Tony has been a Kaplan admissions consultant for nearly nine years, helping numerous clients gain admission to top business and law programs (Ivy League [esp. Yale, Harvard, Penn, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Cornell], Stanford, MIT, NYU, Northwestern, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and international programs such as INSEAD and MSB). He has also helped clients gain acceptance at 2nd- and 3rd-tier schools (Pepperdine, UC-Davis, UCSD, Claremont, Southwestern, and Loyola, to name a few in California). Over the years, Tony has conducted business, law, and general graduate school admissions seminars for Kaplan, and in Fall 2004, served as a Kaplan B-school expert at the World MBA Tour in Los Angeles.
Although Tony is experienced and skilled in all aspects of the admissions process, his primary expertise lies in writing and essay evaluation. (In fact, he often receives compliments from clients and students on "how good he makes them sound.") His main goal is to ensure that each client's essays are unique, distinctive, interesting, and compelling, so that the essays actually get read—and get the client accepted. Tony has been known for helping students make their prose more concise and free of overly general or redundant "fat"; he has a definite knack for finding ways to bring a 1200+-word draft to below a 500-word limit—while losing little to none of the content.
Additionally, he has assisted clients with: brainstorming to discover interesting anecdotes and examples that highlight their strong qualities; developing these anecdotes into vivid prose; creating eye-catching, memorable introductory "hooks"; improving each essay's phrasing, especially to make it more grammatical, idiomatic, and academic; smoothing out the transitions and restructuring paragraphs; and providing the essay set with variety—all with maintaining the client's own voice. He also works very well under tight deadlines (although such circumstances are neither ideal nor recommended) and with students who have qualms or reservations about their English usage or writing skills.
Further, Tony is a veteran Kaplan test prep expert with over 12 years teaching experience (now primarily specializing in LSAT, GMAT, and GRE; he has previously taught SAT, PSAT, and MCAT verbal). His teaching also includes Kaplan courses specially designed for international students, once being selected from a nationwide pool of applicants to teach an intensive GRE course in the United Arab Emirates. He was also an expository writing instructor at USC for 12 years, and has taught English and ESL classes for the LAUSD, local community colleges, and private schools.
Finally, Tony is a member of American MENSA, Ltd., and has a 160+ IQ. He has appeared three times on television game shows; where he once won $5000 on Win Ben Stein's Money, and was a member of the winning team in a televised nationwide IQ test, tying for the highest score by missing only 2 questions (and defeating guest contestant Ben Stein—for a second time!). Although not on television, Tony has performed stand-up and improvisational comedy live on stage, and has written original comedy material both for himself and for others.
He graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in linguistics (summa cum laude, distinction in the major); and also earned a varsity letter in football. In 2000, Tony received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Southern California (specializing in the history of English, colloquial American English and American dialects, English syntax/grammar, sociolinguistics, and historical language change); he previously received his M.A. in the same field, was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi honor society, and received the Outstanding Graduate Student award. Tony has also delivered papers at three conferences and was twice published in the proceedings. During his academic career, among the languages he has studied are Italian, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Ukrainian, Swedish, and Polish.