Our Philosophy

We Hold our Tutors to a Higher Standard, and Pay our Tutors More Fairly, than nearly any other Tutoring Company.  Thus, we have Better (and more Experienced) Tutors.

First things first:  we are an exclusive club.  McElroy Tutoring holds our tutors to an extremely high standard.  We accept only the top tutor applicants, and will never compromise our selectivity in order to artificially inflate our ranks.  In addition, every member of the McElroy Tutoring Team is required to have recently scored in the 95th percentile or above on any standardized test that he/she teaches.    

Who wants to sift through hundreds or even thousands of tutor profiles trying to find just one reliable and qualified person?  Instead, we pre-screen all McElroy tutors for you by employing a detailed, thorough application and interview process.  And our user-friendly website allows you to easily narrow down your tutor search by zip code, subject and hourly rate

Also, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.  Because we keep our overhead low,  approximately 90% of the gross profits from our tutoring sessions goes straight back to the tutors themselves (compare this to a meager 20% at the big companies).  This allows us to offer our clients and students some of the best, most experienced tutors in the business, along with some of the most competitive prices in the country, while still paying our tutors as well as even the most overpriced tutoring companies.

Our fair pricing and tutor payment policy, in conjunction with our user-friendly website, tutor messaging system and the assistance of our office staff, allows us to find more students per tutor, to pay our tutors more fairly, and to retain our tutors longer, than nearly any other company.  Compare us to our competition:

It's Economics 101: If an employer wants his/her employees to excel at their jobs, the employer should pay the employees what they are worth, and always reward them for achieving exceptional results.  For this reason, we pay our tutors quite well:  some of our Ph.D. tutors (minimum 10 years experience) make as much as $100/hr or more.  This is because we only take an approximately 10% administrative cut for the company, giving the remaining 90% cut directly to our tutors.  In contrast, "Big Test Prep" companies such as Princeton Review, Kaplan or Ivy West will normally take a greedy 75%-85% cut, and pay their tutors a pathetic 15-25% cut in the process. 

Doesn't it seem unfair that so many private tutors only take home one out of every five dollars that they generate for their companies?  After all, the tutor is the only one actually doing the teaching!  This is why so many tutors who work for big companies eventually become unhappy and quit after only a short time.  Some of them then start their own businesses, only to discover that running their own tutoring business is a huge hassle, and hard to do by themselves.

No matter how hard these independent tutors work, the fact is that a low-budget, one-person operation has to cut corners somewhere--tutors cannot afford a phone staff to help them take calls and make appointments, for example.  So even when they start to gain popularity, these types of tutors have trouble getting ahead because they are too busy with their current students to reach out and find new clients.   After all, it's hard to answer the phone when you are tutoring students all day!    This is why most tutoring start-ups never make it off the ground---even if they are very talented, independent tutors often have a hard time making a real living.  In the end, they just can't compete with the resources and marketing reach of the large, overpriced tutoring companies.  

Thus, most tutors are are faced with a tough decision:  work for a big company, and be paid unfairly, or work for themselves and worry that they won't find enough students.  Unfortunately, neither option is optimal.

At McElroy Tutoring, we offer a 3rd, and better, alternative.  Our fair pricing and payment policy allows us to keep our prices low, yet pay our tutors well, at the same time.  On average, our tutors earn 2-3 times as much per hour as the overworked and under-trained tutors that "Big Test Prep" seems so good at churning out.  We also offer offer our tutors free online profiles on our website, free credit card billing, free phone and scheduling support, free direct deposit, a strict 24-hour cancellation policy, and full sharing of our in-house tutoring and test-prep manuals.  This is why the best tutors in America are lining up to work for us! 

In fact, many current members of the McElroy Tutoring Team are former "star" tutors from the large, overpriced tutoring companies who overcharge their clients and underpay their tutors.   These tutors have decided to work for us instead because they respect our business model; we offer the perks of a big company with the equitable pay of a smaller organization.    Because we take care of all the billing, and do not limit their employment options, our tutors can afford to focus on the most important goal:  simply becoming the most skilled educators they can be.   

After all, which person do you think is going to be the better tutor: the fresh-faced kid with 3 months of experience who makes $18/hr reading straight from the company's mass-produced workbook (while the company charges you $120/hr), or the professional tutor with 5 years of experience who has access to a wealth of materials and makes $50/hr for McElroy Tutoring (while we charge you $60/hr)?  We can offer you tutors that are twice as skilled, and twice as experienced, for half the price.   

