Tavistock Tutors Blog

Social Science Essays

Getting Top Marks In Social Science Essays Time and time again, students studying one or more of the social sciences will come to me saying that they simply do not understand why so many of their essays have received below average marks. Time and time again, I will tell students in the social sciences the same mantra: “it is not about [...]

Oxbridge Application

How not to get into Oxbridge

  1)    Apply for Cambridge with an AS average of under 90%. The logic is simple: Cambridge asks for a breakdown of your UMS marks, while Oxford do not. Suppose you’ve scored 80% in all your AS papers. If you apply to Oxford, you’ll look like just another straight A student; but if [...]

Importance Of Sports In School

Everywhere you look in today is newspapers there are articles about falling academic standards and English students not comparing favourably to their foreign counterparts. Parents, teachers, and politicians are all looking for ways to improve exam performance in children, so why have their eyes not fallen greedily on the 2 hours a week allotted for PE? After all, for 90% [...]

University Study Planning

There are people who seem to be busy all the time, but still do not achieve their goals. On the contrast, there are people who seem to be so relaxed, but their everyday life is packed with activities. One of my friends is a living example. He is a medical student in a clinical year, runs marathons for charities, volunteers, [...]

Drum Lessons

The essential part: In order to get work, as drummers you have to provide good time, good feel, good musical and rhythmical drum parts that fit into the given musical context. You have to learn to see things not from the perspective of other drummers, but from that of the people who will give you work. That is the musical director, [...]

Personal Statements

It must be one of the hardest things to convincingly sell yourself to other people. A great degree of scepticism no doubt hangs over many admissions offices of many universities during mid October to May of each academic year. Students are tasked with giving the admissions tutors a good impression of themselves, how fun, engaging, intelligent and interested they are [...]

Learning Styles Across Europe

Checking out how our neighbours are learning – and what it tells us about ourselves? The craze of the exams season and results days. As ever, the newspapers have been full of pages of stats and league tables. They are a perennial guilty pleasure of parents everywhere – has their alma mater gone up or down? How has the new head [...]

The Abstraction Paradigm

Let’s talk a bit about the abstraction paradigm. First, we have to understand that the major difficulty and the paradoxe of this article will be to talk to you about this concept without using it. Therefore, we are going to focus on the academic field and particularly the IT to stay simple and make sense. Everyone already dealt at least once [...]

Passing English Literature Exams

Examining the Examinable: Passing English Literature Exams. In my experience preparing students for English Literature exams, a complaint that I commonly get from students is that they have no idea what the examiners are expecting from them. This confusion is experienced by students at all levels, from GCSE to Degree. Even the most intelligent students I've taught have become unstuck [...]

Tips For Oxbridge English Applicants

A: Choosing Your College: GO AND VISIT; it doesn’t really matter how many other opinions you get, the best thing you can do is go and see for yourself. You will be there for three years and it is vital that you feel inspired and comfortable in your surroundings ASK GRADUATES/STUDENTS: the next best thing if you can’t visit is to talk [...]