Ceilidh Erickson

By far, the question Céilidh is asked most often is “how do you pronounce that?” When she tells people that it’s pronounced “kay-lee,” she often gets puzzled looks. (Incidentally, céilidh is a Gaelic word meaning party or gathering – usually one with Irish traditional music and folk dancing. Céilidh took Irish step dancing while she was growing up, and knows various céilidh dances. It’s sort of like being named “Square Dance Erickson.”)

At Princeton University, Céilidh majored in comparative literature and specialized in creative writing, winning creative writing awards and writing for various publications. While there, she began teaching SAT prep as a side job, and discovered a knack for teaching test-prep. Since college, tutoring was always a side job, in addition to working, at various points, for an art dealer, on political campaigns, at startups, nonprofits, online magazines, and even (briefly) at a hedge fund. Tutoring was always the job that bought her joy and challenges, so she decided to make it her full(ish)-time career. She now leverages her 99th percentile scores on the SAT, GRE and GMAT to help other students learn to love the challenge!

Céilidh is also very active with educational nonprofits. Last year her students at NJ SEEDS (an organization that help high-achieving underprivileged students earn scholarships to private schools) had an average of 85% score improvement on the SSATs! (Her students affectionately called her “J-biebs” because of the similarity between her haircut and that of a certain pop singer). This year she redesigned the program’s curriculum, to ensure that all future students can have similar success.

In her spare time, Céilidh is a writer, avid reader, pub-quiz nerd, and enthusiastically terrible karaoke singer! She’s also an insatiable traveler – she has been to 20+ countries and 40 US states, and lived in Ireland.

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