@Corinthian I agree with your analysis. I’ve spoken to a few private tutors and they all agree that those classes are not for kids trying to achieve a very high score. And finding the right tutor is key. I’ve had friends hire tutors at $150 an hour and just thought they were just ok. Probably not any better than their kids studying on their own as these tutors spent most of the time just going over problems with them from practice tests and didn’t really give any additional tips per se.
I have one friend who spent $250/hour on a tutor and her son loved her. My husband think that price is nuts but I’m not so sure. I spoke to her on the phone and she even suggested that our son try to self study first. Thought he may be ok without a tutor. Now, that kind of honestly I like. She offered to see him two/three times if he can’t get the scores he would like after studying and doing practice tests. She mostly works with kids shooting for very high scores so I appreciated her advice and we will follow it. $500-$750 is still WAY less than the price of some of the group classes I’ve seen at Princeton Review, etc.
I guess it’s really a crapshoot. I found three “local” options (by local, I mean 50 miles away) that are apparently frequently used by my kid’s school. One was written up about 10 years ago in a New York paper:
"Brig Boonswang, 34, a former investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Inc., offers teens the use of a 42-inch flat-screen TV, one of Microsoft Corp.'s XBox 360 video game consoles and a fridge stocked with Red Bull energy drinks at his tutoring shop on East 95th Street. Some teens drop by four times a week and may stay hours beyond their one-hour, $250 session, he said.
Mr. Boonswang, who has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Columbia, began tutoring as a career in 2001 after talking to Stephen Spahn, chancellor of the Dwight School on the Upper West Side, at a cocktail party. Mr. Boonswang says he was unemployed after a Brazilian Internet company for which he’d helped raise $2 million went bust.
In April 2005, he was joined at Boonswang Group by Rachel Magid, 28, a 2004 graduate of Harvard Business School. The partners now employ 10 part-time tutors and aim to have the same number working full time and revenue of $3.5 million in five years. “The parents would rather us deal with the kids and the homework,” Miss Magid said.
Mr. Boonswang said his job is much more rewarding than banking ever was. Buoyant kids text-message him after receiving good grades and sometimes seek his support as late as 2 a.m., he said."
This does not fill me with confidence …
But I do know that a classmate’s brother ended up at Yale after using the guy. He probably was doing just fine without him, though…
Honestly, I hate all of this standardized testing stuff. So many kids out there who are at a disadvantage when it comes to these tests. I’m almost embarrassed that we would spend so much money on a tutor. I wish it was more like 1985 when you just took the test at school and called it a day. I feel a little like our hands are tied though. If we are looking for merit and if our son needs tips that he won’t get without a tutor, we will hire one. No way around not playing the game.
S19 IS interested, though, in writing one of his essays about how he survived his high school without a tutor and still managed good grades. At least with math and science, he estimates that 3/4 of the kids use tutors in his classes. What the heck? Are these kids going to employ tutors once they get into their top 30 college? His teachers notice that he’s working hard on his own and they know he wants it that way. I sometimes wonder if it’s the right decision but he just feels so vindicated when he can get an A without one. Even when he gets a B plus he’s proud that he did it on his own.
@STEM2017 S19 won’t work on essays until next summer. The AP Lang teachers will assign one of the common app prompts in class during the spring of junior year. He will start really thinking about them then.
Totally agree @STEM2017 . Too soon to be worrying about essays. Prompts do change . Some schools have their own prompts and it’s very important to answer what is asked in the prompts.
As far as SAT prep,my son and his best friend took a 6 week class with a local company. We paid 500.00 . My son did very well and his best friend is a NMF . What’s right for one student is not necessarily what’s right for all. So in our experience , group classes were as effective as a private tutor for higher stats students . Both boys received generous merit awards.
I went through the process of getting accommodations for D17 working with the LD counselor at her HS. It was shockingly expensive because we had to get her re-tested for LD the summer before junior year since they only take recent testing. Of course, I put off calling around to get an appointment for the LD testing and couldn’t get an appointment until into fall of junior year…which then meant SAT/ACT testing had to be put off until after spring of junior year. From our older son, I knew never to allow D to take a standardized test without accommodations. Older S’s application for accommodations on the LSAT was denied since 25 on ACT when he took it in HS w/o accommodations was viewed as proof that he didn’t need standardized testing accommodations—regardless of what any LD testing said and regardless of any accommodations he’d gotten in college and HS.
Ah, that’s great news. Re-doing the testing was very expensive (and likely out of reach for many). Too late for my D though this may arise again for GREs. She is working with the LD office at college and did whatever paperwork they needed for accommodations there. Not sure what all she is using, she takes care of that herself now. I just gave her the kick to make sure she got it all done before classes started.
Interesting re your D saying it was easier to understand spoken rather than written texts (in your link above). My D would say the same. I on the other hand understand text much better than spoken words. My D cannot believe when I tell her I see the words and they are in my head instantaneously. That just seems impossible to her.
