Category: Test Prep

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The Ultimate Tutoring Question: Tutoring Company vs Private Tutor

While summer is a time of relaxation and a departure from the grind of the school year, some parents and high school students are looking ahead to applying to colleges and one of the key components of the college application process is taking the [easyazon_link identifier=”1119508061″ locale=”US” tag=”evanstutoring-20″]ACT[/easyazon_link] and/or [easyazon_link identifier=”1457309289″ locale=”US” tag=”evanstutoring-20″]SAT[/easyazon_link]. Either test sounds daunting so most look for a tutor to help. (Of course, this situation can also apply to any school year difficulty.) However, how do you know you’re finding the best tutor?

Some flock to a tutoring company who send you a tutor while others look for an unaffiliated private tutor. Which is the better way to go? As someone who started by working for tutoring companies and then tutoring independently, here are the pros and cons (not just for parents, but also aspiring tutors):



TUTORING COMPANY

~~PROS~~

The greatest advantage of a tutoring company is that they have already vetted the tutor you are assigned. You could have been assigned anyone from a big pool of tutors, and they thought this tutor would bring chemistry due to their academic strengths or overall personality.

Companies also have a plan in place and a track record. Some companies produce their own study manuals and core curriculum, which shows organization.

Another thing a company can bring is variety. Say you do not like the tutor you are assigned, you always have recourse with the company and can get a replacement tutor, maybe even get a free lesson. They also have a support staff to handle any other issues.

~~CONS~~

A tutoring company can have its own philosophy and may dictate how lessons are supposed to go. If that does not fit how your child learns then you can hit a dead end.

One of the biggest cons about tutoring companies can be the price and non-corresponding quality of the tutor. You may be thinking, “I paid $80/hour for this lesson. My tutor is going to be great!” Well, your tutor may only be making $25 of that as the difference goes towards staff and other maintenance costs. So now you have to ask, “Do I want a $25 tutor or an $80 tutor?” “Do I want to pay $200 an hour for a tutor that may only be worth $40?”

Earlier in my career I was working at a company where only a fraction of the money the family was paying was going towards the tutor. Perhaps I did not value my ability, perhaps I wanted to get more experience first, but it always felt like, even though I knew I was doing a great job, the family was overpaying.



WHAT ABOUT A PRIVATE TUTOR?

PROS

The great thing about finding a private tutor is that you will get what you pay. For example, I do a lot of tutoring on Wyzant. In the beginning when I had little experience I started at $40/hour. (Keep in mind that Wyzant is similar to a company that does have a support staff and takes 20-40% of the tutor’s wage.) But when you look up tutors on that website you see the great ones are the more expensive ones.

Another pro of a private tutor is that you deal directly with them. You don’t have to schedule or voice concerns through office staff. You can go right to the source. And the tutor can adjust on the spot.

CONS

Usually tutors come with a track record. You should be able to be able to track down testimonials or past references. However, when you go off blind faith sometimes the tutoring can fall flat and you are back at square one. There is no corporate framework behind the tutor, but sometimes the tutor can develop their own materials. You have to trust that the private tutor will get results.

(Subtext – Evan will get you results!)

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ADHD: A Tutor’s Perspective

The ADD/ADHD Diagnosis And What It Means To Your Child’s Education

Let me start by saying I am not a medical professional nor am I being paid to endorse any product or service. What I am going to give you is my unbiased viewpoint from observing and tutoring hundreds of students one-on-one.

Growing up in a public high school in the 1990s, while at times was stressful and competitive, was at the same time simple. You went to class, you went home and you studied. Some stuff you didn’t understand so you just memorized it, but that was the pattern. You then took the test, remembered what you could and immediately after the test you would forget everything. Yes, there were students who had speech or learning disabilities, but a vast majority of my classmates were really just… kids.

In the 2000s, it seemed that the ADHD “boom” came from doctors and psychiatrists looking at why students struggled with their schoolwork and why they experienced one, or several, of a checklist of study manifestations. (On my ‘how to study‘ page, I mention what causes those manifestations.)

