Melbourne VCE Tutor: 99 ENTER, four years coaching experience - Collin Li

[Collin Li]

You can always read the original page at my website here: Melbourne VCE Tutor: 99 ENTER, four years coaching experience, teaching at The University of Melbourne - Collin Li. Below may be an outdated version of my website, and hence, prices may vary:


Hi, my name’s Collin, and I’ve been tutoring ever since I finished VCE in 2006 with an ENTER of 99.00.

I got my first preference at the University of Melbourne, where I study an Engineering and Commerce double degree, and have continued to achieve outstanding results — achieving Dean’s Honours awards every year (ranked in the top 3% of students).

My Ethos.

Contrary to most success stories, I achieved this with an average of only 2 hours of study a day. I focused on introducing structure and consistency, while letting my brain do what it’s already good at — learning conceptually, discovering patterns and absorbing lots of knowledge.

I can be your mentor as well as your tutor. Unlike older tutors who have lost touch with the system, I only did the VCE in 2006. I was in your boat just a few years ago. I've transferred my knowledge to other students year after year, and for myself, I've never strayed from using the same system for remembering vast amounts of knowledge! I'm also an actively involved student – I am an entrepreneur, and I love to challenge myself. I can talk to you about your career plans, challenging the norm, and goal-setting.

My core belief in teaching is to make sure the student understands the concepts correctly. This cannot always be achieved in classroom situations, but as a private tutor, I am able to focus on your thought process, and closing the gaps. By identifying the underlying misconceptions, I can then easily correct the mistakes that your mind makes.

I'm not a believer in rote-learning. It is an inefficient style of learning. Whenever possible, I promote self-learning, conceptual understanding, story-telling and pattern-seeking to make the topics more relevant, enjoyable and memorable to the student.

Through my methods, I have improved the ability of many of my students to recall key ideas from memory. Many of my students have a better understanding of the subject under my tuition, which prepares them for the unexpected questions that can come up on exams.

My Specialties.

I tutor the following subjects for VCE:

• Maths Methods (Units 1 to 4)
• Chemistry (Units 1 to 4)
• Specialist Maths (Units 1 to 4)
• Physics (Units 3 and 4)

I can teach, help or mentor, depending on the student’s needs. Tuition sessions do not need to have a rigid structure – they can be weekly, fortnightly, once-off, or random! It's completely flexible.

I generally operate at the State Library of Victoria, due to its central location.

I charge $80 per hour (negotiable in groups of two). This is a great price for a study coach if you consider that many successful people pay upwards of $100 per hour for a life coach or a manager! I am paid more than $100 per hour by my university to teach economics every week. You have the opportunity to pay a cheaper price because you chose to start early!

Contact me if you are interested, or have any questions at all!



My Experience.

I graduated from Melbourne High School in 2006 with an ENTER of 99.00. I've tutored over 40 students over my four years of tutoring experience. Additionally, I am a tutor with The University of Melbourne, where I teach economics to larger classes of students every week.

I obtained raw study scores of 45 or above in all of the subjects that I tutor, which all scaled up to scores greater than 47 (the highest one being 53.16 for Specialist Maths). Study scores have a maximum of 50, and a maximum scaled score of 55. A raw score of 45 and above ranks you in the top 2% of students who studied that subject.

Testimonials.

First, I want to share some of my favourite success stories:

• I tutored a student who got a perfect ENTER of 99.95. She now studies Medicine at Monash.
• I tutored two students (in a group) who both got a perfect raw study score of 50 in Chemistry.

Academically, I don’t think I offered them much that they already didn’t know (because they were already top students), but in hindsight, I noticed I coached them quite well. I got them to play the right mindset in an exam — the one that unlocked their full potential.

An arguably prouder achievement was when I tutored a student from a difficult background to an ENTER of 95.55 in 2008. He got into his first preference course (Chemical Engineering & Pharmaceutical Science at Monash). I’ve done this with various students over the years, helping them to achieve their first preference.

