The Benefits of Remote Tutoring

Our Experience With Remote Tutoring

Students See Larger Score Improvements

In our experience, remote sessions aren’t a compromise. Instead, they give students a significant advantage. On average, our remote SHSAT students see an extra 14 points of improvement compared to our in‑person SHSAT students. While we tutor for more than the SHSAT, we believe the SHSAT is as close to a “controlled study” as you get in the world of standardized test prep.

Students Love It

We’ve had plenty of families start with in-person sessions and switch to online sessions after a “trial run” (a vacation week, a mild cold, a scheduling crunch). Many of those students opted to stick with online sessions. We’ve never had a student who started online ask about switching to in-person. 

Students Can Plan a Trial Call

We know that even the best of reasons may not be able to overcome parental intuition. With that, we’re happy to hop on a quick trial call so your student (and you) can see exactly what a session feels like before they even take a diagnostic test. 

We Have Eight Years of Remote Experience

We’ve been tutoring online since 2018. This was long before it became the default session format in 2020. The pandemic didn’t invent remote learning; it just sped up an existing trend and allowed us to solidify our online teaching tools.

Advantages Within Sessions

No More Forgotten Homework

Forgotten homework assignments are a thing of the past. With in-person sessions, students would often forget to bring their assignment or bubble sheet from home. When they meet from home, there’s no chance an assignment will be forgotten! 

Digital Tests Call for Digital Tutoring

Most of the exams our students take are now digital. So we should practice in the same format as the test: reading on a screen, annotating efficiently, organizing work digitally, and getting comfortable with the exact interface and pacing the student will face on test day. Format matters immensely and remote tutoring allows us to match it.

We Can Write on Everyone’s Screen Simultaneously

In person, we can write on only one sheet at a time. Online, we can write directly on a student’s screen, as we work through problems collaboratively. This makes our educational experience much more visual. 

Sessions Can Be More Adaptive

When we’re all looking at the same screen, we can pivot Swiftly 😉. If a student is struggling with a particular topic, we can pull up targeted practice problems in seconds and transform every “I don’t understand” into an “I get it now.”

Students Can Easily Document the Session

Remote sessions are easy to capture. A recording or a few screenshots can turn a good explanation into instant notes that a student can revisit the next day. Of course, we ask students in groups to alert their groupmates when they’ll be taking a screenshot or recording. 

It’s Much Harder to Be Late

Remote tutoring eliminates our least favorite variable: the commute. Sessions start on time, end on time, and don’t get derailed by the MTA having a moment or bike traffic on the Hudson River Greenway.

Students Are Physically Comfortable

Remote is simply more comfortable: no one is distracted because they’re freezing, hungry, or trying not to ask where the bathroom is. And no family has to feel like the strain of hosting our sessions. This enables all students to focus on learning instead of logistics. 

We Can Offer Sessions Much Earlier in the Day

Cutting out our commutes between sessions opens up time slots earlier in the afternoon and evening. These time slots tend to be highest in demand for all students. 

Remote Learning Is Better for Tutoring Than for Classroom Learning

A lot of skepticism about online learning stems from student experiences during COVID. Tutoring is different: it’s small-scale, interactive, and highly personalized. Plus, many kids last used Zoom seriously back in early elementary school; their digital skills, concentration abilities, and mastery of foundational material have advanced significantly since then. Better yet, they don’t have to live through all the stresses they did during COVID. 

Remote Sessions Are a Consistent Experience for Students

Remote sessions create the most consistent routine and they let students adapt their learning environment to suit their needs. As they recognize that their barking dog is a bit of a distraction, they’ll find a quiet and comfortable corner of their home to meet in.

Digital Education Tools Are Only Improving

This one is a bit meta, but significant: digital tools keep improving. In‑person techniques evolve much more slowly and, often, through the introduction of new digital tools. Remote tutoring lets us take advantage of the very technologies driving significant change in the world of education. 

Advantages Outside of Sessions

We Have More Time to Focus On the Work We Do Best: Teaching Students

Arranging the logistics of commuting and scheduling are significant energy drains for families and for tutors. Remote sessions cut out (most of) that friction so the time we get to spend together is spent on learning, not on figuring out when and where we’ll learn. 

We Have More Flexibility in Grouping

Going digital widens our candidate pool when grouping students. Digital sessions allow us to put together students who are a great academic match but who could never meet in-person. Whether that constraint be from travel time, finding meeting space, or not being allowed to ride the subway alone just yet, the result is the same: in-person groups are not as well-matched as remote ones. 

