My one child is at a HADES school and has discovered that many classmates, especially the ones who come from very competitive day schools in the US and internationally, have at least one online tutor. What they’ve found bizarre is kids are secretive about who their tutors are, where they’re applying to colleges, etc. Clearly this stems from the parents—let’s do a better job parents, since if your kid is really that bright, talented, etc. they will be accepted into great colleges while also learning to be a good friend, community member and person in general. That said, the first taste of some B’s has now freaked our kiddo out. They’ve gone to office hours, reviews, etc. but they think they’re at a disadvantage without tutors in two of the subjects they’re finding challenging, and although we’re trying to help our child see that a few B’s in a HADES or quite frankly any school is still great we also want to help alleviate some stress. That said, how does one find reputable online tutors? Thanks!
Are you talking about tutors or outside of school college counselors? Tutors are explicitly banned at some schools and only discouraged at others. Outside college counselors are fairly common and not against any rule.
My kids did/will absolutely not disclose where they are applying to college. It sets up a bad dynamic and feeds gossip. Total silence on the subject of college applications is fairly normal and most kids I know keep the info to themselves.
I am generally confused about what you’re asking about/commenting on.
Are you complaining about outside tutors or asking us how to find a good one?
Have you confirmed it’s not against the honor code? I’d be surprised if it’s allowed at a hades school.
This seems to be an issue at one of my kids’ schools but not at the other. While this is not quite what you are asking, according to that kid, the school has some boarders who have online tutors and online classes that meet mostly during the evenings. These classmates are booked every evening with those tutors and classes. It has caused a little bit of an issue with various school events and dorm activities when those kids are expected to be free to participate but are not because of their tutoring or class schedule. So the online tutoring frustrates my kid because those kids sometimes don’t show up for things. Even more frustrating than the online tutors for my kid is the kids who do whole courses online first and then repeat that same class the next semester or the following year at boarding school. My kid feels like they are sometimes struggling with material that they are being taught for the first time while a few of their classmates are acing the courses easily because they are reviewing something for credit that they learned in a previous semester or summer online.
I don’t think any of it is against school rules, but my kid thinks it is giving wealthy kids an unfair advantage since all of the office hours in the world is not the same as having a 1:1 tutor for each of your subjects and a full preview for each of your courses. I have pushed back and asked my kid would you really want every free block and evening time of every day to be filled with scheduled tutors and extra classes? Would you really want to miss so many dorm and social activities or never get to just chill out in the dorm lounge post study halll with your friends? Do you want to spend every summer and xmas vacation taking a class that you will just take again the next year? The answer is a fervent no! And that is a good thing in my mind because I don’t think it is healthy and also because I couldn’t/wouldn’t pay for it even if my kid really want me to.
Yeah, I was taken aback by this post, too—this phenomenon doesn’t exist at all at my school.
And I don’t talk about college with anyone but my close friends, too; the process is just really frustrating, and people can get really toxic and competitive about it.
Anyways, the time sacrificed isn’t worth it. If OP’s child is a freshman, their grades will go up soon enough; everyone does their worst freshman year, myself included.
Fwiw, our school discouraged the parents and the kids from talking to each other about their college applications. They felt it just stressed everyone out.
With that said, I sensed that kids shared about their visit impressions, and for several years, there were group tours to DC and/or Boston for boarders who couldn’t visit with family.
My kid knew a bit about where friends were applying. They weren’t secretive, but it wasn’t general knowledge either. And of course, if reps visited the school, they’d see who else attended the session.
As for tutors, it was discouraged. If a kid was really struggling in a class, the school would help find a tutor – often a teacher who had taught the class before but might be able to explain it differently. But to be fair, the vibe at our school was not one of competition and/or hierarchy, so the “clawing to the top” behavior was not common in the community.
That is great, and it makes me want to add that I don’t think the culture at my kids’ school is particularly competitive either. My kid hasn’t described toxic competition; kids aren’t comparing grades or trying to best each other.
I get the feeling that my kid’s concern is basically two worries: 1. believing some classes move at a faster pace than is reasonable because there is a (small) group of kids who are using resources not available to all students in the class. 2. the practice of getting a tutor in every subject (even classes that you are doing well in) ends up isolates the tutored kids from the rest of the community because they are spending their free blocks and evenings being tutored/taking extra classes while everyone else is doing more community oriented activities. But I also pointed out that it is pretty normal for students at prep school to use their free periods for studying or going to their teachers’ office hours for extra help; it is the use of online tutors that seems unusual.
My kid at a GLADCHEMMS school that doesn’t offer AP classes says a classmate or two use online classes (e.g., from Stanford Online, he says) to help them learn the material for the AP tests in quantitative subjects, but that’s all.
