Greg's SAT Math Tutoring Results

I wasn't as diligent as planned keeping you posted on Greg's SAT math tutoring experience. As you'll recall from this post in July we had decided to hire a tutor to help Greg raise his SAT math score into the 700's. His writing and critical reading scores were already in the 700's and 'good enough' so we wanted to focus all available time and attention on math.

The results from the October SAT test are in and I'm happy to report the tutoring helped accomplish our goal, with a 70 point improvement, and a score solidly in the 700's!

Here's a quick summary of how we chose the tutor, and my thoughts on how the tutoring process worked.

From the begining we ruled out the standard, canned SAT prep classes. These have the advantage of being easier to find and set up (and potentially less expensive), but since Greg wanted to focus on Math their broad coverage of the whole test didn't meet our needs, leading us down the tutoring path. The first decision was between a local, 'in person' tutor or one that was on-line. I checked out both options. We happened to have a Huntington Learning Center 'store' (a national tutoring chain) nearby and they had a college math teacher on staff that was willing and able to tailor a tutoring curriculum to meet our needs. I believe the cost was $65 or $75/hour. This seemed like a good option and was within our budget. There were a few other local tutoring companies that I called but didn't work out. I bet that most communities have one or more local academic tutoring services and that most of them provide some form of college test prep tutoring.

For 'online' there were many more choices, as you would imagine. Just google 'SAT Test Preparation' and you'll be overwhelmed with options. I quickly gravitated to a service called Global Scholar that I had read about as one of the new, hot online tutoring web services. Global Scholar offers tutoring on a broad array of subjects, including test prep, and provides several key benefits. First it aggregates tutors and tutoring companies from all over the world. So while I only found a couple of SAT Math tutoring options in Marietta Georgia, there are literally dozens listed on Global Scholar. Like other web-based directories the tutors on Global Scholar have detailed information describing their qualifications and user-generated ratings (thought since the service is new, there weren't many for the tutors I checked out).

A second potential benefit is that Global Scholar provides an online place to meet. You can use the system to talk live, send instant messages, share documents or write things on an electronic whiteboard. It's not quite like being in the same room with the tutor, but it's pretty close. The other benefit is that once you set up an account with Global Scholar, and enter a credit card, it takes care of all the payment and scheduling details.

Since Greg and I are both tech-saavy we were drawn to the on-line option. I liked it because of the wide selection of tutors that were available and ease with which I could research their qualifications. Greg liked it because of the convenience. It saved him the ride back and forth to the tutor and it gave us great flexibility setting up tutoring sessions.

To find out who we picked and learn about the actual tutoring experience, check back in the coming days for the second part of the story.

Finding a SAT Math Tutor

Greg's SAT scores are almost good enough. He just needs to bring his math up some -- ideally closer to 750. I say 'almost good enough' because Greg has some pretty selective colleges on his preliminary list. These days you need to be strong in all areas to be admitted to a top school. Greg's also interested in going to a good Engineering school, putting extra importance on the Math score. Fortunately colleges take the best score on each part of the SAT, from all the times you've taken it. It even seems like 700+ might even be good enough to get into MIT. So our strategy is for Greg to go with his past Critical Reading and Writing scores and focus all of his SAT test preparation this time on Math.

The first time around Greg self-studied, using the 'Ziggy method' . Obviously that didn't work as well for Math as for the other two tests. So this time around we've decided to hire a private tutor who focuses on SAT Math. The thinking was that this would be the most focused, time-efficient way to improve. In fact, the tutor we choose guarantees a 50 point/section improvement and averages an 85 point/section improvement. So if Greg is just average (and diligently does the homework they assign), he should hit is goal of approaching 750. The other data point that gives us some confidence is that he recently scored a 780 on the Math2 SAT Subject test.

In my next post I'll describe the process we used to find and select the tutor, and who we selected. Then as the experience unfolds I'll post from time to time on how it's working out.