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...by professionally, I don't necessarily mean as a career or anything, but with a firm/company like Kaplan or the Princeton review. Has anyone had experience working with these companies? A friend of mine recommending tutoring as a great way of making supplemental income during the weekends or during odd hours. She did say that working with a company like Kaplan has caveats; you get less money than you would than if you tutorted independently, but you don't have to worry about providing materials like textbooks or practice sets. So has anyone here tutored in this sort of context, maybe preping kids for the GRE or SAT? What was it like, and did it have any downsides? Did you tutor for other subjects as well? There's a similar topic in the education subforum but it appears to be inactive.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 18:05 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 09:17 |
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I personally haven't (I can't teach to save my life), but from a few friends who have done the private tutor for SAT thing, they always were bragging how much money they made. On the extreme end one guy was making $200+/hour, but that was thanks to a reputation he had built up over time. I believe $100/hour is still very realistic if you are any good and can maintain a decent client base. Even if you go private, I think you'll probably end up using books from Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 18:12 |
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creepyloser posted:I personally haven't (I can't teach to save my life), but from a few friends who have done the private tutor for SAT thing, they always were bragging how much money they made. On the extreme end one guy was making $200+/hour, but that was thanks to a reputation he had built up over time. I believe $100/hour is still very realistic if you are any good and can maintain a decent client base. Wow, quite impressive. I wonder how many clients a good tutor can take on in a single day, or does that much instruction wear down a tutor?
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 18:14 |
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I tutored SAT/GRE for Kaplan for a while, it was alright. You basically read the Kaplan books out loud to the students and have them fill in the blanks (this is "providing structure," in company parlance). Kaplan charges over $100 an hour for private tutoring and gives you less than $20 of it. But they make their real money on the classroom setup: standard SAT classes are $600 for 18 hours; you might have 10 students in such a class, but you'll only get paid about $300 for the whole routine (less than 5% of the revenue). My advice: go to the bookstore, read all the different company books, distill it into a "crash course," come up with ways to customize it for average, high-scoring, and low-scoring students, and then market yourself as not being a ripoff. You can charge people a lot less than Kaplan does, and take home a lot more money. creepyloser is correct; if you're good at tutoring, good at marketing yourself, and establish a reputation, you can make some pretty crazy money doing this, especially if you live near wealthy suburbs or in a college town with a lot of law/professional/grad school-bound slackers.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 18:29 |
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A friend of mine taught for Kaplan and absolutely hated it. I don't know if it's the same sort of thing as others here, but he was teaching English to people in England, with a view to them being able to work here. The teaching was fine, the per-hour rate was good, but the problem was that you only got paid for the teaching hours and they required you to do LOADS of extra stuff outside of that to prepare for classes. He had wanted to teach for ages, then completely changed his mind after this.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 21:10 |
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I've tutored for 5 years and was recently promoted to tutor manager at my company (a small private test prep place). My rates near the end were $150/hr and I was paid $45 of that. At the two other tutoring places I worked for, I was paid $20 and $25/hr respectively and wasn't able to get any raises. I would avoid big box companies like Kaplan and the like; they pay worse than private companies and generally don't train you very well. Working for yourself has the biggest potential for $$$: you can charge what you like and do your own marketing. Downsides: you have to find the clients and make them pay, and then find more clients and make them pay, rinse, repeat. It's a lot of hustle. I found working for a small test-prep place to be the best of both worlds. They charge a lot and can pay tutors more than average, and you don't have to find any clients or worry if their $2000 checks bounce or whatever. My company also offered great reimbursements like healthcare, gym fees, and cell phone. I also learned a lot more and got to help with curriculum development and growing our company, which has led to a new position with a great salary ($72k+ bonus and benefits), flexible hours (I only come in 3-4 days a week) and lots of ways to grow my talents. I know you don't think tutoring is a professional career, but I didn't think so either and I'm as happy as a clam right now. If you're a self-starter and think you can handle the marketing and billing and all the nasty stuff, it's probably worth your while to start your own prep business. I hate dealing with that side of business though so it was better for me to work for a company. Good luck! edit: bad stuff - you work evenings and weekends. That means you get the days free but you won't be able to go out in the evenings with your friends until much later.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 23:16 |
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Anjow posted:A friend of mine taught for Kaplan and absolutely hated it. I don't know if it's the same sort of thing as others here, but he was teaching English to people in England, with a view to them being able to work here. The teaching was fine, the per-hour rate was good, but the problem was that you only got paid for the teaching hours and they required you to do LOADS of extra stuff outside of that to prepare for classes. He had wanted to teach for ages, then completely changed his mind after this. When I did it, we got paid minimum wage for the outside hours, but the catch was that you couldn't get more outside hours than classroom hours. So unless you were freaky good at class preparation, your actual hourly wage did get to be pretty low.