At this point, you may be asking, "so how do you stay in business when you barely take a cut?"  Well, that's a good question.  We are able to succeed as a company because we are run efficiently, we keep our overhead low (a 3-person full-time office staff, a main headquarters in San Diego and an interactive, user-friendly website), and we take advantage of an "economy of scale" by arranging thousands of private tutoring sessions each year with expert tutors in 25 cities across the country.  We also require our tutors to pay a nominal membership fee ($6-12/month) in order to help us fully cover our advertising costs and other expenses.   (Nearly all of our tutors soon find this small fee to be well worth the benefits of membership.)

Price Matters... But So Does Reputation. 

Here's how McElroy Tutoring fits in to the tutoring landscape:  we offer experienced, reliable tutors at small-business prices.  

Big tutoring companies have an overhead problem, because they have too many offices, too many employees, and too many advertising expenses; this explains their outrageous prices.  

As for all those flashy start-up tutoring websites run by recent college graduates with angel investors and programming skills, the ones that promise you expert tutors at low prices:  while their tutors are usually more affordable, web-based tutoring companies have a credibility problem because they are usually home-based businesses without an established reputation, who hire nearly everyone who applies and have very little quality control and/or executive experience.  (This is not to mention those that are straight-up scams!)   If a web-based national tutoring business is only 2 years old and already claims to offer over 5,000 tutors, for example, then what does this say about that company's hiring standards?  

Over the last few years, it has caught on that tutoring is a booming business, so now everyone's trying to get a piece of the pie.  Everyone wants to become the next Craigslist by listing hundreds or even thousands of available tutors on their websites.  Problem is, Craigslist already does this quite well.  We don't need yet another website that lists all the people who would like to try working as a tutor, or have tutored only a few times.

That's why our selectivity and customer service sets us apart.  All tutor applicants must pass a rigorous application / personal interview process.  As an education company with many years of experience in the tutoring field, we know how to quickly separate the pretenders from the professionals.  

At McElroy Tutoring, we only offer our clients the tutors who are serious about tutoring, and the ones that are the best at tutoring, and we are able to instantly connect our clients with the tutors who fit them best.   That means no more wasted hours searching through thousands of random tutor profiles trying to find just one tutor who you can trust.  We offer free 15-minute phone consultations with any tutor, and 25% off your first lesson.  We are also a reliable, established company who maintains a rare "A+" rating by the Better Business Bureau, so you don't have to worry about any billing, customer service or tutor reliability issues.   Finally, because we trust in our tutors' results, we never require you to pay for more than one lesson at a time, and we offer you a money-back guarantee for your first lesson with any new tutor.

The truth is that most tutoring companies can be fit into two categories: the Princeton imitators and the Craigslist imitators.  The Princeton imitators (Princeton is short for Princeton Review, of course, for whom our founder Brian McElroy used to work) typically try to write their own curriculums and books, buy up office space by the bushel, schedule 8-12 student classes at $500-$1500 per student, and quickly hire book-smart but inexperienced tutors to teach their classes. Problem is,  these companies are built for brief, generic classroom courses, not customized private tutoring.  Also, their trainings are minimal, and their proprietary materials are often full of flaws, omissions and typos. This is not to mention their ridiculous prices for tutoring (they charge up to a 500-600% markup compared to what they actually pay their tutors).

These companies tend to hire intelligent but novice tutors, teach them a rigid, "one size fits all" tutoring script, underpay them and work them to the bone, then shrug it off and quickly hire someone else as soon as their tutors get frustrated and quit (as they very often do).  In general, the big, franchised companies such as these are built to put marketing and profits first, and results a distant third.   And they rarely, if ever, share any personal information about their tutors (usually to hide their lack of experience).

Some Princeton Review imitators:  Kaplan (the original Princeton imitator), Sylvan, Club Z, Revolution Prep, Powerscore, Eureka, Veritas,  Ivy West, Ivy Bound.

The Craigslist imitators are the companies who want to become the next "Service Engine."  They figure that if they can convince enough independent tutors to create profiles on their website, and they take a smaller cut than most companies do, then they will eventually turn a profit.  They take advantage of trust funds and angel investors, and they build pretty-looking websites with thousands of tutors profiles listed but no real selectivity or accountability.   These companies are little more than a glorified Craigslist with more headshots and fancier window dressing.

Some Craigslist imitators:  TutorsTeach.com, Tutor.com, E-Tutor.com, WyzAnt.com, GlobalScholar.com.