Not sure the confusion. Was curious why so much secretiveness of tutoring services (allowed) and with where kids apply to college (not there yet and our child is an athlete so has a different process). The culture that this type of secretiveness—really, next level competitiveness by parents but filtering down to their children—seems counter-intuitive to modeling/encouraging our children to be good, kind community members in their school and beyond. But yes, per my original post we were looking for suggestions for reputable online tutoring options, and thankfully some kind members of this group have messaged recommendations in addition to us reaching out to department chairs in the subjects our child was seeking extra help.
Yes, this is a similar concern. I’m not sure about kids taking a course and then re-taking it at school but that might explain why my child said there are kids that came into a course so far ahead and the only ones with As. So my child thinks they need tutoring to “catch up”.
More common is kids having taken math or language classes at their former school but then placing into the same levels of one or both in the boarding school placement tests. E.g., they might have taken algebra II at their middle school but instead of placing into pre-calculus for boarding school, they placed into algebra II. There’s nothing nefarious about this. It happens because the kids are rusty and/or what’s expected for a certain course is simply more in a “top” boarding school than in, say, public school.
A few things I think about here is:
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Tutoring and taking extra classes are not the same thing.
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If the kids need permission to skip clubs/study hour/ECs to take these classes (not tutoring but classes), then that’s a discussion you should be having with your child’s school. Considering most blow smoke about equity and diversity these days, if you have a legitimate concern, bring it up with them.
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Perhaps these families don’t openly share this info because they hate other families being up in their junk!
Personally, I don’t see the practice of online tutoring or outside of school zoom classes at boarding school as much different than the way that families use the Russian School of Math or CTY online or other academic enrichment classes at public schools or private day schools. All of those enrichment resources can help students either accelerate in their course sequence or strengthen their performance in a regular track class if they choose not to accelerate. And most of those resources are difficult to access when one doesn’t have the $$$. One of the my D22’s friends told me that she had already learned every topic covered in her ninth grade math class in some after school math class that she took during eighth grade. Whatever. Families who have that kind of money for academic enrichment are free to use it however they wish. I don’t think it is up to me to question it. Using those types of resources (if one can afford it) doesn’t seem that different than pouring money into a kids’ athletic or arts or other extracurricular training.
Unless a school expressly forbids outside of school support (and as far as I know, none of my kids’ schools have rules against it), I don’t consider the practice to be problematic or at least not problematic enough to rise to the level of reporting it to a school’s administration. At the same time, I have been startled to hear from my kids that they have classmates who are getting tutors in order to help them turn Bs or B+s into As. When I was in high school, most kids who got tutoring did so because they were getting Ds and Fs in their classes not in response to honor grades. Actually, I know that one of my younger kids has an international friend who is getting ESL tutoring online 2x/week since the school doesn’t offer it. That seems like a great use of funds, and one that I understand more than a tutor to help turn a B in a course into an A. It must be really hard for students whose native language is not English when suddenly all of their classes are conducted in English. All the while, they are trying to adjust to the culture shock of going to school many thousands of miles away from home in a school with a really different pedagogy than their previous school. On the other hand, my kid also has friends who are domestic students who grow up in homes where their parents don’t speak English because they are recent immigrants. English is a second language for those kids as well. They don’t have the money for ESL support though they might need it nearly as much.
I am not sure what you mean about blowing smoke. As a parent of non-majority, relatively low income kids, I think the challenge of being not wealthy at these prep schools is very real. It is difficult to be a poor kid at a school where most of your classmates are wealthy or upper middle class. Even with the best of financial aid, your experience is quite different. I appreciate that some schools try to address it even when they aren’t fully successful. Lip service annoys me, but honest efforts to address equity do not. I don’t consider concern about inequities to be “blowing smoke.” To know that my children are attending schools that state their commitment to equity clearly and have plans in place to address inequities is important to me even when the school’s execution is not fully unsuccessful.
This is exactly what I meant. If it is known that these people are truly skipping obligations to take courses that they repeat the next term for a successful grade and the school is not addressing this issue of disparity between the rich and the poor, then they in fact are blowing smoke. You don’t get to pick and choose when you want to be equitable out of convenience. It has to be in place for all and at all times. So when a school turns a blind eye (if that is actually the case) then yes, they are blowing smoke.
Just to be clear, CTY testing is modestly priced and they offer a great deal of financial aid. It does quite a good job of offering equitable access. Russian Math and AOPS do not, although AOPS is considerable less expensive.