Zoom Is the Future

Learning to connect and learn over video is necessary in modern life. Kids will collaborate online in high school, college, and work, though that may feel a world away. Remote tutoring quietly builds communication skills that will serve students well beyond test prep.

We Can Take More Comprehensive Session Notes

Eliminating our commute means we can write more thoughtful session notes and reminders to follow up while everything is still fresh. That’s better for parents, students, and tutors. 

Remote Helps Us Prevent the Spread of Illness

One lesser-known element of working as a tutor: we’re effectively professional germ messengers. Remote sessions dramatically reduce the “everyone gets every germ from every school” domino effect, which keeps student attendance more consistent and keeps families healthier.

Similarly, a Student With a Mild Cold Can Still Attend the Session

Remote removes the awkward incentive structure around said illnesses. If a student has a mild cold, nobody has to choose between protecting the group and avoiding a cancellation fee. And if a student is truly too sick to meet, a recording of the session can keep them up to speed without spreading anything.

We Have the Flexibility to Stay Later

Because remote cuts the transition time to almost zero, we can occasionally be more flexible. Thanks to remote sessions, we’ve been able to linger for an extra few minutes to make sure a student really grasped a concept or send out a quick check-in email to cover our progress. 

We Can Get Back to Urgent Requests

Those aforementioned small gaps between sessions matter. A few minutes here and there lets us respond to urgent emails or texts, prepare materials for the next session, and keep our tightly-packed calendar running smoothly.

We Spend Less Time Scheduling Sessions

Less scheduling friction = fewer emails and texts about the boring stuff. When logistics get easier, families get their time back. Better than time, we get to focus more on what we love: teaching students the skills they’ll need to be successful in the next phases of their lives. 

We Can Better Accommodate Schedule Changes

Fall schedules are a whirlwind of change. Between sports games, Bar Mitzvahs, tours, and a student’s regular schoolwork, the juggle can be a struggle.  Remote tutoring allows us to more easily accommodate the requisite changes for all of our students, meaning we get to maintain the consistency of our practice. 

We Can Better Accommodate Last-Minute Sessions

Remote makes our calendar easier to build and easier to adjust, which means it’s much faster for a student to grab a last‑minute session if they’re preparing for a pop-quiz or have an unexpected schedule change. 

Nobody Needs to Commute

Groups are often sold as a commute‑saver. Remote makes that benefit universal: nobody commutes, everyone saves time, and we can form the best group based on fit, instead of geography. 

Every Session Continues to Perfect Our Remote Education Skills

Tutoring is a practice. By focusing on one format of tutoring, we get to refine the systems, tools, and pacing that make remote sessions a superior experience to in-person learning. 

The Tutoring Industry Is Moving in This Direction

In our conversations with other top tutors, the trend is clear: the industry is moving remote. The tutors who stay in person tend to do very large classes or more “au pair‑style” academic support. For targeted test prep, remote is quickly becoming the standard.

We Don’t Want Students Lugging Their Devices to Sessions

In‑person tutoring increasingly means students have to lug a laptop or tablet to school in order to access digital materials during our sessions. Remote sidesteps that entirely. There’s no added weight, no risk of losing a device, and no “please don’t play video games during the school day.” We believe our students’ backs will thank us someday. 

The Potential Downsides of Remote Tutoring

There’s Less Socialization

One downside of remote is that it’s not as social an experience for the students. Thankfully, that’s a plus from our perspective. We’ve found that remote sessions tend to be more focused, with less crosstalk. That said, we still believe we make every session intriguing and fun. 

It Can Be Harder to See a Student’s Work

The trickiest part of remote work from a tutor’s perspective is seeing each student’s work. But this problem is solvable: students can share any work they’ve completed on their screen, talk us through their steps, and learn to communicate their thinking clearly (which is a superpower on tests). Unexpectedly, we find this is a huge advantage for most students. 

Screen Fatigue Is Real

Screen fatigue is real and it’s a challenge that we love teaching students to cope with. Almost all of the tests we tutor for will be administered in a digital format and we believe it’s crucial for students to recognize when they’re exhausted and learn how to regain their focus and properly rest their eyes. 

Technology Isn’t Perfect

Disruptions from tech issues or from a student’s home environment can be frustrating. We flag disruptions if they’re too consistent and aim to resolve them. 

In-person sessions aren’t a perfect solve here. Sometimes a family dog barks or an upstairs neighbor has piano practice at the same time. 

We find students spend more session time focused on the task at hand in remote sessions, with more of a tendency to goof around during in-person sessions.