Content is the easy part. It is in every textbook and half of YouTube. What actually moves a grade is mentoring, guidance and a plan, from a tutor who sat your exam two summers ago and is now on the course you are aiming at.
Every student we meet already has the notes. Almost none of them are short of material. What they are short of is someone to tell them what matters, in what order, and whether they are actually on track.
Someone in your corner who has done this recently, who you can message when a question breaks you at ten at night, and who will tell you plainly when you are fine and when you are not. Most students do not need more information. They need someone who knows them.
Knowing what to drop, what to drill and what to ignore entirely. Which topics are worth the hours, which university and course actually suit you, what the application wants and what the interview is really like. That judgement comes from having done it, not from reading about it.
A sequence with dates on it, worked backwards from the exam. Very few students fail because they could not understand the material. They run out of time, or spend it on the wrong topics in the wrong order, and find out in May.
Which matters, and which we are good at. But teaching without the other three is a tutor working through a textbook at your pace, and that is what most tutoring is.
Every ILE tutor is a current student at a leading university who took top marks in the subject they teach. That means each of them is standing on both sides of the thing you are trying to cross.
Not thirty years ago and not on a different syllabus. Recently enough to remember which questions caught people out, because those questions caught them.
Reading Medicine at Cambridge, Physics at Oxford, Economics at UCL. They made the application you are about to make and sat the interview you are worried about.
You are matched to a tutor on subject, exam board and where you are headed, before the free trial lesson. Not to whoever has a gap on Tuesday. The team is on our about page.
The same process for every student, whatever the subject. The plan changes; the shape does not.
Bring a paper you have already attempted. We go through it against the mark scheme and find out whether the problem is content, technique or timing, because the three need completely different fixes. You leave that session knowing what is costing you marks whether or not you book another.
Built backwards from your exam, in the order that moves your grade fastest, with the topics everything else depends on first. You and your parents get a copy, so the plan is a thing you can hold us to.
Teaching, timed practice and mark-scheme feedback in the hour. Between sessions you can message your tutor when you are stuck, and parents get an update after every lesson. The mentoring is the part that happens in the gaps.
Full papers under real conditions, well before the summer, marked the way an examiner would mark them. By then the plan is mostly drilling and holding your nerve, which is the point.
No lesson templates delivered identically to forty students. Your tutor plans your hour around your last paper.
Questions are chosen for the gap you actually have. Volume without diagnosis mostly rehearses the same mistake.
If we have no tutor who took your subject on your board and did well, we will tell you rather than improvise.
Nobody can, and anyone who does is selling something. What we commit to is the diagnosis, the plan and the work.
It depends what is wrong. Technique problems, misread command words, answers that never reach the mark scheme, can change in the first timed paper. Content gaps take as long as the content takes. What you should expect from the first session is an honest diagnosis rather than a promise about how fast it will move.
Yes, and it should. The grades are one half; the admissions test, the personal statement and the interview are the other. Your tutor has been through that application recently, and we cover the tests and mock interviews on our entrance exams page.
Whichever the diagnostic says. Some students need the full sequence taught properly; more need three specific topics repaired and then technique work on everything else. Paying for content you already know is the most common waste in tutoring.
Cost, scheduling, exam boards, cancellations and how parents stay informed are all answered on the FAQ page, and the rates are on the pricing page.
A full 60-minute lesson, free, with no card details. Bring a paper you have already attempted and you will leave knowing exactly where the marks went.
Book a free trial lesson →