Octavian A
Tutor in Balham, South West London

Personal Description:
I have been teaching Physics at the University of Oxford since 2009. I also do research in Medical Physics (mathematical optimization of radiotherapy for cancer patients). I am a polyglot fluent in 5 languages (English, French, Italian, Romanian and Spanish) and I am currently improving my Arabic, Galician and German. I hold degrees in Physics (MSc Paris and BSc Toulouse), Engineering (BEng Toulouse) and Radiation Biology (Msc Oxford). I have obtained no less than 9 certificates in 4 languages from the University of Oxford Language Center, the most advanced being in Spanish (Proficiency/C2), Italian (also Proficiency/C2), German (Vantage/B2) and Arabic (Elementary/A2).
Tutoring Experience:
Higher Education: 1500+ h of tutoring at the University of Oxford and privately at Degree level (Mathematics for Physics, Mechanics,Electromagnetism, Thermodynamics,Statistics, Quantum Mechanics, Solid State, Biophysics).

Secondary Education: 1200+ h of tutoring in Physics (A2, AS, IB, PAT, SAT, GCSE), Maths (A2, AS, IB, MAT, SAT, GCSE) and French/Spanish/Italian (all levels, conversational and writing skills). Examination boards covered: Edexcel, OCR and AQA.

Some (non-exhaustive) recent tuition work:

Some recent tuition examples:

1)C. is a 2nd year student at KCL. We started in person and online tuition in March 2016 and, working 21 h/week, in 2 months we covered the whole curriculum and the past papers. C. received marks ranging from 60 to 95 in all of his exams.

2)T. is a 1st year student at KCL. Having gone through a family tragedy, he initially suffered from poor self confidence. We started online tuition in February 2016 and we covered the full curriculum. By April, T was able to do on his own 3 past papers/day and the need for tuition was reduced to 3h/week. His hard work paid off, as T received a First for his 1st year results.

3)O. is a very bright AS/A2 student who suffers from Asperger`s. I have regularly worked with him for 2h/week for over more than a year, teaching him C1-4, S1-2, FP1-2, M1-2 and the MAT. I have helped him with exam strategies, time management, and making use of visual representations (graphs). We also focused on those particular types of exercises where he would get very low marks. O is taking no less than 16 exams this May and June and scored AAC.

4) A. graduated with a Degree in Law and wanted to work for a prestigious fashion firm in France. I helped her with translating her CV and statement of purpose from English into French.

5)I. suffered from poor health and needed my help to prepare for his Physics and Maths A2 Exams. I worked with him on average for 1h/week and I expect him to receive the grades required by his top-choice University.

6)J. is a first year Physics student at UCL. Unfortunately, due to a food poisoning incident, she missed her May exams. This summer, it is my duty to encourage and prepare her for her September exams. Hopefully, the food poisoning was a blessing in disguise and she now aims at a First.

7)V. needed my help to prepare for a 3rd year Quantitative Finance exam at Regent`s University. We had intensive tuition in December, for 3-5 hours/per day during two weeks. I also helped him translate the website of his start-up from French into English.

8)A. is a 3rd year student at the University of Glasgow. Unfortunately, last year he failed all of his exams. This year, I had online tuition with him for 1-2h/ week and we focused on solving past exams papers he struggled with on his own. He passed all 10 of his exams and graduated.

9)G. is an Italian MSc student at Imperial College in Biological and Medical Sciences. I helped him prepare for his Physics/Biomechanics exam.

10)P is a Russian 1st year Physics student at Imperial College. I helped him prepare for his Mechanics exam resit and we worked for 3h/day during the week before his exam. P achieved much more than the 40% needed to pass and is now enjoying a worry free summer.

11)M is from Saudi Arabia and is a Foundation student at Kaplan. He excelled at his theoretical modules, yet he encountered problems when it came to writing lab reports on the Physics experiments he hid in class. I gave him hints on how to organize his data, structure his ideas and present them in a clear and logical order. A`s marks increased to 95%, the top of his class!

Tutoring Approach:
Every student is unique and as such, I always devise a personal study plan for each and every one of them. I take into account the goals, the time left until the exams, the material that needs to be covered, the current level of the student, and use all of this to compute the number of hours of tuition and self-study (homework) required to achieve the goals.

I am a friendly Tutor. I always learn what my students' interests and hobbies are and adapt my teaching to include them. For example, a student interested in water sports will enjoy a lot more solving kinematics problems involving boats and ships rather than cars or trains.

During the last 15 minutes of the tuition session, I can write a detailed report that will include how the student coped with homework, a summary of the work covered, what the student's strengths in the tutorial were, any suggestions for improvement, the homework assignments and the agreed date and time of the next tutorial. This report will be immediately e-mailed to the student and/or the parents, so that they can have real-time feedback and easily track progress.

Payment can be made in cash immediately after the lesson or via bank transfer before the lesson.

I look forward to helping you achieve your personal best!