Most families arrive for one exam and stay for the next eight years.

Same tutor through 11+, IGCSE and A-Level. Then the same practice sits the admissions test with your child, drills the interview, and files the UCAS application itself.

  1. Age 10–13

    11+ and 13+ entry

    590–790per hour

    Common Entrance, CASE, UKiset, verbal and non-verbal reasoning, Eton King's Scholarship. Or the SSAT and ISEE for US prep schools.

  2. Age 14–16

    IGCSE and MYP

    630–830per hour

    Cambridge and Edexcel IGCSE, IB Middle Years. If your child's school doesn't offer a subject, IST can enter them as a private candidate for the CIE sitting.

  3. Age 16–18

    A-Level and IB Diploma

    690–890per hour

    GCE AS, A2 and IAL, IB Diploma, plus the SAT, ACT, IELTS and HKDSE.

  4. Year 12–13

    Admissions tests and interviews

    1,180–1,580per hour

    BMAT, UCAT, LNAT, LSAT, MCAT, STEP, TSA, and the Oxbridge admission tests and interviews. Boarding and school interview coaching is 890–1,090.

  5. Final year

    The application itself

    Separatesee note

    IST is a registered school and a UCAS Centre, so it can submit the application on your child's behalf and track it. Personal statements, Common App essays, Non-JUPAS and Ontario OUAC. Sixth-form college placement through seven affiliated UK colleges.

    Priced separately — fee to confirm

Hourly rates in Hong Kong dollars, published on IST's site. The lower figure is the standard rate, the higher one a principal tutor. Application and placement services are quoted separately.

Request lessons

No payment when you enquire. A proposed schedule with the price comes back and is held for seven days.

What a lesson looks like

Online, one-to-one, over Zoom or Google Meet.

No cross-harbour trip, and a T8 signal doesn't cost you the week before an exam.

Shared screen — past paper

Question 7

3D + R = 61

try D = 12 → D = 49/3

try D = 10 → D = 17

D has to be a whole number, so 12 fails and 10 works. Two trials, not five.

Marks available: 2Time on question: 1 min 40

CCTutor

—Student

Mock-up built for this concept page from the working in IST's own published BMAT solution. A screen-recording still of a real lesson would be stronger — it's on the asset list.

Why the same tutor matters

Nobody re-learns your child every September.

  • 2005 · 2009 · 2018

    The tutors don't leave

    Don Ho founded IST in 2005 and still teaches. Calvin Chan has been tutoring maths here since 2009, Yenga Yan since 2018. Compare that with a centre advertising a hundred-plus tutors and a selective recruitment funnel — at that scale, the person who taught your child last year has usually moved on.

  • Twelve months ahead

    Families book a year at a time

    IST's own booking terms note that some families have already confirmed a full twelve months of lessons, paying in twelve equal monthly instalments. You don't commit a year to someone you're testing out.

  • Waiting list

    Good tutors run out of slots

    If the tutor you want is full, IST puts you on their waiting list and offers a recommended tutor meanwhile — and families who take the recommendation get first refusal when the slot frees up. Worth knowing before you leave it until August.

Request lessons

You can name the tutor you want on the form, or ask for a recommendation.

Past the last exam

The part most tutors hand back to you.

Lessons are billed by the hour at the rates above. The application services are quoted separately — IST hasn't published those figures, so we're not going to invent them.

  • Personal statement and application essays

    UCAS personal statements, Common App essays, Non-JUPAS and Ontario OUAC. Don Ho has advised on these every year since 2005.

    Hourly

  • Admissions test and interview practice

    LNAT, BMAT, UCAT and the Oxbridge tests, then interview drilling. Strongest published record is Oxford Law.

    1,180–1,580

  • Filing the UCAS application

    As a registered school and UCAS Centre, IST can submit and track the application rather than routing it through your child's school.

    Separate fee

  • Private candidate exam entry

    Registering your child for a CIE IGCSE their school doesn't offer — Chemistry is the usual one.

    Separate fee

  • Sixth-form college placement

    Affiliated agency partner of Cardiff Sixth Form College, Queen Ethelburga's and its Faculty, Concord, Rochester, Chelsea Independent and Kensington Park.

    Separate fee
Request lessons

Ask about the application services on the form and IST will quote you.

Who you'd be working with

Three of the tutors, and how long they've been here.

You can name one on the form, or ask for a recommendation.

Mr Don Ho, founder of International Scholars Tuition.
DHPhoto to follow

Mr Don Ho

Founder · English since 2000

Principal University Application Tutor since 2005. In his strongest year both of his Oxford applicants won full scholarships — the D. H. Chen Foundation and the Jardine. Strong published record on Oxford Law.

Mr Calvin Chan, mathematics tutor.
CCPhoto to follow

Mr Calvin Chan

At IST since 2009 — sixteen years

BSc Mathematics with Honours, Imperial College London. MSc Mathematics, CUHK. Teaches the maths sections of the SSAT, ISEE, SAT and ACT — so he can carry a student from 11+ through to the SAT.

Miss Yenga Yan, science and entrance-test tutor.
YYPhoto to follow

Miss Yenga Yan

At IST since 2018 — seven years

University of Cambridge graduate. Awarded Gold in the Senior UK Mathematics Trust Challenge as a student. Teaches the sciences plus the UKiset, SSAT and ISEE.

Monograms hold the space until IST sends headshots. Drop three square files into an images/ folder beside this page — don-ho.jpg, calvin-chan.jpg, yenga-yan.jpg — and the photos appear with no other edit. Same background and crop for all three.

Where the tutors studied

Eight universities, no logos borrowed.

  • Oxford
  • Cambridge
  • Imperial
  • Queen Mary
  • Alberta
  • UVic
  • CUHK
  • HKU

Colleges IST places students with

Affiliated agency partner of seven UK colleges.

  • Cardiff Sixth Form College
  • Queen Ethelburga's College
  • The Faculty of Queen Ethelburga's
  • Concord College
  • Rochester Independent College
  • Chelsea Independent College
  • Kensington Park School

Set as names rather than logo files — IST doesn't hold licences to display these marks, and a borrowed logo wall is the first thing a parent discounts.

Request lessons

No payment when you enquire. A proposed schedule with the price comes back first.

Scheduling

Term lessons start straight away. Holiday courses run in six windows.

Term-time requests are scheduled as soon as they arrive. Holiday requests are scheduled once the current holiday finishes, so book the window before the one you want.

  • ChristmasWindow 1
  • FebruaryHalf term
  • EasterWindow 3
  • JuneHalf term
  • SummerWindow 5
  • OctoberHalf term

One step

Request lessons.

Tell IST where your child is now and where they're aiming. A proposed schedule comes back with a named tutor, the times and the cost.

Student
Lessons
Parent or guardian

No payment and no card details. A named schedule comes back and is held seven days.

Assets IST needs to supply
  • The retention figure this page is really about — what share of families come back, or average years per student
  • Fees for UCAS filing, private candidate entry and college placement, currently marked "separate"
  • Three square headshots — same background and crop — to replace the monograms
  • A screen-recording still of a real lesson, to replace the drawn illustration
  • Two or three families who went the whole route, ideally named by exam and year
  • The full roster with joining years, so the ladder can show more than three tutors