The conclusion was a student’s lack of comprehension had something to do with the brain and that there was a chemical imbalance. Here’s the kicker though: the National Institute of Health says there is no such thing.

“We do not have an independent, valid test for ADHD, and there is no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.”— National Institute of Health (NIH) Consensus Statement

If students had trouble remembering what they read or got headaches or felt tired then that led to the ADD/ADHD label. All of a sudden there was a laundry list of behaviors that could place someone under that umbrella. But from my perspective there’s nothing ‘disorder’ about having trouble understanding something that is difficult. If I’m passing out in science class, it’s not because of ADHD, it’s because something happened in that lesson that caused my behavior.

And what has been the solution? Medication, more specifically Ritalin, Adderall and endless other psychotropic drugs that are really amphetamines with dangerous side effects. You did not have an Adderall deficiency so why would you take that drug. Sleep, nutrition and exercise are just a few of things that can counter ADHD symptoms.

In my over 3000 hours of tutoring, in almost every instance of seeing a student not understanding, I never thought, “Oh, this is an ADHD student.” What I observed was this child simply didn’t know how to study!
Because the ADHD diagnosis is now so widely accepted (and misunderstood), students and parents have grown suggestible enough to believe medication is the answer. In fact, thanks to all those television commercials you see and magazine ads you read over 8 million children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs in the USA alone, and that includes 1 million children under age 5!

Of the hundreds of students I have tutored, the ones on the medication have been the slowest. Not because there were naturally slow, but because the medication toned them down. It turned them from an alert child into a monotonous zombie.

Years ago I was tutoring a bright girl who then went to a neurologist who said she was ADHD. She then had to ‘get used to’ her medication. I continued to tutor her, but what happened was her mental math declined, her cognitive processing slowed down and her mood became more wooden.

I had another bright student studying for the ACTs. She had her issues with the test, but she was always engaged with what she was learning. As test day was approaching, she disclosed that she was labeled ADHD even though she never displayed any of your ‘typical’ ADHD signs when I was tutoring her.  She was deciding whether or not to ‘take a pill’ the day of the test to give her a boost. My viewpoint is why would you introduce an unknown into your routine when you are already successful?

More recently, I tutored someone who was essentially an honors student, but just like baseball players looked for an edge in ‘the steroid era,’ this student did six hours of ADHD testing only in hopes of getting more time for tests. (He was already finishing his tests in time.)

I am not saying that the symptoms you experience when trying to learn something are bogus, but the brain-based theory behind the cause is the first misdirection, which makes the medication a ‘mis-solution.’ I will continue to tutor ADD/ADHD students, but I will be tutoring the student and not the diagnosis.

You have the potential to learn anything and if you can’t it doesn’t mean you have ADD or ADHD. It means you need to learn the technology of study. We take classes in different areas of knowledge, but we never have classes on how to learn. That is something I always introduce to the struggling student. I will even do a full lesson only on study skills. And then you won’t have to spend hours memorizing something for a test, because you will simply know it.

Check out my how to study page and get some real data about ADHD and child mental disorders.

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Tale of the Test: Should you take the SAT or ACT?

TALE OF THE TEST:  Should you take the SAT or ACT?

As high school students look ahead to college, they know that part of the application game is choosing which admissions test is best for them. While you can look at the layout of each test on my SAT & ACT pages, I’m going to compare the sections of the test against one another as if they were a series of boxing matches. So in a scholastic version of Mayweather-McGregor, let’s see who wins.

Match #1: ACT English vs SAT Writing & Language

The ACT English runs a little faster so you don’t have to think as much to find the right answer. When you sit down to take the ACT, their questions are pretty straightforward whereby if you know the grammar law, you’re golden. In this case, you would apply the 4 C’s: Is the answer ‘clear, consistent, complete and/or concise?’ There would be a few questions about the passage overall, but sometimes you can get the answer just from looking at the title of the passage. The curve on English is stiffer than other sections of the test so you really need a high percentage of correct answers to do well so that your raw score translates favorably to your ‘out of 36’ English score.

The SAT Writing & Language section is briefer and touches on the same grammar rules as the ACT. Some of the questions focus a little more on reasoning so you may need to keep a little more attention on the comprehension of the passage. Some feel that is what the reading section is for and the old SAT was more fun for students before it changed in 2015.

