Has anyone ever worked for Varsity Tutors before? I’m looking at applying to them as an online tutor, but I don’t know their track record from a tutor point of view. Has anyone had any experience with them?
Never worked for them in particular, but my experience with such online tutoring businesses hasn’t been great: generally don’t get many hours, are expected to commit fully to being available at certain times every week (which when in uni, with tests etc. at unexpected times, isn’t too possible—might be possible for you in your situation) and they take a fair chunk of your earnings. On one occasion I put a lot of time into signing up, getting documents etc. to verify myself, and then never got a single student. On the other hand, signing up for services such as www.firsttutors.com has been great (not sure if this is international, I’ve been using the NZ site, but think it is). Basically it’s a repository of tutors, people come and leave messages for you to see if you’d be a good fit and if you have times you could both make it, and then you each pay a small one-off fee (usually <$20 for the tutor) for the website providing the interface and get eachother’s contact details. I’ve set up both online and in-person tutoring through this, online being about a fifth of all requests. The first year I used it I got about 3 or 4 students through it (each of whom I met for one or two hours a week and lasted on average ~6 months). Nowadays, with a few good reviews on there, I’ve put up my fees to double what they used to be and still get about 15 requests a year, each of which is good for about 2 hours tutoring a week—I don’t take them all, but I could. And the fee the website charges is nothing in comparison to the hours I get out of it, usually it’s less than an hour’s work to make it back.
Thank you for the link. I had not heard of First Tutors before, but they seem to be a solid choice and one I’ll research more. The flexibility is a very enticing quality, considering the high level of control I’ve seen in other service providers.
I haven’t worked with that specific company before, but there are a lot of mixed incentives in the tutor market.
If we can believe Glassdoor, they offer around $20/hour. (I suspect the 2 reported at $30/hour are either grad students or some other specialization). Here are some employee reviews, but I expect two of the five-stars are faked.
Judging by the reviews and my own experience in the past, I think you can expect to get around five hours a week of tutoring this way. That doesn’t include time spent preparing for topics and other overhead. I imagine the only way the company maintains quality control is by reducing hours on tutors after one or two bad reviews, or after a single refund request. Office politics wrt the director-tutor relationship are probably going to be brutal, and there’s not going to be any reward or incentive for doing an above-average job. It seems reasonable to assume turnover is high.
Since you’re looking for online tutoring, I assume it’s not possible to tutor in person in your local area?
That is correct. While I am looking into possibly offering Common Core math tutoring in the local area (there is an intense dislike of Common Core among parents here and I feel a tutoring service specifically for it may relieve some burdens and be worth the expense to these families), for the moment I am looking entirely online.
Thank you for the links. The information really does not surprise me. I have an expectation of $15/hour unless I prove to be extremely effective as a tutor. The overhead is the central unknown to me as it’s something I won’t have clear numbers on until I actively deal with such an issue. Using friends of mine who currently tutor (one through Varsity) as examples, I’m not too worried about the overhead.
Has anyone ever worked for Varsity Tutors before? I’m looking at applying to them as an online tutor, but I don’t know their track record from a tutor point of view. Has anyone had any experience with them?
Never worked for them in particular, but my experience with such online tutoring businesses hasn’t been great: generally don’t get many hours, are expected to commit fully to being available at certain times every week (which when in uni, with tests etc. at unexpected times, isn’t too possible—might be possible for you in your situation) and they take a fair chunk of your earnings. On one occasion I put a lot of time into signing up, getting documents etc. to verify myself, and then never got a single student. On the other hand, signing up for services such as www.firsttutors.com has been great (not sure if this is international, I’ve been using the NZ site, but think it is). Basically it’s a repository of tutors, people come and leave messages for you to see if you’d be a good fit and if you have times you could both make it, and then you each pay a small one-off fee (usually <$20 for the tutor) for the website providing the interface and get eachother’s contact details. I’ve set up both online and in-person tutoring through this, online being about a fifth of all requests. The first year I used it I got about 3 or 4 students through it (each of whom I met for one or two hours a week and lasted on average ~6 months). Nowadays, with a few good reviews on there, I’ve put up my fees to double what they used to be and still get about 15 requests a year, each of which is good for about 2 hours tutoring a week—I don’t take them all, but I could. And the fee the website charges is nothing in comparison to the hours I get out of it, usually it’s less than an hour’s work to make it back.
Thank you for the link. I had not heard of First Tutors before, but they seem to be a solid choice and one I’ll research more. The flexibility is a very enticing quality, considering the high level of control I’ve seen in other service providers.
Tutoring seems like a great way for lots of LW people to earn extra money. Apparently at least one high end tutor earns $1000 an hour.
Interesting article, but that tutor is in a fairly small niche—test prep tutoring for the children of very rich parents.
It’s major that (when he tells the reporter how to solve a math problem), that he starts with teaching the reporter how to lower his panic level.
I haven’t worked with that specific company before, but there are a lot of mixed incentives in the tutor market.
If we can believe Glassdoor, they offer around $20/hour. (I suspect the 2 reported at $30/hour are either grad students or some other specialization). Here are some employee reviews, but I expect two of the five-stars are faked.
Judging by the reviews and my own experience in the past, I think you can expect to get around five hours a week of tutoring this way. That doesn’t include time spent preparing for topics and other overhead. I imagine the only way the company maintains quality control is by reducing hours on tutors after one or two bad reviews, or after a single refund request. Office politics wrt the director-tutor relationship are probably going to be brutal, and there’s not going to be any reward or incentive for doing an above-average job. It seems reasonable to assume turnover is high.
Since you’re looking for online tutoring, I assume it’s not possible to tutor in person in your local area?
That is correct. While I am looking into possibly offering Common Core math tutoring in the local area (there is an intense dislike of Common Core among parents here and I feel a tutoring service specifically for it may relieve some burdens and be worth the expense to these families), for the moment I am looking entirely online.
Thank you for the links. The information really does not surprise me. I have an expectation of $15/hour unless I prove to be extremely effective as a tutor. The overhead is the central unknown to me as it’s something I won’t have clear numbers on until I actively deal with such an issue. Using friends of mine who currently tutor (one through Varsity) as examples, I’m not too worried about the overhead.