Some of my highest praise can be found on my online tutoring page. I am deeply appreciative of their comments. Some of these comments came directly from this VCENotes thread! Thanks to all of my students for their praise and support. Without them, I wouldn’t have the confidence to continue providing the help that I can.

Contact

Let me know what subjects you need to be tutored in, what kind of help you’d like, and when you’d like to begin. E-mail is preferred, but you can also PM me - keep in mind that I don't get e-mail notifications for my PMs received at VCE Notes, and I am not a very active member anymore.



Thanks for your interest!

[vcestar]

Just outta curiosity, do UNI results mater much?

[shinny]

I think he means in relation to you being a tutor, and in that respect, yes, they definitely show that Colin knows his stuff, and his posts on this forum to me shows that he knows his stuff beyond the level that my teachers would.

ENDORSED.

[Flaming_Arrow]

Colin is an awesome tutor!

[brendan]

Just outta curiosity, do UNI results mater much?

For some professional organizations you need to get certain marks to be accredited.
Employers will care about your final year results particularly, to short list applicants.
If you want to do postgraduate studies then the admissions officers will look at your marks, same if you want to apply for Honours.

[lacoste]

I am not a believer in rote-learning: I attempt to impart a "bigger picture" in order to bring the topics to a neat close for a concise and potent understanding of the subject.

Hey Coblin, what exactly does rote-learning mean in your context?
Doesn't it require a fair bit say ~75% of rote-learning to do well in the subjects that you tutor in, or not, please explain?

[shinny]

There's various ways of doing subjects like Chemistry because they are so concept-based, as opposed to solid theory like say business management. For example, for Le Chatelier's principle, you could rote-learn that in terms of what occurs in each and every scenario off by heart, or you could do it the other way (and it's the way I'm pretty sure most of the top students do it) is to just remember the concepts behind LCP, and derive what you need when you need it. This applies in many areas of chemistry, and was the main reason I was able to cram and learn the course in such a small amount of time since I just learnt the concepts and moved on; everything else I needed, I'd derive inside the exam.

[lacoste]

ahh ok, i sort of get what your saying. actually no i dont. i have no idea what Le Chatelier's principle is, sounds pretty french to me. :] ;]
looking forward to that principle. !!!!

[lacoste]

can you give an example for chemistry ? instead of BM.

[Collin Li]

Instead of remembering the separate trends for atomic size, electronegativity, first ionisation energies, etc., you can derive them all from a single general underlying principle.

[shinny]

LOL LCP isn't from busman, its from chem ahah...but don't worry you don't need to know about it yet. I can't quite remember what's in unit 1/2, but another weaker example might be like, rather than memorising all the trends in the periodic table, you could derive some from others. For example, you know that as you move left to right, top to bottom, the number of protons increase by one. You could then use this obvious trend to then deduce that the weights increase as you move in this fashion (not always actually, there's exceptions but screw them), then from this, you would be able to deduce other stuff and so on. It's not as good of an example since the other trends are quite obvious too, but my point is that by learning and understanding fundamentals, you'll often be able to approach 'new-style' questions with ease by deriving what you need. For example, this happened in this year's chemistry end year where a lot of people got stuck on a question which we didn't actually have a formula for. People would have only rote-learned E=VIt and Q=It and the types of questions they could be used for. What many didn't know or realise is that these two formulas could be merged to make E=VQ to solve the problem. Also not the perfect example of what I wanted to say, but it still sorta works.

EDIT: coblin summed what I wanted in one sentence..PFFT.

[lacoste]

Instead of remembering the separate trends for atomic size, electronegativity, first ionisation energies, etc., you can derive them all from a single general underlying principle.

ok. the general underlying principle is using the rules for the periodic table?
or not?

[lacoste]

shinny: lol for thinking it was busman, heha!
good explanation for periodic table one

[enwiabe]

Lol, tutoring 'business'... do you even have an ABN?

[Fyrefly]

Lol, tutoring 'business'... do you even have an ABN?

Lol! Of course he doesn't... cash in hand ftw!

Though... if he did set up a business... his HECS fees may be tax deductible!
That's certainly something worth looking into actually...