Becoming a tutor? Forum
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lawguy999
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Thu Jun 27, 2019 3:46 pm
Becoming a tutor?
So I've been thinking about it curiously recently, and I had a thought. Not saying I would/ could ever do this, but what type of score might one need to be able to offer 1 on 1 tutoring services, generally speaking? How might I know if I could be a good tutor and how does one start? Sorry for the abstract question.
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BrainsyK
- Posts: 382
- Joined: Mon Jul 18, 2016 5:37 am
Re: Becoming a tutor?
Tutoring is as much about marketing as tutoring. 170+ plays well in ads unless you live in a mega-metro like NYC or towns built around elite institutions like Cambridge. In those cases, 170+ is the price of entry.
If you want to start, just post an ad, or apply for a company if you want to work for a company. It just depends how much of a self-starter you are. I recommend most people work for a company first because once you do, you can stamp their name on your ads to gain an air of legitimacy and also because they can provide with a decent workflow than just working for yourself. If you want to self-start, just post an ad.
You probably won't be good unless you already had significant experience tutoring other standardized tests before, but don't let that stop you from charging a high rate. LSAT tutoring is like wedding photography. No one knows what it's supposed to cost, but they know that it's supposed to be expensive so they associate cost with quality. Also, the person consuming the service isn't usually the person paying for it, and people tend to be very generous with other people's money.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to improve for your own sake, but your own personal development can still take place while you're being paid well.
If you want to start, just post an ad, or apply for a company if you want to work for a company. It just depends how much of a self-starter you are. I recommend most people work for a company first because once you do, you can stamp their name on your ads to gain an air of legitimacy and also because they can provide with a decent workflow than just working for yourself. If you want to self-start, just post an ad.
You probably won't be good unless you already had significant experience tutoring other standardized tests before, but don't let that stop you from charging a high rate. LSAT tutoring is like wedding photography. No one knows what it's supposed to cost, but they know that it's supposed to be expensive so they associate cost with quality. Also, the person consuming the service isn't usually the person paying for it, and people tend to be very generous with other people's money.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to improve for your own sake, but your own personal development can still take place while you're being paid well.
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Yugihoe
- Posts: 691
- Joined: Thu Apr 12, 2012 4:25 pm
Re: Becoming a tutor?
Co-sign the above. I tutored in NYC and had a 170+ and the market/competition was still pretty fierce. According to my records, the most I made in a given year (tutored back when I was in school) was like $15k. Was charging like $80-130/hour. Never tutored for a test prep company but imagine that would help you get some customers who would think you're more legit. I had a website and marked on craigslist, linking to my website. There's some tutors on TLS that regularly hang around the lsat prep forum...so maybe answering questions online for free and being helpful will get people interested in you as well.
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LSATWiz.com
- Posts: 983
- Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2017 10:37 pm
Re: Becoming a tutor?
OP - you'e welcome to PM me if you have interest in taking on some tutoring work. I don't have any non-compete and don't mind if you use the approaches and structure I developed to bring in business on your own. I'd just want a gentleman/woman's agreement that you won't utilize them with another test prep company.
Regarding pricing and marketing, as someone whose rates have increased 4x since I first started tutoring, I can say the biggest difference is in the quality of student you attract. By charging low rates you should note 2 things:
1.) If you're in that $50/hour range, the cost to meet with you can be less per hour than taking a course with 20+ people, which means it's low risk. About half of the students comprising these classes don't put in a great deal of effort, about 25% complete all of the homework and nothing more, and another 25% go next level. By charging a low price, you can expect to see a similar distribution. The cost to meet with you is low enough that you're not necessarily going to be perceived as an investment, but as a convenience.
In fact, before I was an experienced and truly effective tutor, I had a fairly famous solo attorney procure me to work with his daughter who had a learning disability 8 hours a day for several months leading up to her LSAT solely on the basis that I am personable, patient, and non-judgmental despite the fact she was working with a much better tutor one hour a week at $400/hour. I was not providing her with any new approaches but just helping her practice the approaches she was learning with another tutor. I mention this just to say that the cost is so low that a decent percentage of your clientele will choose you simply because you provide value as a study buddy. At times tutoring activities included taking her to see a movie or for lunch, which you can argue is degrading, but then again your price is so low that some will find you to be contributing value even if all you're contributing is a "you can do this" cheerleading perspective.
2.) By charging a low rate, you become universally affordable. What this means is that you gain access to students who would otherwise not be able to afford a tutor. On the one hand, you provide a service to a demographic that could not otherwise afford tutoring so in theory are doing something of great social value. On the other, the unfortunate reality is that there is a link between socioeconomic status and LSAT performance.
