Improving Academic PerfORMANCE

So, you’ve survived four years of high school; Congratulations!  Just as you’re getting comfortable, the world and its karma throw you into a completely new environment called college.           

One of the results of being able to look for tutors online is that there tends to be a selection available, which means that you have to evaluate different tutors in order to be able to choose among them.  If you are looking for an online statistics tutor, here are a couple of factors to base your evaluation on.

Choose A Specialist

Statistics is a specialized subject that not all tutors, or even all math tutors, will be proficient in.  Generally, the more subjects a tutor claims to be able to teach, the less specialized he or she is.  A tutor who claims proficiency in statistics and twenty other subjects is probably not as proficient as a tutor who claims to be proficient in just one or only a few subjects.

Sam Ribnick is an online MyGuru tutor for calculus and physics. He attended MIT where he received a Bachelor of Science in Physics, and is a high school physics teacher in Boston Public Schools. He has tutored students online and in person on subjects including AP calculus, AP and IB physics, multi-variable calculus and introductory college physics.

As the web continues to become more and more of a fixture of everyday life, more and more students are looking for the convenience and accessibility of online tutoring.  A wide range of college tutors for all subjects can be found online, but finding them can be overwhelming if you don’t know where to start.  That’s what this post is for.  If you are looking for a college tutor online, here are five places you can start your search.

Join Discussion Boards 

There are discussion boards you can join that are related to tutoring in general as well as to specific subjects.  Some of these are just online, attached to websites, and others are groups on social networking sites like Facebook and Linkedin.  Similarly, discussions happen via mailing list groups as well.  These can be good places to ask for leads or advice or to actually meet tutors who hang out there.

One way to ensure that you get the most value from your education is to hire a guide, someone who can provide personal attention to facilitate your learning process.  Given that AP Physics is one of the most challenging courses you can take in high school, and given that it is usually preparation for even more specialized studies, hiring a dedicated AP Physics tutor makes a lot of sense.  The responsibility for getting the most out of your education, however, still belongs to you, the student.  Here are some steps you should take to ensure that you are using your AP Physics tutor’s services wisely.

Do Your Best On Your Own

The most successful physicists and engineers have been the ones who are independent thinkers.  Before dumping all the responsibility in your tutor’s lap, try your best to read and understand the material and work through the problems on your own.  If you get stuck in one place, don’t stop there and throw up your hands in frustration; instead note the difficulty you are having and move on as best you can.  Not only will this build the study skills that you will need to progress along your educational path, it is also cost effective.  The time you spend with your AP Physics tutor should be spent on filling in the gaps in your understanding, not starting from scratch.

On the surface, there are many reasons why students and parents consider private tutoring, but in essence they boil down to three fundamental reasons.  The general reasons for hiring a private tutor are listed here in order of reactiveness to proactiveness.

1.  When There’s A Problem

The majority of people looking for a tutor are hoping to solve a problem.  These are parents seeking out tutors because their kids’ report cards are unsatisfactory, or college students looking for help after they bomb the midterm.  The motivation for these sorts of people is primarily damage control, and once the problem is solved they intend to go back to business as usual.  They see private tutoring as a last resort tactic, sort of like stopping at a gas station and asking for directions.