<p>Some people at my school offer SAT tutoring, but none of them received a 2400 (they all got around 2200). While I don't think that tutors must necessarily have a 2400, I feel that a 2200 is just a bit too low to offer tutoring. Does anyone have any experience with SAT tutoring, and what a qualifying score should be?</p>
<p>The knowledge of your tutor on how to prepare for and take the exam is what matters. What score you would like to receive will influence what level of knowledge you would need your tutor to have in order to learn a satisfying amount. It is reasonable to assume a positive though imperfect correlation between the tutor’s score and his or her relevant knowledge. </p>
<p>For most high-potential students, I find that self-studying (involving practice tests) facilitated by strategies that can be found online is the best option.</p>
<p>Like silverturtle, I also got a 2400 and self studied for it. Whether a fellow student with a 2200 might be able to assist you, depends on your score. If you’re already scoring 2300, then I might suggest you tutor them rather than the other way around. :P</p>
<p>But if you’re stuck at 1800 or so, then a 2200 tutor would probably be able to help you.</p>
<p>Love silverturtle’s allusion :P</p>
<p>Ideally, yes. But a 2400 is not enough. In fact, the other much more important part of the equation to picking a good tutor outweighs a less than 2400 score.</p>
<p>That factor is how WELL that tutor can analyze specific students and get those students to understand. Doing well on the test is a wholly different skill set than being able to convey those abilities to a student.</p>
<p>Just because a tutor knows how to solve a math question a certain way, perhaps the “mathy” academic way…doesn’t mean his student will. And if this is a low-scoring student, trying to force the student to learn the mathy way is ridiculous. Instead, a good tutor needs to know when to adapt and teach this low-scoring student a more nimble strategy such as plugging in the answers or making up his own values for the variables and trying it out.</p>
<p>A tutor must also be likeable and relatable. He must be understanding and caring. He must be patient.</p>
<p>He must be able to spot the trends a student is doing over and over. A good tutor must be able to organize a curriculum and adapt because simply going over a giant list of questions spawning a bunch of concepts is completely unhelpful. You must organize the session around individual concepts, one at a time. A good tutor must not simply show a student the steps, but ask guiding questions to get the student to think for himself. Brute memorization of a bunch of steps does not work because then the student gets trained in one very specific type of question. When he tries to apply this to another similar, but different question, those steps won’t work anymore. A good tutor gets his student to think nimbly.</p>
<p>Finally, a good tutor must be encouraging.</p>
<p>As far as scores go, as long as the tutor has higher than the target score, I think it’s good enough. The other factors above are much more important.</p>
<p>@pwcpeng</p>
<p>Excellent points all! Which is why high scores alone are not sufficient – gotta have that teaching connection.</p>
<p>Still, I would find it surprising (though not impossible) to have a tutor who was fluent enough to teach the material who did not also have higher than 700 in the subject they teach. And if your scores are already above that level, you really don’t need a tutor at all – you can self-study to get those last points (or at least a good fraction of them).</p>
<p>Of course. That’s why every NBA coach was a scoring champ as a player.</p>