Alex Cotton, GMAT, GRE & EA tutor

Alex is GMAT Ninja’s resident renaissance man, with a background in biology, journalism, fiction writing, and jazz piano performance, in addition to 15+ years of full-time tutoring experience. He earned a 780 on the GMAT, including a perfect 51 on the verbal section.

Alex earned a biology degree magna cum laude from Columbia College and a Master’s degree in journalism from New York University, and he’s one of the rare teachers who has spent his life deeply immersed in both the verbal and quantitative worlds. Alex has tutored full-time since 2005, and spent ten years teaching test-prep and academic subjects at an elite New York City tutoring agency before joining GMAT Ninja.

Thanks to his breadth of tutoring and scholarly experience, Alex is an expert at diagnosing his students’ issues on both quant and verbal. He has worked tirelessly at mastering the art of giving students the right mix of encouragement and brutally honest feedback needed to maximize their GMAT and GRE performance.

Alex knows that boosting your GMAT score takes a huge effort, and can even hurt sometimes. But he also believes that GMAT tutoring should be fun, and that test-prep is a great opportunity for personal growth. Although many of his students have achieved their goal of admission to elite schools, his favorite part of tutoring has been seeing the intellectual development of his students over the years.  

When he’s not tutoring, Alex is probably either writing fiction, reading fiction (exactly as we recommend!), writing fiction, or reading fiction. He also enjoys honing his jazz piano skills; playing tug-of-war with Albus Dumbledore, his 70-pound pit bull-lab mix; and sipping double IPA’s at NYC’s Jacob Riis Beach with his wife.

Our favorite review of Alex’s tutoring:

“I needed to find my perfect tutor… Alex helped me to find my motivation and confidence! He has a really positive and fun way to teach, and he always had a good joke in his pocket… Alex always reviewed my homework a day before our next session, he gave me honest feedback of my improvements (or sometimes non-improvements), and… I got into my desired Master’s program *double yayyyy*!”

Read the full story of how she achieved a 150-point improvement on the GMAT or read more GMAT Ninja tutoring reviews.