Frequently asked questions
26 straight answers on the McGill and Concordia courses I cover, CEGEP and English secondary school, the French program for parents who do not read French, how sessions run in person and online, and the free platform with its optional account. If your question is not here, write to me.
My name is Ahmed Squalli Houssaini and I have been tutoring in Montreal for more than 10 years. I hold a French Baccalaureate with a mathematics specialisation, a B.Sc. in Computer Science, Finance and Mathematics from McGill University, and an M.Sc. in Applied Computer Science from Concordia University. I studied in both the French and the Quebec systems, which is why I can move between them without a student having to be translated twice.
More about the tutor →Either, and the student decides, not the school. Plenty of students at Lycée Marie de France or Collège Stanislas follow the French program all day and still think in English. We can work through a French textbook while speaking English, and the written answers stay in the language the exam will be marked in.
Yes, and it matters more than it sounds. A single session can move from a calculus limit to the physics problem that needed it, because the two are the same difficulty wearing different clothes. There is no second tutor to brief and no gap between them.
On the mathematics side, MATH 133 linear algebra and geometry, MATH 139, MATH 140 and MATH 141 calculus, and MATH 222 calculus 3. On the computer science side, COMP 202 Foundations of Programming, COMP 204, COMP 206 and COMP 250. In physics, PHYS 101 and PHYS 102. First-year chemistry as well. MATH 133, MATH 140, MATH 141, COMP 202 and PHYS 101 also have a free course page, chapter by chapter, with a corrected set and a revision sheet written in English for each chapter.
Math tutoring →COMP 248 and COMP 249, the two Java programming courses, plus first-year calculus and linear algebra, and the PHYS 204 and PHYS 205 physics sequence. I did my M.Sc. at Concordia, so the course structure and the marking culture are familiar ground. MATH 203, Differential and Integral Calculus I, has a free course page, chapter by chapter, with a corrected set and a revision sheet written in English for each chapter.
Computer science tutoring →It usually is not, because COMP 202 fails students for one of about five reasons and they are all fixable: confusing an assignment with a comparison, printing a value where a return was needed, mutating a list while looping over it, off-by-one indices, and never having learned to read a stack trace. Once the actual reason is named, the recovery is fast.
COMP 202 page →I help you learn to do the assignment, which is not the same thing as doing it. We work on a problem of the same shape until the method is yours, then you write your own submission. Academic integrity rules at McGill and Concordia are strict and I will not put a student at risk.
Yes: differential calculus 201-SN2-RE (formerly 201-NYA), integral calculus 201-SN3-RE (formerly 201-NYB), linear algebra and vector geometry 201-SN4-RE (formerly 201-NYC), statistics 201-337, general chemistry 202-SN1-RE (formerly 202-NYA), solution chemistry 202-SN2-RE (formerly 202-NYB), organic chemistry 202-SNU-RE, and the three physics courses: mechanics 203-SN1-RE (formerly 203-NYA), electricity and magnetism 203-SN2-RE (formerly 203-NYB), and waves, optics and modern physics 203-SN3-RE (formerly 203-NYC).
Free corrected exercises →Yes. Secondary 4 and Secondary 5 mathematics, physics and chemistry follow the Quebec program whatever the language of instruction, including the Secondary 4 ministerial examination. The vocabulary changes, the content does not.
They are not the same year. Quebec Secondary 5 is the last year of high school and is followed by two years of CEGEP; the French Terminale is the last year of lycée and leads straight to university. A student arriving from France in Secondary 5 is usually a year ahead in mathematics, which is why the transition looks easy for one term and then stops being easy.
Parents guide to the French system →That is one of the most common situations I work with. I read the French textbook, the French assignment and the French report card, and I explain to you in English what is actually being asked and where the marks are being lost. You do not need to learn the system in order to support your child inside it.
Read the parents guide →In Première a student picks three spécialité subjects and drops one for Terminale, keeping two. Those two are the main written papers of the Baccalaureate, alongside French, philosophy and the Grand oral, and they largely decide which university programs stay open. Since 2026, every Première student also sits an anticipated mathematics paper at the end of the year, whatever their spécialités: 2 hours, no calculator. Dropping mathematics at the end of Première is the single most consequential choice in the French system, and it is made at sixteen; the maths complémentaires option in Terminale softens it, it does not undo it.
French Baccalaureate tutoring →They do not translate linearly, and this is where most English-speaking parents misread a report card. In a French scientific subject, 12 out of 20 is a solid pass, 14 is good and 16 is excellent. A mark of 10 is not a failure the way 50 percent would read in a North American system, it is the passing threshold.
Both. In-person sessions happen in Montreal; online sessions use a shared whiteboard and work just as well for calculus, algebra and code, which is most of what I teach. Students outside Montreal, including families at the French schools of New York, work with me online.
We find the real gap. A student who cannot integrate is very often a student who cannot factor, and no amount of integration practice fixes that. The first session diagnoses where the chain actually breaks, then we start there rather than where the syllabus says we should be.
Both are available. Individual sessions move entirely at the pace of the student. A small group of two or three students at the same level lowers the cost per student and makes weekly work affordable across a full term.
Yes, and it is included. Message me the night before a midterm with the problem you are stuck on. Much of the value of a tutor is not in the scheduled hour, it is in not staying blocked for four days.
Rates depend on the level and on whether the session is individual or in a small group. Get in touch for current rates.
WhatsApp, the contact form on this site, or email. I answer quickly, usually the same day, and we find a slot that works.
Get in touch →Yes. Every set is read directly on the site with the full worked solution on the same page, and every exercise can be checked on the page before the solution opens. Nothing to download, no email capture, no paywall, and no account needed to read anything. If a solution is worth writing it is worth showing.
Browse the bank →The McGill and Concordia courses that have a course page (COMP 202, PHYS 101, MATH 133, MATH 140, MATH 141 and Concordia MATH 203) have their sets and revision sheets written entirely in English, listed at the top of the exercise index and on the English revision sheets page. The rest of the bank is in French, because that is the program most of it was written for. Mathematics itself does not need translating, so a French set on integration by parts is perfectly usable in an English course.
English revision sheets →The student's progress: exercises ticked as done, those flagged to review, sheets read, favourites, the points earned and the right answers of the self-checked exercises, which stay filled in when they come back to finish an exercise. The dashboard brings them back to the last set they opened and says which chapter to tackle next, computed from each chapter's prerequisites. A student can also note the date and chapters of a test or midterm and get a plan day by day, and every answer missed on the first try lands in a notebook of their own traps.
Create my free account →An email is enough. The student enters their address, receives a six-digit code and types it on the page: the account is created, or reopened if they already had one. No password, and nothing else is asked, no name, no school, no phone number. The code is valid for one hour; the same email also carries a button that opens the account on the device where it is read. A student under 14 asks a parent to create the account with the parent's address.
Create my free account →For a child under 14, the parent creates the account with their own address and adds one profile per child: each profile has its own dashboard, viewed one at a time. From age 14, students open their own account and decide what they show. The site creates no ranking and no public profile.
No. The bank exists whether or not you ever contact me. Use it, share it with a classmate, work through it alone.
Yes. At the bottom of every exercise set and revision sheet, the box “Something missing?” takes a type of exercise your teacher gives, a problem you are stuck on, or a mistake you spotted in a solution. I read every request. Sending one goes through a free account, an email and no password, because that is how you hear back: when the exercise is added, you get an email and see it on your dashboard. Nothing on the site needs an account to be read.
Create my free account →Message me on WhatsApp or use the contact form. I answer quickly.