<p>Why is it a waste of an Ivy education? What do you expect one does with a degree from Columbia? </p>
<p>Keep in mind, he started his SAT tutoring business as a sophomore at Columbia. Why not continue building on a success?</p>
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<p>And of course that’s precisely what the test is intended to do…distinguish among the people who need five minutes (now that calculators are allowed) of brute force to solve the problem, and the few who don’t. And rank them. It does it pretty well, and its an excellent tool to help you figure out who you’re looking at in an application.</p>
<p>Self disclosure: I think I might have done some of that “plugging in” myself if I was stumped years ago, but I can’t remember with certainty. To me, the biggest thing on the test was to work quickly and not get hung up on something that I wasn’t confident that I understood how to solve. I’d blow through the problems and mark and skip ones that weren’t instantly obvious, and then come back to work on them once I’d gotten the answers to all the ones that I knew “cold”. I think possibly you can’t do it quite that way anymore because the sections are broken up into smaller groupings and you aren’t allowed to go back to another section, but I’m not sure, and I don’t know if my memory of the old format is correct either. It seems there was some dividing of the test into sections possibly, but maybe math and verbal were just two big sections of maybe 90 minutes each. Its been more than a couple of decades.</p>
<p>If the sections are broken up, it obviously penalizes (restricts) someone from using my method, which will further compress the scores together rather than separate them. </p>
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<p>Unless one plans to be 9-to-5 in a specific profession, what one majors in any undergrad college is pretty close to irrelevant. </p>
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<p>Value perceived is value achieved. Never fails to work, as long as the product gets close to delivering. </p>
<p>Dadx, visit the SAT forum and you will find links to recent tests. The current test is broken down in 9-10 sections. You cannot move around sections, but going back inside a section is possible. Allocating the correct time to various questions is important as the test expects unprepared or ill-tutored students to waste time on nebulous problems. </p>
<p>Some say that every problem can be solved in 30 seconds but I think that a couple of problems belie such statement. </p>
<p>Didn’t see this thread until after I responded to the other one referencing this article, but I agree completely with Xiggi. This is a simple algebra problem that students who understand algebra1 should be able to do in 10 seconds. The tutor’s approach is an unnecessary waste of time and does not prepare the student as well as actually teaching them how to do the problem.</p>
<p>Really solving this problem will be faster than substitute and check and I think it’s quite telling that this tutor evidently didn’t have the confidence in his ability to teach the reporter the best method to attempt to do so. Two different Algebra 1 teachers successfully taught my kids how to actually solve problems like that at age 11 or so, and they were paid closer to $1000 per week, not hour, for doing so.</p>
<p>It’s actually quite nice to see that perhaps the kids whose parents are dropping shocking amounts of money on high priced tutors aren’t getting anything more than a middle class kid with a far more modestly priced tutor would. If they think they’re getting any value for their money, makes me wonder what kind of value they are getting for their companies.</p>
<p>Mathyone, I agree with you, but we need to remember that the story is based on the perception of the reporter. There is always the chance that Green started with a direct algebra solution and quickly lost the reporter who admitted not to know much HS math. He might also have deliberately sent her off to a lengthy course to then show the quick way and … look smarter. </p>
<p>I do not think that the article painted Green in a very positive way. Showing him working from his kitchen table was a reminder of Sal Khan famous closet days. For a self-marketing genius, Green might have thought about presenting a more professional image. </p>
<p>But that is his problem! :)</p>
<p>Here’s another article about him:
<a href=“Meet the SAT tutor to the 1%”>http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/14/smallbusiness/sat-tutor/</a></p>
<p>Haha, Oldmom, when it comes to education reporting I tend to look up at the “bio” of the reporter as a first test. This comes from having read so many darn awful “college” stories that makes your head spin. </p>
<p>In this case, this glorified infomercial is not hard to “get” when the reporter is none other than someone who labels herself as “fox@CNNMoney luxury writer, in mansions and benzes” Green only needs TMZ of the Huffpo to hit the cycle! </p>
<p>Fwiw, many know that there is a tutor that has been charging those super high fees in New York for quite some time, The difference is that his company is well-established and has enjoyed a long history of successes. Also, there are a number of the star tutors who work for the “big names” that make their money with those mostly ineffective group classes. The star tutors are in a class apart from those group tutors who have qualifications barely above the kids they end up teaching. </p>
<p>Green’s approach is bizarre! </p>
<p>Funny, being a visual person my first thought upon reading the article and looking at the pictures was–“this guy makes a thousand dollars an hour and he still lives in a crappy apartment with bars on the windows.”</p>
<p>Kind of agree with xiggi that the photos do not make for the most professional presentation.</p>
