Choosing the Best Tutor for YOU!
Many students say to me that they have tried other tutors and had poor success. Many say that their tutor is unable to explain the material at all. If you are paying
someone and they don’t know what they are doing and they don’t know your course, find someone else.
If you are paying someone $25/hour and they are taking hours to teach what I would teach in one hour, you are actually paying more in the long run and you are probably getting confused for no reason. The “going rate” for a teacher providing tutoring is between $50-$90 per hour. If someone is charging you $25-30 per hour, they probably aren’t qualified to teach you.
Remember, the great majority of tutors are just students who took the
course once and want to make some money. They just show up and ask you what you want to do. Some tell me their tutor shows up and just wants to chat. Many don’t even know the course or what is in it. It is a good cue to you that if your tutor can’t just make up questions or lessons for you on the concepts in the course, then they don’t really know the course.
Several have said their tutor spent half their time staring at the questions, not
able to figure them out. Some of these tutors charged $35/hour, by the way. These
were not even the most inexpensive tutor.
Some said they couldn’t understand their tutors English. If someone’s accent is too
hard for you to understand, find someone else. You need to find someone whom you can understand and learn from.
Getting someone from the professional tutoring agencies that charge $75-$90 per hour is generally not advisable either. These people are required to have a PhD which they think makes them a better prospect for a tutor. I know from my experience, I would NEVER pick a tutor based on the fact that they have a PhD. My experience with PhD students is that most of them are brilliant and understand the material, but can not teach at all because they don’t have the ability to explain concepts in different ways. This is a common complaint of my students about other prep sessions that are provided by other companies. Students tell me the people teaching them can’t actually TEACH at all, so you can’t understand them. Although there are some PhD students who I’m sure are good teachers, this is not the experience of my students.
I hope this helps. Remember, if you pick someone and they are terrible, find a new
one. Your success in your math course is what is most important:)