Noureddine El Alam, Instructor in Math and Statistics
Do your assignments the day you have the class. And you might say, “But I have stuff for tomorrow.” That should have been done the day you had that class. Oftentimes, students do the assignments for the next class on the day. It shouldn’t work that way. So if you have a class on a Monday and a class on a Tuesday, do the assignments on Monday nights for the class [you just had]. Not for Tuesday. Tuesday’s would have already been done. And use the weekend to recalibrate and rebalance and start over again. Pace yourself. If you have a major assessment, it could be a big paper, [or] a project, work a little at a time — don’t cram. Definitely don’t spend the night before studying and not sleep. Sleep is more important than actually studying. So in fact, on the last night before a big assessment, you shouldn’t be studying at all. You should be just reviewing for 10, 15 minutes just to make sure you’re in the right place.
Maggie Fulop ’26
Preparation strategies vary by class for me, but I recommend having a strong playlist of music you like for each subject. Once I associate certain music with certain subjects, playing said music helps me get in the right mindset to focus on the work. [Also,] Quizlet is great, and I recommend typing out study guides or documents compiling all the information you need to know for a test. Try new things! Life is short and high school is shorter, and it only gets harder to start new things as you get older… Attend whatever clubs interest you, even if it’s only for a few meetings.
Jay Wei ’27
Clubs are a really good way to bond, as well as to learn from each other. Since clubs are mainly stuff outside of academics, [they are] a way that you can find people who have the same interests as you, and not focus on just academics, something that’s outside school. That’s why you can also meet new people at clubs. Also, clubs are a way to open up to other types of things that you might want to try that you may have not tried before. It helps you both open up to new things, as well as find people who share the same interests as you, which I think is awesome… It’s important to have fun at Andover, and although times may be hard, you might have peaks and valleys, you have to climb out of those valleys and have the time of your life. This is what Andover’s about.
Sami Tokat ’26
One tip that I would give is to really get to know your teachers. And I don’t mean this [as] “play towards your teacher’s preferences.” No, and I say this specifically about Andover — I’m sure it’s true about other schools too, but specifically about Andover — the teachers here are really, really, really…brilliant. You may think that they don’t play as big of a role in the class environment here because you’re learning from your classmates, but…you have to take advantage of really how smart they really are, and this is super underappreciated. That’s why I think conference time is such an important time. It’s not just to ask, it’s not just to show your teacher that you’re trying, it’s really to get to know the people around you [and to ask] the teachers questions you’re interested [in].
Scott Hoenig, Instructor in Math and Statistics
A lot of students here tend to stay up late, tend to use the weekends also for staying up late, and then kind of sleeping in late, and then Monday rolls around, and it’s pretty tough to get out of bed if you’ve slept in kind of late on the weekends. It’s a hard thing, because it’s a lot of fun to stay up with friends, and there’s a lot of great stuff going on on weekends. So, it can be really challenging to establish consistent and healthy sleep habits, and when students don’t do that, it really takes a pretty heavy toll on them. So, one piece of advice that I give to students in general, but particularly new students, is to try the best that you can to really put an end to your day. Even if you’re not all done with your work, just try to end your day, and go to sleep. If you need to get up a little bit earlier, I think that’s better than staying up later.
