Is online SAT Tutoring right for you?
While in-person SAT tutoring is the most effective (and still potentially the most cost effective) way to improve rapidly your SAT score, online tutoring is a growing, viable alternative.
For those who don't live in big cities or near large universities, online tutoring can be an efficent way to get access to great teachers and personalized learning. One thing that online tutoring isn't good for is saving money. It should be somewhat cheaper than in-person tutoring becuase the tutor doesn't have to put time into travel or money into renting space. Even so there is a still a premium on great teaching.
Like in-person tutoring, online tutoring is most effective for students who have big differences between their strongest and weakest areas, becuase a personal tutor can just focus on the weak ones. It's also good for students who find themselves more easily motivated by an individual than a class or book.
With technologies like skype and an increasing number of computers that have microphones and camera's built in, most families that can afford the cost of tutoring, usually already have the techology on hand.
Of course, despite the benefits, something is certainly lost. As teachers, we lose alot of information by not being able to see students' paper as they work through the problems. Even when students explain their process it's not the same. As such, online tutoring tends to work for students who are highly verbal and comfortable expressing themselves.
At this point, almost all the major tutoring companies offer an online tutoring option. Tutorvista has made a name for itself by outsourcing tutoring to India as a way to lower the cost, and large tutor referral sites like Tutorspree or Wyzant are still options becuase you can always ask a tutor in another city if he or she would be willing to tutoring online.
As with any tutoring relationship, the best source of candidates is referrals, and on't commit to any multi-week plans until you've one or two lessons to see what the student teacher relationship is like.
One of the most important things a tutor should have you or yoursstudent to is complete a practice test to get a baseline. If you havn't taken a practice test yet, check out the rapid SAT practice tests at Testive.