So, when they take the ACT and/or SAT - is everyone going to have the Board send the scores automatically to colleges of interest? I don’t want to do that because what if they suck? I would rather just pay later to send them after I see all the scores but I guess that could add up depending on the number of colleges.
I was planning on my D19 taking the Junior PSAT in Oct and taking the SAT in Jan and the ACT in Feb. Maybe taking them both again in April/May. If at a point of desperation taking just one of them an additional time. I honestly don’t know anything except I want all testing to be done by start of Senior year.
I also got my first truly negative comment about a school I mentioned to a friend. We are instate for Maryland so when asked about possibilities I mentioned UMCP, Salisbury and Frostburg. We could afford these schools. Well, apparently Salisbury and Frostburg suck and I must be crazy to be considering them and they mentioned a bunch of privates where she could get possible aid. I countered that a $60K school with $25K merit is just too expensive. Maybe its just me but I am having a hard time finding privates that offer merit aid (to average stat kids) that come close to instate tuition. Maybe for high stat kids, but that isn’t my D19.
@Cotton2017, I grew up in Maryland, going to a high school that didn’t send all that many students to four-year colleges but when it did, they generally went to Frostburg or Salisbury. Their reputations back then (thirty years ago!) were pretty low—Frostburg was where the students who wanted to go to college to party went, and Salisbury was where the students who wanted to go to college to learn but have a really easy time of it went.
As I understand it, though, times have changed—Frostburg, in particular, has worked hard to shed its party school atmosphere, and has beefed up its academics. Salisbury has taken steps to become more rigorous, and has also worked hard to make itself a regional educational hub for the Delmarva Peninsula.
However, the received wisdom folklore about Frostburg and Salisbury persist, even if it’s decades out of date—such is the nature of folklore. I will say, if either of those schools offered fields my D19 is interested in (sadly, neither do) and she had a shot at getting decent merit aid there as an OOS student, I’d have her looking at them. Yeah, there’s nearly no prestige associated with them, but they have decent outcomes, and they’re both from what I understand quite good at taking students who have struggled and helping them successfully make the transition to college and then beyond.
There are probably some expensive privates out there that might offer enough merit aid to students like yours to make them financially competitive (look at some of the Colleges That Change Lives schools, as a starting point), but having in-state options like Salisbury and Frostburg is one of the benefits of a state with as strong a tradition of public higher education as Maryland.
Nothing I can say about dealing with your friends, though, other than that you might have to develop a thick skin, but at least you can rest secure in knowing their stereotypes are rather out of date.
@dfbdfb - thanks! I have definitely heard the talk about those schools (more FSU vs. SU) but it’s MD and we don’t have in-state options like VA or NC. My D19 has a great GPA and we just need to work on the standardized testing. But, even if she hits a home run with SAT/ACT, we would probably still have to look instate or close too it (maybe Roanoke or Bridgewater) just to be affordable. I am dead set against loans so this is our reality. Maybe we can broaden our net if her SAT’s absolutely crush it but I am not counting on that.
@Cotton2017 We are just having the test scores sent automatically to the top choice schools. Strictly an economic decision. If the scores are low there will be a retake so I figure it isn’t a big problem.
@STEM2017 Totally agree. Now need to get S19 on board. I think that’s hard for kids who aren’t looking at the more popular colleges at their high school. I’m sure his friends will wonder why Michigan, Illinois, Northwestern, Chicago not on his list like probably most of his classmates with his classload. Plus, it’s got to be best to not discuss at all since you don’t want to have to report that you didn’t get in or got in and decided not to go when other classmates choose that school. Seems best for all involved to keep quiet.
@Cotton2017 Since S19 is taking his first SAT so early, there are no “top choice” schools as of yet and he won’t send the scores anywhere for now.
I didn’t mind telling people where my D16 was applying and of course, now that she’s in school the weed jokes never get old ; ) (She’s at Colorado State).
Even at my kids’ highly ranked public high school in a fairly wealthy DC suburb, the college getting the most students each year is often the local community college. (But it’s as if the parents want to pretend that doesn’t happen). We should all be proud of our college kids no matter where they end up.
I am so grateful to live in a place where people aren’t chasing prestige!
@Cotton2017 We will not automatically send scores. I prefer to wait and see how they did before sending and send to schools we know we want to send to. It is not the most economical choice but at the time of test taking I don’t expect any schools to be ones we absolutely know he’s applying to beyond maybe the flagship. Of course S19 has a mind of his own and I wouldn’t be at ALL surprised to learn after the fact he selected schools to send to. And if he does, that’s fine too.
Very close friends S graduated from Salisbury a couple of years ago. To @dfbdfb 's point, they did a fabulous job taking a semi struggling HS mid stats student and turning out a very successful young adult who managed a couple of internships while there and leveraged those into a nice job where he’s been steadily moving up.