If you want to find a cheap tutor with little or no legitimate tutoring experience, then feel free to visit one of these websites, or even better, go to Craigslist itself, where there is no middleman at all, it is free to post, and I have seen prices as low as $10/hr quoted by people who lack experience and qualifications but need the extra work.  There are definitely people who will work for even less if you look hard enough.  But if you want a truly professional and effective tutor, then you need a company that has real experience in the education business and knows what it takes to become an expert tutor. 

In other words, if companies like TutorsTeach are the Craigslists of the tutoring world, then McElroy Tutoring is its Google.  We don't present you with all possible tutors in no particular order; we present you with only you the best tutors, in order! 

We Never Hide Our Tutors' Identities Behind Closed Doors. 

Did you know that most big tutoring and test-prep companies will simply hire college students or recent grads with good scores, toss them into a quickie, weekend-long training course, then label them as "certified" and immediately start assigning them students?  These companies will usually try to avoid telling you their tutor's full names, what educational credentials they have, the test scores of each tutor, or even how much experience their tutors have.   Their tutors' identities are kept a mystery, hidden behind closed doors.  "Trust us," they say, "our tutors are smart, really!" 

We do not believe in withholding this information from our clients, because we don't need to.  You will not find any cheap gimmicks or deceptive promises here--just a expert team of over 100 elite tutors in 25 cities, and an informative website that allows you to easily select your own tutors, and then contact those tutors instantly.

At McElroy Tutoring, we value teaching and tutoring experience above all else.  We require all of our tutors to have at least one year of teaching or tutoring experience, and most of our tutors have advanced degrees, teacher certifications, and/or multiple years of experience.   In order to prepare students for a standardized test such as the SAT, ACT, ISEE, GRE, GMAT, LSAT or MCAT, our tutors are required to have recently scored in the 95th percentile or above on that particular exam or exams. 

Above all, we seek dynamic personalities.  We strive to provide our clients with naturally gifted teachers and communicators who can identify with nearly any student. 

All McElroy Tutors are eligible for raises, promotions and additional student referrals as rewards for  their excellent performance, so there is always friendly competition among our tutors, and they are continually motivated to get great results.   Also, because our low prices allow us to find more students per tutor than nearly any other company, our tutor retention rate is one of the very best in the industry.

We are More than just a Fancy Website.   

While an informative website is an essential part of any growing business, a quality educational company also needs to make long-term investments in its personnel, its hiring standards, its ethics and its quality of service.   

Our commitment to selectivity, customer service and quality business practices is why we chose to establish a San Diego, CA Headquarters in 2005, after our first 3 years as a successful home-based business.  We needed a full-time office staff to help answer emails and the phones that were ringing all day.  We needed a professional web content manager and designer for those who preferred to use our website to find or purchase lessons with a tutor.  We also needed a test-prep expert to expand our curriculum, a visionary to write our business plan, payroll specialists, several trusted advisers, content producers, a lawyer, and an accountant.  Finally, we needed a home city: a place to build our reputation, establish a nationwide brand, interview tutors and meet with clients in-person.  (No better place than sunny San Diego, a place where many of our national clients visit on vacation anyway.)  

Thanks to these investments, we now have a state-of-the-art website, an experienced telephone staff, a long list of satisfied customers, a transparent, client-friendly business model, and an expert team of over 100 professional tutors (all of whom have been personally interviewed by our founder Brian McElroy).   At our San Diego headquarters, we also offer a classroom space for group lessons and diagnostic tests, a dedicated private tutoring area, and an executive office for private college and test-prep consultations.  We have also been  accredited by the San Diego Better Business Bureau and maintain a rare "A+" Rating. 

However, unlike the big companies, we do not see the need to continue to add to our overhead by renting hundreds of offices throughout the country--in our opinion, that's overkill, and it leads to inflated prices.  

We already have over 100 tutors in 25 cities across the USA, and a website that allows you to easily find and connect with the best tutors in your area.  Nearly all of our tutors will travel to the meeting place of your choosing, so we just don't see the need to increase overhead any further by renting additional office space.  We choose to spend carefully, and we pass the savings off to our clients. 

There is no "One Size Fits All" Solution to Tutoring and Test-Prep, so we utilize a wide range of Training Methods and Materials. 

Most test-prep companies love to toss around trademarked phrases, and proclaim that they have the "secret recipe" for solving standardized tests.  That's simply not possible.   This is like claiming that one style of chess or kung-fu always beats another:  it's not the style that matters so much as the person using it.  Ultimately, the effectiveness of a tutoring program or classroom course lies not in the type of techniques used, but in the tutor's understanding of the material, and his/her ability to relate those concepts to students.