What this means for you as a tutor is that you will have many students starting in the low 130's and scores that we think are otherwise impossibly low. Success with these students is getting them to a 150, which as we all know leads students to attend schools from which they are unlikely to procure good jobs so you can argue whether you are actually contributing something of social value. Of course, you will sometimes have that person in the low 160's who you push into the low 170's from a lower socioeconomic class, which is truly life-changing but the reality is that this is few and far in between.
The other thing to note is those with lower starting scores also tend to study less so you face a double whammy whether or not they are cognizant of it. You may have to keep in mind that your students will not study more than an hour a week outside of their sessions with you so may have to assign idealized homework assignments and also the bare minimum of what they can do in 5-10 minutes a day and still improve.
By charging high rates, there are also 2 things to keep in mind:
1.) You are attracting students who tend to be more serious about the LSAT. I disagree with another poster about someone else (i.e. parents) paying for the LSAT. At the low end of the spectrum, this is true the majority of the time, but from the perspective of a third-party not taking the LSAT, if A charges x per hour and B charges much more than x per hour, you are going to pick A, because (1) you can't measure whether someone is a great tutor or not and (2) it's just a stupid test so why not go with the lower option?
At the high end of the pricing spectrum, it is generally young professionals who are motivated to go to the next level. You get a lot of re-takers, many have taken a course but stagnated at a certain score. These people are going to be able to decipher if you're good or not right away. If you are not on top of your shit, I imagine this segment of clientele would be pretty pissed.
2.) Many of these students are from a higher echelon of society such that the actual cost is largely irrelevant. The question is only can you help them crack a 170. If you can do this, you can probably charge upwards of $500/hour. Once you're established, you have preset rates so it would be sketchy to charge some students x amount and some y amount, but the idea is that for many people the cost is irrelevant. It just boils down to whether you're good so you are being judged from an entirely different standpoint. It's no longer how much do you cost. It's "is my score improving?"
I would add that despite being someone disgusted by the reality that most people scoring in the 170s are from people from wealthier backgrounds, it is much more rewarding to work with clientele with higher starting scores simply because you can teach the test at a higher level, which makes it less boring. Whether you scored a 170 or a 180, if you tutor for a long enough period, the test becomes a joke. You could score a 180 drunk/stoned/with 10% of focus. The flaw of the test, which you recognize over time is that there appears to be a small number of people writing it and the structure of their arguments repeats itself again and again and again such that you eventually kind of know what the right answer is going to be just based on whether the stimulus starts with "Psychologist:" or "Archaeologist:", which makes it kind of boring.
The fun aspect is really just seeing someone develop and take that next level stage in their development of "thinking like a lawyer" so I would say that if I had the prior clientele when I charged lower rates work with me when I changed higher rates, I would probably be bored and not derive joy from tutoring. At the same time, if you're not great at teaching the test yet, I would recommend charging lower rates but increase those once you become good.
Regarding marketing --
There are 2 ways of approaching this, and it depends what you're going for. If you're on craigslist, you are a random cog in the wheel. If you were hiring a handyman, you can hire someone established with a good reputation or go on craigslist to get someone cheap who might be terrible, weird, or effective. You go on craigslist because you're looking for a service you can procure off of craigslist but are looking to save money.
When you're starting out a website is good simply because you are at least attaching something to your name. From the perspective of a third party, they don't know if you're a weirdo or a terrible tutor, and there is really no accountability for who you say you are and what you can accomplish because your name isn't attached to anything. If you're confident that you will add value, attaching your name to it goes a long way.
What I found is other students put me on Yelp, which drove in students looking for someone who was just really good versus someone really affordable, which ultimately changed and how I teach the test. Originally I was looking to maximize the students, and would work primarily with students beginning in the 130s and low 140s. Presently, I developed approaches and an entire structure based on the presumption the student is starting in at least the 150s and specifically gearing them to crack the 170s. The result is I have an entirely different type of student, am limited to 10-20 hours of tutoring a week, and am really a waste of money for anyone just looking to crack a 150.
How to develop a reputation as a great tutor --
You need students to improve consistently over a period of time. For this to happen, you need structure. You need to know how you are going to teach each type of question, and one of the things you find is most of the improvement happens when you are not working with them.
