The Unsung Educators: Tutoring at Stuyvesant

For many Stuyvesant students, academic excellence often begins well before they even set foot in the school. Across New York City, the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT)—the notorious three-hour-long online exam that determines who gets admitted to the city’s seven elite specialized high schools—is the pinnacle of opportunity and pressure. While some students take preparatory courses or pay for private tutors that cost thousands of dollars, others turn to volunteers willing to share their time and expertise for free. Some of those volunteer tutors are Stuyvesant students who have experienced the exam themselves and are now dedicating hours each week to helping others. 

One of these students is senior Sophie Zhao, an SHSAT department head of the Metis Project, a student-led organization that connects students from kindergarten to high school with volunteer tutors in various subjects. Zhao began tutoring for the Metis Project in her sophomore year, explaining that her motivation to tutor is rooted in personal experience. “After borrowing prep books from the library and learning ahead in math and grammar, my hard work paid off. After this experience, I realized that I wanted to help ambitious students who don't have access to adequate preparation in school but don’t want to pay for tutoring to ace the SHSAT. Hence, I started my tutoring journey and eventually became the SHSAT department head at Metis Project!” Zhao said in an email interview.

Zhao’s dedication to equity is evident in her highly structured approach to her tutoring sessions. She explains how her teaching style, which involves various practice problems, highlights diverse aspects of her work. “I alternated between math and English lessons. I incorporated problems from the official SHSAT handbooks, some SAT problems from Khan Academy, DeltaMath problems, and English Regents questions. In each session, I presented a slideshow teaching a topic, worked on example problems with my students, and gave my students practice questions. I periodically offered students practice tests to do,” she said. Later, when Zhao was promoted to SHSAT Department Head, she took on extra responsibilities. “I reviewed diagnostic test results for other tutors and provided individualized feedback on areas of improvement for their students. During my sophomore and junior summers, I revised the organization’s curriculum to cover more advanced topics and contain more practice questions,” Zhao said. 

For Zhao, tutoring is more than just helping students do well on the test. She aims to create equal opportunities for those who need them, a goal easily attainable given the high caliber of Stuyvesant students. “I believe a lot of Stuy students tutor because Stuy students are already academically strong and are well-equipped to share their knowledge with the rest of their community,” she said. Additionally, she believes that tutoring is widely recognized as an accessible form of community service. “Tutoring sessions can be established in any convenient spot or be virtual […] Virtual tutoring is convenient for both the tutor and the tutee. It is also very easy to start tutoring anytime,” said Zhao, who tutors virtually. 

Sophomore Benjamin Xie, however, takes a different approach: tailoring general lessons to specific needs. “I started tutoring with teddybearcommunity.com after learning about it in Mr. Blumm’s Opportunities Bulletin. Right now, I tutor with Teddy Bear Community and Stuyvesant Study Society, and also with FRAP whenever I want to. I tutor for the SHSAT partially with TBC/SST and fully with SSS/Stuy Prep,” he said in an email interview. At every session, Xie noted, he asks the tutee if there is something in particular they want to talk about or work on; otherwise, he simply expands on the previous session’s topic. Xie also stressed the importance of preparation for both the tutor and tutee. Given his lack of a standardized curriculum to follow, it’s crucial that he feels comfortable teaching the subject. He noted, for instance, “With something like middle school math, I am comfortable with no preparation, but with something like StuyPrep or FRAP, I prefer to do some research / look over my notes before tutoring.’’

Additionally, Xie reflected on the SHSAT’s role in curating a tutoring culture at Stuyvesant, emphasizing personal dedication over an extreme quantity of instructional time. He said, “The SHSAT requires some small group tutoring (can be one-on-one), but individual dedication is more important. For me, the only tutoring I did was my school’s after-school program. The reason I did well was that I took the program seriously. I am fine with the tutoring culture at Stuy. I believe it is good that Stuy students want to make their knowledge more accessible for everyone.”

Indeed, Zhao furthered this by noting how, while the SHSAT isn’t explicitly unfair, it does present preparation divides across the city. “My middle school’s curriculum did not prepare me for some topics of the exam, and I’m sure this also applied to other middle schools. I decided to self-teach myself everything I needed for the SHSAT since I didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars to compensate for the lack of preparation my middle school classes had,” she explained. 

Others have chosen to develop new institutions to combat these underlying problems. Sophomore Gianna Guenther, who moved to New York City the summer before eighth grade, wanted to make the resources needed to understand the NYC high school system more accessible. She created EmpowerEd, an education-focused support system committed to tutoring, informational seminars, and nonprofit work. Guenther commented in an email interview, “The underlying problem with SHSAT tutoring isn’t just about test prep, it’s about the gaps in material that start much earlier, especially for underprivileged kids. In many under-resourced schools, foundational skills aren’t properly being reinforced. By the time they have to prepare for the SHSAT, [students] are having to play catch-up while also learning test strategies.” In particular, this creates financial disparities that are exacerbated by the expensive tutors that EmpowerEd aims to push back against. “The students who would most need one-on-one [tutoring] are often the ones least able to afford it,” Guenther explained.

The tutoring culture at Stuyvesant is produced by a blend of personal experience, academic focus, and goodwill. As many of the city’s top high schools continue to rely on the SHSAT exam, these student tutors demonstrate that equity can be built from within a student body itself, one weekend at a time.