of his scores for graduate, business, or law school. Much to their chagrin, he has not.