The reality is most people are not self-starters. Most people perform better in a law firm or company dynamic, because those provide structure. Even if you are the best tutor in the world, that talent is wasted on a student if the student doesn't know what they should be doing between the times you meet. You need to see yourself as less of an end all-be all source and more of a personal trainer. If you were a personal trainer, you may not need to give such concrete advice because the client knows "Okay. I shouldn't drink 12 beers a day and should probably exercise and not eat like a fat POS".
When it comes to the LSAT, the "what should I do" is not necessarily as obvious. It's going to be up to you to structure their day by day so as to make sure that they are getting where you want them to be over a period of time. This requires experience and won't be obvious from the onset. Over time, however, it will lock itself in.
I hope you do find all of this useful and are able to establish yourself as a force to be reckoned with in the LSAT tutoring world.
Regarding pricing and marketing, as someone whose rates have increased 4x since I first started tutoring, I can say the biggest difference is in the quality of student you attract. By charging low rates you should note 2 things:
1.) If you're in that $50/hour range, the cost to meet with you can be less per hour than taking a course with 20+ people, which means it's low risk. About half of the students comprising these classes don't put in a great deal of effort, about 25% complete all of the homework and nothing more, and another 25% go next level. By charging a low price, you can expect to see a similar distribution. The cost to meet with you is low enough that you're not necessarily going to be perceived as an investment, but as a convenience.
In fact, before I was an experienced and truly effective tutor, I had a fairly famous solo attorney procure me to work with his daughter who had a learning disability 8 hours a day for several months leading up to her LSAT solely on the basis that I am personable, patient, and non-judgmental despite the fact she was working with a much better tutor one hour a week at $400/hour. I was not providing her with any new approaches but just helping her practice the approaches she was learning with another tutor. I mention this just to say that the cost is so low that a decent percentage of your clientele will choose you simply because you provide value as a study buddy. At times tutoring activities included taking her to see a movie or for lunch, which you can argue is degrading, but then again your price is so low that some will find you to be contributing value even if all you're contributing is a "you can do this" cheerleading perspective.
2.) By charging a low rate, you become universally affordable. What this means is that you gain access to students who would otherwise not be able to afford a tutor. On the one hand, you provide a service to a demographic that could not otherwise afford tutoring so in theory are doing something of great social value. On the other, the unfortunate reality is that there is a link between socioeconomic status and LSAT performance.
What this means for you as a tutor is that you will have many students starting in the low 130's and scores that we think are otherwise impossibly low. Success with these students is getting them to a 150, which as we all know leads students to attend schools from which they are unlikely to procure good jobs so you can argue whether you are actually contributing something of social value. Of course, you will sometimes have that person in the low 160's who you push into the low 170's from a lower socioeconomic class, which is truly life-changing but the reality is that this is few and far in between.
The other thing to note is those with lower starting scores also tend to study less so you face a double whammy whether or not they are cognizant of it. You may have to keep in mind that your students will not study more than an hour a week outside of their sessions with you so may have to assign idealized homework assignments and also the bare minimum of what they can do in 5-10 minutes a day and still improve.
By charging high rates, there are also 2 things to keep in mind:
1.) You are attracting students who tend to be more serious about the LSAT. I disagree with another poster about someone else (i.e. parents) paying for the LSAT. At the low end of the spectrum, this is true the majority of the time, but from the perspective of a third-party not taking the LSAT, if A charges x per hour and B charges much more than x per hour, you are going to pick A, because (1) you can't measure whether someone is a great tutor or not and (2) it's just a stupid test so why not go with the lower option?
At the high end of the pricing spectrum, it is generally young professionals who are motivated to go to the next level. You get a lot of re-takers, many have taken a course but stagnated at a certain score. These people are going to be able to decipher if you're good or not right away. If you are not on top of your shit, I imagine this segment of clientele would be pretty pissed.
2.) Many of these students are from a higher echelon of society such that the actual cost is largely irrelevant. The question is only can you help them crack a 170. If you can do this, you can probably charge upwards of $500/hour. Once you're established, you have preset rates so it would be sketchy to charge some students x amount and some y amount, but the idea is that for many people the cost is irrelevant. It just boils down to whether you're good so you are being judged from an entirely different standpoint. It's no longer how much do you cost. It's "is my score improving?"
I would add that despite being someone disgusted by the reality that most people scoring in the 170s are from people from wealthier backgrounds, it is much more rewarding to work with clientele with higher starting scores simply because you can teach the test at a higher level, which makes it less boring. Whether you scored a 170 or a 180, if you tutor for a long enough period, the test becomes a joke. You could score a 180 drunk/stoned/with 10% of focus. The flaw of the test, which you recognize over time is that there appears to be a small number of people writing it and the structure of their arguments repeats itself again and again and again such that you eventually kind of know what the right answer is going to be just based on whether the stimulus starts with "Psychologist:" or "Archaeologist:", which makes it kind of boring.
