Summer Job - ACT/SAT Tutor?

[SBDad]

Does anyone have any experience with their college age kids offering SAT/ACT tutoring services when they are home in the summer?

When scholarship awards to our son were run in the local paper last year, he got a couple calls from kids asking if he would tutor them. We live in a rural/summer resort community, so there isn't really wide availability of professional tutors.

The couple kids he tutored were very pleased with the results, so he's considering advertising for his services this summer.

Any experience or words of advice out there?

[HarrietMWelsch]

SB Dad, my college D is a PR tutor during the summer. PR's training is quite rigorous (though they do pay students for the time spent in training sessions), but at least in this area there are lots of review classes running throughout the summer, so the trained tutors almost always find work easily. Some end up tutoring privately alongside their classroom jobs; others only do classroom or only do private tutoring. It's a pretty high-paying summer gig. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to know more.

[siliconvalleymom]

In our area, many tutors advertise on Craigslist. It's faster if he includes this information in the listing: his experience, rate per hour, whether he's making in-home visits or tutoring at a local library, schedule availability (in his case, not until summer starts).
Our high school newpaper also allows tutors to list their availability.
One more thought: he might have more clients if he is also willing to tutor for SAT subject tests and/or specific subjects in addition to test prep.
I know that calculus and physics tutors, in particular, make a premium to ordinary tutoring.

[xiggi]

PR's training is quite rigorous (though they do pay students for the time spent in training sessions),

Would you please detail what the rigorous training entails at Princeton Review? Number of hours? Requirements? Qualifications?

[HarrietMWelsch]

Xiggi, I'm a little leery of going into detail here, lest it be considered an endorsement, or seem as if I think PR tutoring is the best and only way to go. It is emphatically *not* an endorsement, and I think there are many paths (including no formal prep at all, and certainly including the "xiggi method") to an SAT score that meets a student's goals. Furthermore, I didn't take the course myself, so what I can tell you is secondhand.

That said: Pretty much all of what you listed. The qualifications to apply to be trained are somewhat stringent (very high SAT scores in a single sitting, + high GPA in college, maybe others); applicants then have to sit for the SAT again and meet a cutoff score (and if you think SAT math is hard for juniors who've been away from lower-level math for a while, ponder how it feels for college kids!); then applicants have to "audition" by teaching a non-academic skill to a group; then those who make those cuts have somewhere north of ten hours of training - again, don't hold me to the details - which includes being taught how to teach PR's lesson plan and THEN doing "teachbacks," in which students turn around and teach the lesson they've just had to the group. The group (trainers + trainees) then rates how well you covered the material and how animated/engaging/effective your teaching style was. Apparently if your rating isn't high enough, you are dismissed from the training at the next break. According to my kid, this happened throughout the course.

Again, I don't want this to be construed as endorsement. I'm convinced, as I said above, that there are many excellent paths to the SAT score each individual student is looking for. PR suits some and is effective for them. Individual studying works wonders for plenty of kids. A combination of methods does the job for still others . . . . One size seldom if ever fits all when it comes to learning anything.