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| # ? Feb 28, 2013 20:48 |
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I recently saw WyzAnt mentioned in an E/N thread and it looks neat. Tutors put up profiles, students can search for them, WyzAnt helps pair them up, manages some business crap and takes a cut. I'm considering using it perhaps later this year to tutor people in CS subjects for some extra spending money.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 04:59 |
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Radio Talmudist posted:There's a similar topic in the education subforum but it appears to be inactive.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 05:58 |
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Cicero posted:I recently saw WyzAnt mentioned in an E/N thread and it looks neat. Tutors put up profiles, students can search for them, WyzAnt helps pair them up, manages some business crap and takes a cut. I'm considering using it perhaps later this year to tutor people in CS subjects for some extra spending money. I saw that too and I'd like to hear more about it. Like half the google suggestions for it are "is Wyzant a scam" so I'm a bit hesitant.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 16:14 |
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I proctor for Princeton Review, I have been asked to do the actual program but can't be arsed. Your major qualification is a good score on the tests themselves, after that they train you to teach a given test and you do it. The pay is poo poo, like, $12-15 an hour around Chicago but it isn't hard work. Proctoring is even easier, I drive out, read a book for four hours, and drive back.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 16:21 |
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Eggplant Wizard posted:I saw that too and I'd like to hear more about it. Like half the google suggestions for it are "is Wyzant a scam" so I'm a bit hesitant.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 17:33 |
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I work for a smallerish/newer tutoring company and have been quite happy with it. They expect me to do some outside work, but not a lot (and if it is something big they will pay me to do it) and pay pretty well per hour. I also have to drive rather far sometimes, but the company will pay travel as well. They also give raises regularly so long as your doing a good job. I think I went from making 20-25/hour to 24-31/hour within a year. I also really like that this particular company seems to actually come up with really useful strategies to teach to students and has a really strong focus on collaborating to work to improve our individual teaching abilities. The only downside is that you are held to a point increase guarantee which you can potentially be put on probation for missing (they are also wonderful about examining each case individually)and that because most of the employees are college students looking for just a few hours, they keep a very large number of tutors which means it can be hard to get more than a few hours each week. All in all I enjoy it quite a bit. I mostly tutor SAT/ACT which, as far as the content goes, can get a bit dull. However, watching the often crazy amount of improvement my students make is really rewarding and getting to know them is really fun too. As a side job, I think it's pretty darn great.
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 01:04 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 09:17 |
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I know that test prep tutoring has the "glamour" factor to it, but there is also money to be made in SES tutoring, which is the industry that provides tutoring services to Title 1 schools throughout the US. Yes, you're usually providing services to elementary- and middle-school kids, but they pay upwards of $30 an hour, and it only requires a bachelors degree. I was able to work afternoons for about 2-4 hours a day, and as a supplemental check it was nice. Another area to look into that can make you a good chunk of change is grading standardized tests. There are various companies out there that will hire you, and you may have to do some internet digging, but they will usually hire people with masters degrees to grade. It generally runs seasonally, with spring being the busiest time. Anyway, just a couple of thoughts.
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 01:37 |
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