Russian School of Mathematics

RSM is quite good for older kids, however I do not recommend until 4 – 5 grade ! The classes are huge and for a small child to be able to concentrate in a room of 15 – 19 more people is quite ridiculous IMO

Dreadful and extremely disorganized place. We signed up for a test and they lost our papers. No apology, nothing. Not sure why people like this place. I was unfortunate enough to sign up my son into this school. Two months later we switched to School of Engaging Learning in Brookline. My son was totally bored and hated this place. I have PhD in Math from MIT and judging by my son’s experiences and his home work, I find this place mediocre. There are many Math schools in Boston area with much better quality of education.

RSM is an after school private enrichment program for mathematics. It caters to children from K-​12.
I attended RSM about 10 years ago when the school was still small. I was forced to go every single weekend for about 2 hours of extra math by my parents. I lived in Andover, which at the time didn’t have a branch of RSM, so the only option was in Newton. Trust me, driving an hour for math was not my idea of a fun weekend, neither was getting stuck in traffic for an extra hour both ways when I had weekday classes. For some reason, my parents never complained about the drive– I guess because they knew it was for my own good. Class sizes at the time were pretty large– from what I remember there were only two levels. When I first began, I strived to be in the advanced class and worked up until the point when I was moved up– the occasional McDonalds trip with my father helped that motivation too.
I also consider the homework at RSM an integral part of the curriculum. It is extremely important for children to actually sit down and do over the course of a week, not the 30 min car ride homework session right before my class that I would sometimes try get away with. What is taught in the 1 – 4 hours of class time is not enough for a child to retain for the next week or in a year, at least in my case. Throughout the constant battles of doing homework with my parents, I realized that the times when I actually spent 2 – 4 hours on my homework, would be the most benefiting classes for me.
I have actually spoken to a lot of parents and their kids in the past couple of years who have/​currently do attend RSM. A lot of parents simply send their children off to RSM and expect their kids to «do» the hw. «Doing» homework like it is done in public elementary schools is just not enough anymore. I have a younger brother who scribbles god knows what on his paper, hands it in, the teacher draws a big star on the sheet of paper and gives him 100%. I’m sorry but 9×9 does not equal to 75– effort should be awarded, but how is he going to learn from his mistakes if the teachers don’t even take enough time to look at his mistakes?
And this is why I continue to love RSM. I probably received about 50 C’s, D’s or even F’s on my homework or quizzes. why? Because each teacher I had took the time to grade each problem– looking for key strategies taught in class, including the correct answer!
It wasn’t until I entered high school that I personally realized what RSM had done for me. I was in honors classes all throughout high school, took AP Calc and AP Stat and did pretty well. –Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a whiz to begin with, but RSM developed critical thinking skills in me from childhood that helped me understand and grasp new materials easily. SAT’s at this point, seemed like a piece of cake– thankfully, I was able to avoid the annual SAT craze.
The SAT craze is what I call the obsession for SAT cramming in sophomore/​junior year of high school. Andover had a huge SAT craze as the local parents went crazy for the «best tutors» for their children in high school. I completely disagree with spending hundreds of dollars an hour during sophomore/​junior year in high school trying to cram information into a child’s head. Of course the SAT’s are all about tricks, but you also have to have a solid foundation of the material in order to complete the test quickly and correctly. Throughout the RSM curriculum, by the time I was in 8^th grade, I took my first SAT test for the Johns Hopkins Competition. Believe it or not, I did better than an average junior or senior in high school. By my sophomore year, I did not have to take any additional tutoring sessions and now was the one with all of the free time. While my friends crammed in 4 – 6 hours of SAT prep, multiple times a week, with extremely expensive private tutors, I scored in the high 700’s for the math portion of the SAT I and SAT II, and got to finally relax on the weekends of my junior and senior year.
On top of the quantitative proof of the results of previous RSM students and their astonishing accomplishments at higher institutions of learning, RSM fosters a place of personal development and growth. I grew up spending most of my weekends at RSM and ended up making friends who are actually my roomates in college now. I treated RSM as an activity, like any other sports team – I went to learn and even made a few lifelong friends along the way.
In conclusion,
Many of us have seen the new «Waiting to Superman» documentary which was right – how can we expect the next generation of children to advance the world if their education is limited? Well, the solution is in your hands and RSM is here to help.