<p>I think he’s got a pretty good PR person. Getting mentioned in the press – almost any press – is money in the bank in this field. I need to figure out how to get articles like this about my consulting. :)</p>
<p>As I said on another thread, I was really surprised by the example given in the article of specialized math tutoring expertise. I’d expect a $25-an-hour college student to explain the problem that way. Maybe the subject didn’t want to give away his secrets, but I suspect his tutoring is much like that of other capable people. Teaching these tests takes skill and patience, but it isn’t brain surgery. The people who make a fortune doing this are great salespeople with good connections.</p>
<p>“What a waste of an Ivy education”</p>
<p>I majored in psychology, so I use what I learned every day working with teens and families. But even if I’d majored in French, I would hardly think it was a waste to do work I love that gives me so much freedom. In my book, if you can make a good living working part-time from home, you won the game. Credential prestige probably matters more in this field than any other. A genius consultant who went to Whoville State is going to have a tough time building a brand.</p>
<p>^^
Not all publicity is good! One assumption is that there are always enough fools to be parted from their money. That might very well be the case for that 0.01 percent in a city such as New York, but there are plenty who might wonder about the kitchen table and low-tech organization. And plenty who think along the way Calmom described. </p>
<p>Fifteen seconds of fame might not turn into a sustainable business. Others have tried the sensationalist approach in the past with variable successes! There are limits to the smoke and mirror approaches. Or the Gary Trudeau of the SAT. </p>
<p>My kitchen table looks much better than that. I clean up pretty nice, too (I mean, in terms of dress!). It’s the lawyer training.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I will not shed any tears for the financial future of this guy.</p>
<p>My guess is the guy is a pretty good tutor<br>
and he is getting pretty good word of mouth.</p>
<p>In life, people dont know if a SAT score of 2300 was achieved without a tutor or the student scored 1900 and his parents were able to buy the kid another 400 points. :)</p>
<p>Might be a pretty good deal for wealthy people. </p>
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<p>It looks like one I recently saw at West Elm. I actually quite liked it, though I’d pair it with chairs rather than a bench. But that’s just me. ;)</p>
<p>Except for the fact that they probably find an even better and more well-qualified tutor for either face-to-face or online one-on-one tutoring for a whole lot less…</p>
<p>I agree with you that the guy is probably “pretty good” at what he does – but there are a lot of “pretty good” tutors in this world, and even some “amazing” ones. Test prep isn’t rocket science.</p>
<p>I think that a lot of test prep can improve scores-- but this guy Green isn’t working miracles – he’s just engaging in a little bit of flim flam that starts with being choosy as to who he works with, and involves a lot of hype.</p>
<p>I do think the guy is smart. But his genius lies in marketing, not test prep. He’s figured out how to sell himself and make a ton of money doing it. </p>
<p>Very definitely test-prep corrupts the whole testing system and creates additional barriers to the poor, but it’s not something reserved for the mega-rich. Middle class people can pay for private tutoring too. When my d. was in high school I found a local SAT tutoring company and offered to pay for tutoring for her – I think it was about $90/hour – D. would have none of it. </p>
<p>But the analogy is more like life in a city where it’s important to have a car to get around. Poor people who can’t afford the cost of a basic, reliable car are screwed. But the rich guy with the Ferrari isn’t winning the transportation game as compared to a worker who buys a used Toyota – transportation-wise, the Toyota owner probably is way ahead of the game.</p>
<p>@mathyone
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<p>He’s teaching standard test-prep - same as what Kaplan and Princeton Review does. The test outfits teach the tricks and test-prep strategies, and they also have their students complete multiple practice exams. That’s a lot easier than teaching actual math, but it’s in line with the goal of improving scores on a multiple-choice exam. The questions on the exams are all the same, exam after exam, in the eyes of prep industry. You can categorize, and you can figure out short cuts that will either lead to a correct answer or sharply increase the probability of a right answer – and you can share that knowledge. </p>
<p>Actually teaching content (as opposed to strategy), could be counter-productive in terms of test scores. It’s easy for a smart kid, but poor test-taker, to get a little bit too immersed in the handful of very difficult problems on the test, and then run out of time to handle the easier stuff. Computerized testing might be a boost for those types of students, as the computers are set up to stop feeding them the easier questions – but in a paper-and-pencil format, there’s a penalty for spending too much time on getting things right. </p>
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<p>Exactly. He’s offering the exact same stuff as Stanley Kaplan came up with way back when. </p>
<p>This tutor is giving a few wealthy people what they want. </p>
<p>In a lot of ways it’s no different from the “private” anything wealthy people can pay for. These people are not going to put their kid in group tennis lessons at the Y or make him/her go crosstown for a Kaplan prep class. Their kids are likely highly scheduled and are used to having things done on THEIR schedule, not someone else’s. </p>