If your high stats kid is looking for a little bit of money I would suggest him/her doing some private ACT/SAT tutoring. My D19 started her first client yesterday. She is charging $25 per hour. I think she will do 6-8 hours with this person before the June test.
We threw something up on facebook and got a client and she might have another one once school is done for the year over the Summer.
We figure that there are parents that will pay that rate in our area. She might as well use those brains and her score to get paid. D19 figures it beats flipping burgers for 3 hours.
My only regret is not thinking of this idea 11 months ago when D19 got her ACT score. She could have been doing it all senior year. Now she only has until mid-August.
Ever since D19 gave up her sports senior year she has been trying to make all the money she can.
High scoring kids don’t necessarily know how to teach low scoring kids how to improve though. Or know how to each, period. If this is a thing a kid is good at, it would also be terrific service for the title one schools etc. As a parent, I would not pay a HS kid with a high score unless they had been proven. Make sure to keep some good records. Grumpy parents of unsuccessful kids will blame their tutor.
I was thinking the same thing as @Sybylla . High stats kids with no teaching experience can probably help other high stats kids in a useful way, simply by doing/practicing/discussing questions… But kids who really struggle need a professional tutor, and even then it is a formidable undertaking.
I think the title is a little misleading, as it implies that someone wants advice on whether they should go for private tutoring. This post almost sounds like advertising. How is it relevant that your D has been trying to make all the money she can? I apologize if this is simply the OP being conversational, but if that’s the case, perhaps this should have been posted in the parent cafe.
I’m a professional test prep tutor. It’s taken me years of doing this to get to where I’m at now. Every student has his or her own issues and there is no “one size fits all” approach In general, my easiest and least lucrative students are the really intelligent high stats kids. They mostly just need to become familiar with the test and maybe learn some time management tips.
It’s fine if someone wants to hire OPs daughter for test prep, but effective test prep (especially if a parent is looking for merit aid, or aiming very high, etc…) usually needs someone with more than just a high score.
She should be very careful in how she promotes herself. I totally agree with the people above who have said if parents pay and see no improvement they will be very unhappy. We paid 150 an hour to a tutor who brought my daughter from a 1430 PSAT to a 1560 SAT. We consider that money well spent. My daughter didn’t need tutoring on the material; she needed tutoring on the test - on how to take the test and master it.
If your DD can get $25 per hour by tutoring the SAT, my advice is for her to sign-up as many people as are willing to pay. Is she likely to be as effective as a $150 per hour tutor? Of course not but there is a benefit in getting the students to spend time on the SAT.
As to the purchasers of such a service … caveat emptor.
Very true. My D was asked by the GC to tutor. She was also asked by a Korean family who lived on our street to tutor their young children in English. For that she was compensated.
Dd19 tutors both for NHS and privately for pay, but we hired a specialized SAT tutor for her, as well as her siblings. It’s more than just content. As for making money, dd14 is at a birthday party dressed as Elsa from frozen, with tips she can make almost $100 an hour! She only makes $20 an hour babysitting.
Babysitting is way more work than lifeguarding, if done correctly. She picks up from school, takes them to the park, bike rides, plays games, cooks, cleans up, changes diapers, plus she is on an on call basis, not regular scheduled hours. Some gigs start before 7 am, some end at 2 am.
I’d say caution is needed on both end of this. Not every kid who scores high can verbalize strategies for others or break down and teach/review problem areas.
We paid for online tutoring done by college students and it was extremely low quality “tutoring”. It was pretty much timed tests and correcting with no remediation or review. It definitely was not worth it. Luckily my kid got a great ACT score, but it was almost the same great score he got before tutoring. He was near the top of the test, but I think with some targeted math tutoring and review he could have bumped that score. I specifically asked the tutor to focus on that area.
Sometimes paying $25 an hour for teen to sit with another teen just to jump through some practice tests is enough. If my kid did this I’d want to advertise what their constraints are and price accordingly.