Head to any local bookstore, peruse the test-prep section, and you will find a plethora of test-prep manuals.  Some of these are excellent, some are OK, and some are horrible.   As a company, we have decided that there are already plenty of books out there.  So we don't waste our precious time and resources by trying to create yet another test-prep manual.  While we do create our own in-house materials, provide online training tools, and meet regularly to collaborate with each other, we also encourage our tutors to use a wide selection of materials when teaching students, and to always consider alternative explanations and techniques.  Tutors are also free to find tutoring help anywhere and everywhere, including blogs, videos, Wikipedia, and yes, even books written by competitors.

Our tutors do not need to follow a "one size fits all" canned script; they realize that the beauty of private tutoring is that the tutor can adjust his/her lesson plans to meet the needs of the individual student.  For this reason, we respect the creativity of our tutors, and always  allow them to embrace their own styles and methods.  We are simply looking to hire the most talented teachers and tutors in the business, and to provide them with the best tools of the trade. 

Because we believe in educational equity, we also post many of our lessons and test-prep tips for free on the McElroy Tutoring Blog and McElroy Tutoring YouTube Video Site.  We always make sure to share our teaching tips with one another, and to give credit where credit is due by embracing excellent books, no matter the publisher.  We are all better tutors as a result of this transparency. 

Most importantly, unlike most test-prep companies, we use real tests in the preparation process whenever possible.  Why would we waste time writing our own imitations of tests, when we can give our students the real thing?

 Much Lower Prices than Other Elite Tutoring Companies.

Our prices are approximately 50% less than those of our closest competitors.  For example, the same caliber of tutor who would cost $100/hr at a big company costs around $50/hr with McElroy Tutoring, the same caliber of tutor who would cost $200/hr at a big company costs around $100/hr with McElroy Tutoring, etc.  We can afford to offer you such low prices because we keep our expenses low, and take only a small administrative/marketing cut of what we charge our clients for each lesson.  The remainder of that cost goes directly to the tutor. 

99th Percentile Tutors, not just 99th Percentile Test-Takers.

There are hundreds of tutoring websites crawling around the internet that make exaggerated and/or patently false claims.  One of the most common claims is that "all of our tutors have scored in the 99th percentile or above on the (insert standardized exam here)."  First of all, it is impossible to score above the 99th percentile!   More importantly, however, simply because a person can score highly on a standardized test by him/herself does not mean that person can also convey the same ability to others.   Think about how many star athletes make lousy coaches, for example, or how virtuoso musicians often can't explain to others how they produce such incredible music.     High test scores are certainly a prerequisite for our test-prep tutors,  but they certainly do not guarantee that one will be any good at tutoring.  Thus, we focus on providing our students with skilled, experienced and professional tutors, not just high scorers.  

In addition, unlike some companies, we are not concerned with how our tutors scored on a test 10 years ago.   For example,  most of us took the SAT at one point in our lives, but how many details about this exam do most adults remember 20 years later?  Moreover, the formats of these tests change frequently so tutors must stay up-to-date with any changes.  This is why we are only concerned with what our tutors have scored on a recent administration of the test.  We require our tutors to have recently scored in the 95th percentile or above on any standardized test that they teach. 

While we do have many tutors who scored in the 99th percentile on these exams, we think it's the easy way out for tutoring companies to simply hire smart kids and assume that they will able to effectively communicate with students of all levels.  This is why we also consider temperament and experience when evaluating our tutors.    While a "master tutor" is sometimes necessary (if you are trying to improve from 96th to 99th percentile, for example), other times you simply the services of a skilled communicator who might not necessarily know the correct answer to every single question on the test (if, for example, you are trying to improve your score from 50th to 75th percentile).   This is why we offer 5 levels of tutors:  Junior, Senior, Master, Executive, and Ph.D

True Accountability.

McElroy Tutoring's proprietary "Student Rating System" allows students to log onto our website and rate their tutors at the end of each lesson.  This system allows us to reward our best tutors, and to cull out the tutors who aren't receiving consistently excellent results.  We rate all of our tutors on a  0-10 scale, and students are given the ability to rate their tutors online at the end of each lesson.   In addition to the web-based system, we also collect paper-based  Tutor Rating Forms from our students and clients. 

This unique Student Rating System that we have created assures you that we are not simply blowing hot air, like so many other tutoring businesses on the web these days.  We're only interested in hiring the best, so we're not afraid to put our numbers out there for examination.  Student satisfaction ratings or score improvement claims are just that, claims, unless the company provides facts and statistics to back them up.  At McElroy Tutoring, we are more than happy to do so, and always include updated information on our website.
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