Graduate from the University of Cambridge. Providing practical and efficient advice for Oxford or Cambridge applications and interviews. 100% interview success rate across all previous students.

Find out more about Noah

• 1) When did you develop an interest in your chosen field and in private tutoring?

  Politics, History and English Literature are three highly interconnected subjects. You cannot study a single one of these without necessarily dipping into the others at any given time. Ever since I began studying these subjects I have gained an ever greater appreciation for the complex ways in which they inform each other and enrich each other. I have found that tutoring only helps me further appreciate these subjects, and I have always enjoyed the opportunity to engage with students perspectives on some of the big questions that these subjects offer.

• 2) Tell us more about the subject you teach, the topics you like to discuss with students (and possibly those you like a little less).

  I particularly enjoy when students identify the intersections between these subjects. Sometimes the best ways to understand political concepts such as nationalism, fascism and communism is by exploring their impact on history and literature. In other times, we an only understand historical events such as the Iraq war or the Haitian revolution by understanding the essential political regimes of the time and their impact on literature. Even in English Literature, sometimes texts like Paradise Lost can only be understood relative to their historical and political significance.

• 3) Did you have any role models; a teacher that inspired you?

  One of the teachers who had the biggest influence on my teaching style was one of my Cambridge supervisors for ancient political philosophy. Contrary to many of my other supervisors who would expect each essay to have a bibliography the length of my arm, this supervisor in particular would expect each essay to focus on a specific paragraph of a core text. He was a big believer that we could learn more about the context and significant of a piece by analysing it in strict depth.

• 4) What do you think are the qualities required to be a good tutor?

  Being fun, being simple and asking good questions. The majority of the time students know the answers, a good teacher knows the questions that lead the students to these answers.

• 5) Provide a valuable anecdote related to your subject or your days at school.

  I remember in particular that I spent an entire hour and a half with the aforementioned supervisor discussing only the first line of Plato's Republic. This showed me more than any other learning experience how intertextual the subjects of History, Politics and Literature really are, and how far critical analysis can be taken.

• 6) What were the difficulties or challenges you faced or still facing in your subject?

  Overcomplicating my understanding! To a lot of students, these subjects seem inaccessible, they seem too complex and they seem too difficult. While indeed there are learning curves to some concepts - every single student eventually realises that the answers to their questions were very simple. I only grasped this in the last months of my Bachelors degree, but it is only at this point that the study of these subjects becomes a total pleasure.

• 7) Do you have a particular passion? Is it teaching in general or an element of the subject or something completely different?

  My passion is outside of academia. I have spent the majority of my career working in NGOs across Europe and largely based in the Balkans. The Balkans remains a complex political landscape with a rich history, and I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time with a number of NGOs in the region. Getting to work professionally in the international NGO space here has allowed me to understand the practical reality of my subjects and this has been undoubtedly informed the way I teach these subjects. Politics, History and Literature all have very real manifestations and I have worked on the ground in a number of contexts that let me understand this. While I can talk about this for hours - you will have to ask me about this separately to my tutoring.

• 8) What makes you a Superprof (besides answering these interview questions) ?

  I am a superprof because I have an earnest love for the subjects that I teach, but unlike other tutors with my academic profile, I bring a very practically grounded ethos. Politics, History and Literature are useful subjects to learn for their real world applications and they can equip students with essential knowledge about the world they will need to live in. I will get you through your exams, but more importantly I will get to the core of how your subjects actually influence the world around you.