<p>Don't shoot me if this has already been hashed and rehashed. I didn't come on this board until well after all of this went down.</p>
<p>Is Mike Barrett the Mystery Tutor?</p>
<p>I recently saw references to Mr. E Tutor on CC and then watched several of the videos on YouTube. I was already familiar with Mike Barrett, and had seen several of his testingiseasy videos on YouTube, as well.</p>
<p>The sound on the Mr. E videos was deliberately distorted to mask the voice, but the cadence of his speech, the way he chuckled to himself and the phrases he used all have me convinced that Mr. E and Mike Barrett are one in the same.</p>
<p>The physique is similar and self-assuredness (read "cockiness") is the same. The only thing that had me doubting my speculation, is that Mike uses his hands a lot when speaking and I didn't see that so much with Mr. E. However, Mr. E seemed to be reading from cue cards or a teleprompter, and I imagine that Mike might use his hands less when reading scripted copy. I saw another Mr. E vid that a girl named Kelly posted to the Facebook MT page (about college admissions). In that video Mr. E is seated and uses his hands in the same manner that Mike does.</p>
<p>Also, a lot of the strategies (and even the specific BB question references) Mr. E discusses seem to be straight out of Mike's SAT strategy guide.</p>
<p>Am I right? Is Mike Mr. E? Is this all old news?</p>
<p>I referenced the wrong Mystery Tutor video above. It was actually a video about tutoring. It was posted by a girl named Christine on February 16, 2009. Google “Facebook sattutoring.wmv”.</p>
<p>This is the one where the Mystery Tutor is seated and is off script. It’s clear that he had only his five bullet points in front of him. He is rambling on and on for 27 minutes in the same manner that Mike Barrett rambles in his testingiseasy YouTube videos. He uses his hands constantly to emphasize his speech, just like Mike does. He has a habit of shaking his head left and right when he makes negative statements. Mike does this, too. The Mystery Tutor sound has been distorted to alter the voice pitch and/or speed, so they do not sound the same, but general inflection and modulation of the voices are very close.</p>
<p>I have not seen any of the Mystery Tutor pdfs that he mentions in his videos. However, I have seen a copy of Mike Barretts SAT and PSAT strategy guide. There are many similarities. For example, Mystery Tutor, in his prefixes and sufixes video, makes a point of saying that “un” in the word “understand” does not mean the opposite of “derstand”. This same example is used in Mike’s guide. Also, Mystery Tutor states in one of his SAT writing videos that one of the CB standards is to avoid verb forms ending in -ed and -ing. Again, this is one of the “bad patterns” from Mike’s books. There are many more similiarities.</p>
<p>So, again, my speculation is that the Mystery Tutor and Mike Barrett are the same person.</p>
<p>If not, perhaps the reason that Mystery Tutor disappeared is because he lifted a good deal of his material from Mike Barrett.</p>
<p>Are these videos any good? There was this spammer advertising some wookieprep website who linked posts to Mystery Tutor’s video tutorials hosted on his site. I tried watching them but ultimately couldn’t stand his bunny costume. And not to mention, the intros!</p>
<p>I won’t make any judgement about the quality of the advice, but don’t give your email away to any spammer or go to any website where someone is trying to sell you something.</p>
<p>Just go to YouTube and type Mystery Tutor. You’ll find all of the videos that were saved there. A few videos are also available at FaceBook.</p>
<p>Videos all suffer from the same problem: you have to patiently sit through the drivel to find a gem or two. This said, it’s obvious that this Mystery Tutor knows the SAT very well, and it’s obvious why he generated so much interest on the internet, and on this site. </p>
<p>But that is all in the past. Mystery and all.</p>