see title. I am ~5d.

Alternatively: Make a detailed and complete (the gaps might be your weaknesses!) list of all go theory topics, ask yourself for each topic "Is my skill 6d or 7d?", else study those topics meticulously.

Yilun Yang, Mingjiu Jiang, An Younggil...

Depends on what you're looking for, but those are a few to check out.

I'm looking to improve to 7d-8d level. Specifically, is Mingjiu or Yilun betterb for my level?

Mingjiu is the meanest.

Younggil is the strongest of all the pro teachers on KGS. His price is a bit hefty, though.

To me this means he is the most miserly, but of course the poster's location tells me it's American so I can put that meaning on hold. However, that doesn't help me much. I can understand what a "grounded" American kid means when he says, "Mom, don't be mean", but in this case I am totally at sea. What does it mean, and what are the cues that guide you to the intended meaning? I assume the go context and normal respect for pros is one cue, so the meaning is presumably (ironically?) good - but that doesn't help me much either.

I'm guessing it means that if a move is bad he says "This is bad!", rather than saying "Moving here might be better than the move you chose"

Yang taught the USA players Joey Hung and Eric Lui, both USA WAGC representatives, AGA ratings 8.5 and 8.7 respectively, early in their careers. I think Hung also worked with Jiang.

As for the meaning of "mean" to me, a senior citizen, it means "harsh" or "sadistic", or possibly "unsympathetic" or "unforgiving". In colloquial use it might have a sense of excellence or high level effectiveness , such as "a Ferrari Testarossa is a mean machine".

Gowan categorized it well. I can't comment what teacher can get someone to what level. I just have been at group lessons with both and mingjiu can be quite harsh. So the better teacher may depends on what type of personality you want in your teacher.

If you do pick Mingjiu, make sure you are either good at tsumego or good at push-ups.

I have friends from both teachers' students, and I guess I can say that both teachers do a pretty good job. Mingjiu is harsher like others said. Yilun Yang's price is a little bit cheaper I think, but don't quote me on that.

Mingjiu is severe. He tells people their moves are stupid when they are stupid. If you ask him a question you could answer yourself if you thought for 5 minutes, he tells you to go and think about it yourself for 5 minutes. I think that this is really quite useful in a teacher.

What brand of 5 dan is the original poster though?

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And it can happen that there is no suitable teacher at all. E.g., I have yet to see any pro teacher with the ability to mention all my major general mistakes, which share the detection difficulty of assessing that my local life and death problem reading is not 6d/7d level yet, while I think that a good teacher must be able to quickly identify all current major general mistakes of a pupil at his current rank.

Teacher personality is insufficient - teaching ability is required. There may be also other teaching qualities, but identification of all major general mistakes is a MINIMAL requirement for any good teacher. Taking 500 hours from a pro (if a 5d wants to become 7d/8d, that many hours are surely necessary) who lacks that ability can easily be wasted money.

So why not take dozens of different teachers, each for a couple of hours, to find out the most suitable teacher or if there is any at all?

What's that?

Why... are there teachers not telling the truth...? Or might others say too politely "eh, maybe this move is not the best..."?

What the heck - do pupils make physical exercises...?!?

It is a reference to military discipline, where push-ups are a common light punishment on the spot for small infractions or failures. So it is used here, I presume, to indicate that Mingjiu is a very strict teacher, who does not go easy on his pupils.

It would indeed be interesting to see an _online_ teacher with so much influence that his/her students would actually do pushups.

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He just need his student to set up a webcam