A TOEFL student's success in math and languages

by Mia Della Pietra

After classes have finished at NYLC's Upper West Side location, it is usually very quiet.  The students have left and the staff are quietly typing at their desks.  But two of the students in the TOEFL class sometimes stay behind.  Their table is covered with notecards and textbooks.  Their TOEFL books, however, are in their bags. 

Felipe loves working with numbers, but he also has a huge
interest in learning languages.

Satomi and Felipe stay after their TOEFL class to teach each other Japanese and Spanish.  Satomi is thinking about going on vacation to South America this year, and Felipe just loves languages!  Felipe’s enthusiasm for languages has definitely paid off.  He recently scored a 103 on the TOEFL, which is incredibly impressive!

Felipe is from Chile.  He studied structural engineering at university and has a Master’s degree in engineering, as well.  While he does love languages, he picked engineering because of the mathematics involved in it.  

“Numbers!  Numbers were so easy for me,” he says. Also, engineering had the perfect balance of math and variety.

“I love that you can work in so many places,” he adds. Indeed, engineering school prepared him to learn anything that he wanted. 

In Chile, he worked as an associate director of infrastructure at the engineering school of a university.  He was responsible for new projects, including everything from their budget to their architecture. The most difficult part of his job was managing the construction of the buildings.  

“Construction is so tricky, the needs [of the project] can change while you are constructing something.”  Now he wants to get a Ph.D. in the U.S. in public policy to be able to work in infrastructure and civil engineering. 

He first took the TOEFL in January of this year in Chile and, with minimal preparation, got a 91. Then he decided to come to New York to improve his English and study for the TOEFL. Why NYC? He had already been here twice before and had really enjoyed it.  

“I just love the city because of everything it has--the lights, the culture, the museums.  You can find people from all over the world.”  He currently lives in the Bronx and will stay here until November.  He found NYLC online and enrolled in our TOEFL preparation class in July. 

Felipe with his classmates in the TOEFL Preparation class.

In class he is an incredibly engaged student; his response to most vocabulary explanations is “Perfect!” which embodies his positive attitude in class.  He is inquisitive and is always looking to find out the reasoning behind every section.  He took the TOEFL again on August 5 and was able to get a score of 103!  

Now that he has completed his course at NYLC, he is applying to Ph.D. programs here in the U.S. He has applied for a Fulbright scholarship, and he has his eye on programs at NYU, Columbia, Princeton and MIT.

Felipe and Hitomi teach each other their native languages
after their TOEFL Preparation class.

Felipe embodies the spirit of NYLC; even after his success in the TOEFL, he is still finding new and exciting ways to keep learning.  We wish him the best of luck on his applications, and we hope he will come back and visit!

Mia teaches TOEFL Preparation at NYLC's Upper West Side location. She enjoys meeting students from a wide variety of countries, cultures, and backgrounds on a daily basis and takes pleasure in putting her students at ease by finding the humor in the challenges of learning English.