The fun aspect is really just seeing someone develop and take that next level stage in their development of "thinking like a lawyer" so I would say that if I had the prior clientele when I charged lower rates work with me when I changed higher rates, I would probably be bored and not derive joy from tutoring. At the same time, if you're not great at teaching the test yet, I would recommend charging lower rates but increase those once you become good.
Regarding marketing --
There are 2 ways of approaching this, and it depends what you're going for. If you're on craigslist, you are a random cog in the wheel. If you were hiring a handyman, you can hire someone established with a good reputation or go on craigslist to get someone cheap who might be terrible, weird, or effective. You go on craigslist because you're looking for a service you can procure off of craigslist but are looking to save money.
When you're starting out a website is good simply because you are at least attaching something to your name. From the perspective of a third party, they don't know if you're a weirdo or a terrible tutor, and there is really no accountability for who you say you are and what you can accomplish because your name isn't attached to anything. If you're confident that you will add value, attaching your name to it goes a long way.
What I found is other students put me on Yelp, which drove in students looking for someone who was just really good versus someone really affordable, which ultimately changed and how I teach the test. Originally I was looking to maximize the students, and would work primarily with students beginning in the 130s and low 140s. Presently, I developed approaches and an entire structure based on the presumption the student is starting in at least the 150s and specifically gearing them to crack the 170s. The result is I have an entirely different type of student, am limited to 10-20 hours of tutoring a week, and am really a waste of money for anyone just looking to crack a 150.
How to develop a reputation as a great tutor --
You need students to improve consistently over a period of time. For this to happen, you need structure. You need to know how you are going to teach each type of question, and one of the things you find is most of the improvement happens when you are not working with them.
The reality is most people are not self-starters. Most people perform better in a law firm or company dynamic, because those provide structure. Even if you are the best tutor in the world, that talent is wasted on a student if the student doesn't know what they should be doing between the times you meet. You need to see yourself as less of an end all-be all source and more of a personal trainer. If you were a personal trainer, you may not need to give such concrete advice because the client knows "Okay. I shouldn't drink 12 beers a day and should probably exercise and not eat like a fat POS".
When it comes to the LSAT, the "what should I do" is not necessarily as obvious. It's going to be up to you to structure their day by day so as to make sure that they are getting where you want them to be over a period of time. This requires experience and won't be obvious from the onset. Over time, however, it will lock itself in.
I hope you do find all of this useful and are able to establish yourself as a force to be reckoned with in the LSAT tutoring world.
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LSATWiz.com
- Posts: 983
- Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2017 10:37 pm
Re: Becoming a tutor?
I would also just add that if you are using craigslist, it is imperative to utilize common sense and protect yourself. You are likely not getting a credit card upfront, and have to realize that going to someone's house or apartment presents risk. I'm going to tell a little story that is not a joke. This actually happened.
When my methodology began developing out and I had other tutors, I once had a strange man specifically request a female tutor to go to their residence in the middle of nowhere that upon googling it appeared to be a shack about a mile from where bodies were found a few years later who would pay cash but would not leave a credit card. Upon feeling sketchy about sending a female out there, I canceled that student's lesson. I actually reported a tip when this news broke out and my tip was deemed valuable enough to justify an interview with detectives, paid travel, and a nice lunch. I'm just saying if you're utilizing craigslist, there is weird shit out there. Be aware and be smart.
My point is just to say that if you're doing something 1 on 1 in someone else's residence, you want to know who the hell person is before going to anyone's home or (which is much better) have a preconceived space for where the tutoring will take place.
When my methodology began developing out and I had other tutors, I once had a strange man specifically request a female tutor to go to their residence in the middle of nowhere that upon googling it appeared to be a shack about a mile from where bodies were found a few years later who would pay cash but would not leave a credit card. Upon feeling sketchy about sending a female out there, I canceled that student's lesson. I actually reported a tip when this news broke out and my tip was deemed valuable enough to justify an interview with detectives, paid travel, and a nice lunch. I'm just saying if you're utilizing craigslist, there is weird shit out there. Be aware and be smart.
My point is just to say that if you're doing something 1 on 1 in someone else's residence, you want to know who the hell person is before going to anyone's home or (which is much better) have a preconceived space for where the tutoring will take place.
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