Thanks. I knew that CTY’s testing was affordable, but I didn’t realize that their financial aid was good. Two of my kids were encouraged to take their tests by middle school teachers. They received the “grand honors” award, but we never followed through with any of the courses or programming. The list price of the summer camps seemed pricey and none of my kids were interested enough for us to do further research or look at the aid application.
For what it is worth, I don’t think there is anything wrong with kids doing online courses or parents using their resources for tutoring if their kid is struggling. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like CTY can be a fantastic experience especially for kids who aren’t being challenged in their home schools. I do hope that in most cases, enrollment in that sort of academic enrichment program is driven by a child’s genuine interest in the subject and not by the desire to gain a competitive edge over other students in their middle or high school. My impression is that most boarding schools are challenging enough. Adding more virtual work on top of boarding life might lead to burnout or at least less enjoyment of school.
Interesting conversation!
I can’t help on the tutor front since hiring external tutors definitely does not seem to be the vibe at our school. Internal tutors are available at the various resource centers. For example, my daughter is a science and math peer tutor, and works at the STEM resource center a couple of times of week so anyone who needs help, can pop in and get it for free.
Regarding college apps:
Whole different ballgame.
In my mind, you might be confusing “privacy” with “secrecy.”
The general consensus in the college app world is that staying private about your schools helps reduce competitive culture. You may not agree with that assessment, but it has me wondering if maybe you just haven’t gone through the process yet? Like the pregnant woman giving parenting advice to a mom of 4 (a real example). :). Or, maybe you have gone through the process and you still disagree with that – totally cool too. But, know that industry standard is: no need to be vomiting out all the schools you are applying to because it creates an unhealthy frenzy. So parents “doing a better job” actually IS keeping private about college apps.
ps. This conversation just gave me an excellent question to ask in the admissions process which I cannot believe I hadn’t thought of before in the millions of school zooms we’ve attended throughout the admissions process: “do students typically hire external academic tutors?” This might be great for some, but would be a negative for us.
You should definitely ask the tutoring question—it might give a small nugget of insight into the school’s level of competitive culture.
We have gone through the college admissions process with an older child at BS a few years ago and although no one was publicly announcing where they were interested or top choices, they certainly shared amongst friends and teammates. So what we’re seeing now just seemed to feed into the overall secretiveness with tutor sources, college applications, etc. adding another layer of unnecessary competitiveness stemming from parents and filtering down to their children.
For sure the culture does vary by school (and BS). The tutor question might give a ton of insight, and agree…would recommend it to families looking at BS. (My four girls are either already in their BS or in college, so not applicable to us anymore, but a GREAT question for future prospective families!)
Another question that I found enlightening to ask in the school research process was: what is the typical daily homework load (in hours per day) for a freshman in a normal (non-finals) week? Some schools said that typically freshmen can get their homework done in study hours (2 hours), or study hours plus a little bit of daytime work during a free (so, like 2.5 hours). Some said 3 hours. And some outright estimated 4 hours. For us, freshman year that targets 4 hours of homework a night really spoke to a culture – could be a great fit for some who crave that level of work or it could be a non-fit. Also, what might take my daughter 4 hours to complete could take someone else 3 if they are a whiz-kid in a couple of subjects.
Anyway - it would be interesting to notice how all these various cultural elements relate to one another. Like if my kid had given up all of her teenager spare time and never had time to hang out at the student center and shoot some pool with friends because she had 4 hours of homework a night for 3 years, she might also be a little less likely to share a top-notch tutor or college consultant with others for fear of losing the competitive advantage she had paid such a high price to develop. I don’t know for sure. (She will never find out because she isn’t getting any such tutor or consultant!). :).
Anyway – interesting topic. thanks for sharing.
This is not entirely indicative of the school culture however unless you survey every single student. One may tell you they have 4 hours and another may tell you 2. Talk to faculty and you’ll get another answer. One may utilize free time to check in with peer tutors or their teacher and one may utilize free time to do homework. One may be taking Latin 600 and the other Latin 100 or it could be Digital Photography for one while the other is taking Applied Quantum Mechanics. It is really tough to compare because not everyone is going to have the same amount, put in the same effort, take the same amount of time, etc. My son has friends that attend 2 of the top schools and when talking to various students of various grades (but not grouping one school with another) they all range in the amount of homework they say they have. One kid says he has about 2 hours a day but he also skips breakfast to do math homework he didn’t do the day before, too. Another says she doesn’t often have more than an hour but she uses her free blocks to work on it during the day, too. But pictures people paint of these 2 schools would make you believe these kids are pushing out 5 hours a night. So you really have to get the entire picture when asking “how much homework is there a night” or you may be painting a false picture of the “culture” of a school.