Prep Session Advice

November 10, 2006 1:42 PM

I am currently a graduate student who has been tutoring first year students in math at my university for the past 4 years. I've tutored probably over 140 students. I'd like to start doing prep sessions for exams and am looking for some advice.

I plan on getting a group of 30 or so students and go over all the necessary material for upcoming exams. I've seen a few companies around campus offering to do this, but I feel I have more experience and could do it better and I'd be able to charge less since it would just be me running the prep sessions. I'm still working out the details of this, but I thought I'd ask:

1) Have any people here set up something like this? Do you have any advice about setting things up and how to run it?

2) Have any people here taken part in prep sessions like this? What sorts of things did you like about it? What things didn't you like about it?

posted by jplank to education (1 comment total)

When I was in college, there were a couple of outfits that did something like this.

There are two markets within college studiers:
1. Learners
2. Slackers

I would say that starting a test prep geared toward slackers is more profitable in the end.

The best way to do it is to give the students easy explanations of the nuts and bolts of a topic, accompanied with real world or easily relatable examples. It's easier said than done. What students don't want is someone simply droning on for an hour about an arcane topic or covering things in a methodical way.

You're entering a service business, and this sort of service will only spread by word of mouth. Give freebies in the beginning to get people hooked, and they will tell their friends about your classes.
posted by reenum at 2:22 PM on December 15, 2006