Winner: ACT English


Match #2: ACT Reading vs SAT Reading

The ACT Reading section shows up as the 3rd section of the test, right after your break and is the same four-passage layout each time: Literary Narrative, Social Science, Humanities, Natural Science. I also find time to be more of an issue with this section because if the passages get a little involved, you can find yourself having to rush at the end. The content of the passages have a drier feel.

The SAT Reading is the first thing they hit you with on the test. So you sit down and BAM: over an hour of reading. However, you are given ample time for each passage (65 min / 52 questions / 5 passages) and the content is a little more interesting, sometimes including graphs, but can sometimes get too significant with the more literary selections. If you’re not a reading person, an hour of reading may be a bit much to start out your SAT, but its content is more enjoyable.

Winner: SAT Reading


Match #3: ACT Math vs SAT Math (no calculator & calculator sections)

Just like the English & Writing sections, the math content needed to be known for both tests is similar. However, the way the questions are presented is different. ACT Math questions are more like problems you would have for homework. Just like the SAT math sections, the questions do run easy to hard, but the way the ACT math questions get hard is bringing in harder topics where the SAT brings in additional layers to problems.

If math is your thing, then the SAT has more of it, and one positive change, for teachers at least, is pulling the calculator away for one math section, but then allowing it on the second one. Sometimes the students have issues with time on the math sections, more so with the ‘no calc’ section. When students struggle on math questions on these tests, it’s more than they don’t know the skill on the ACT, while they don’t know how to approach the question on the SAT.

Preference over who has the superior math section(s) depends on the student, but if these are reasoning tests, let’s go with the one where more reasoning is involved.

Winner: SAT Math


Match #4: ACT Science vs Mystery Opponent

There’s no mystery opponent, but ACT Science has to fight somebody. Science is not necessarily a section about science. It’s more another reading comprehension section with science content as a backdrop. Now both tests’ reading section have a passage based in science, but the ACT science section is more about looking at data, experiments and opinions and reading the graphs/studies and essentially following the yellow brick road. If you like reading about experiments, more so than doing a second math section, then the ACT may be for you.

Winner: N/A – No Contest


Match #5: ACT Essay vs SAT Essay

At the end of each test, there is an ‘optional’ essay that everyone does. Both essays changed in the last few years so let’s compare the essays as they are today.

First, for the ACT, make sure you get a newer book because some books on the market may still carry the older essay about school issues. Now the ACT cares about issues that affect our culture and offer multiple perspectives, to which the same essay task of analyzing them and giving your own viewpoint is always the same. One thing the ACT essay does allow for is a chance to create your own examples and give your own viewpoint on the issue.

The SAT essay, on the other hand, does not want your opinion. The current iteration involved reading an article about an issue and then writing about how the author makes their point. So you’re not analyzing the article, you’re analyzing how the author analyzes the issue. This lends each essay to having the same thesis of the same three bullet points that are given in the prompt. The SAT essay is more of a commitment because you are stuck with that one essay and you have to, in a way, praise the author despite your personal feelings, when you would think, showcasing your own feelings should be the way to go.

Winner: ACT Essay





And the winner is:

Uh oh, this could be one of those articles where you read a lot about something and then at the end nothing is resolved. By the tally of the matches, you could conclude that, but this is the analogy I give to students & parents:

The SAT comes off like a test that was written by a liberal arts hipster outdoors under a tree and the ACT was written by a hermit in their dorm room or campus library. So the ACT is drier, but the SAT may have more advanced content. It is really up to the student. Also, I have had students awarded extra time due to various conditions/disabilities and a slight majority are directed to take the ACT. However, it does depend on the student.

The best thing I can recommend is to check out these most recent official books. Each has their own theory section as well as practice tests. And if you’re looking for which test has the better prep materials available, then I would side with the SAT.

Evan Wecksell is the self-proclaimed ‘best tutor in the world.’ This is his site so no bio necessary, but definitely find the best test prep books on his materials page. And follow Evan’s Breakthrough Tutoring on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!