How to Find a Good Private GMAT Tutor
UPDATED FOR THE NEW GMAT IN 2024
Let’s suppose that you live in a city large enough to have a decent population of private GMAT tutors, and let’s suppose that you’ve collected a list of local tutors from Craigslist or Google or some other website. (And let’s suppose that you’re not looking for an online GMAT tutor, otherwise you would have contacted us, right? Um… right?)
So how, exactly, should you go about figuring out which private GMAT tutors actually know what they’re doing?
Before I continue, let me be painfully honest about my own history as a private tutor: when I first started teaching GMAT lessons at a major test-prep firm more than 20 years ago, I barely knew what I was doing. I was always a lively teacher, but you really shouldn’t have hired the 2001 version of GMAT Ninja; the GMAT is an incredibly nuanced exam, and it took some time for me to truly understand how to help my GMAT students succeed.
I worked hard at my craft from the very start, but I know — with the benefit of hindsight — that I wasn’t the world’s best GMAT tutor when I first started out.
So if you’re looking for a great private GMAT tutor, you want to avoid shoddy, inexperienced teachers (again, including the 2001 version of me) and instead find a well-trained instructor who can really help you achieve your goals.
To guide you in your quest, here are six ways to help you separate the best private GMAT tutors from the rest of the crowd.
HIRE A GMAT SPECIALIST, NOT A MATH GENERALIST
Way back in the day, I placed general advertisements that offered my tutoring services for every major standardized test, including the GMAT, SAT, ACT, and GRE. You shouldn’t have hired me back then, at least not for the GMAT.
Here’s the problem: the GMAT has shockingly little in common with most other standardized tests. The GMAT is a frustrating experience for many students exactly because its questions are unusually twisted; the quant section of the GMAT, for example, tests your ability to read convoluted math questions and make tricky logical connections. Sure, a general math/GRE/SAT tutor can help you polish your algebra and geometry basics, but an ideal tutor will help you to understand the quant quirks that are unique to the GMAT.
So if you find a general math tutor who claims to teach the GMAT well, make absolutely certain that the tutor can tell you exactly what makes the GMAT different from other standardized tests. Ask the tutor to discuss the difference between the GMAT and the GRE or the SAT. If he tells you that the tests are basically the same, then you’re better off finding a different private tutor.
ASK IF THE PRIVATE GMAT TUTOR HAS TAKEN THE GMAT
As you probably know, the GMAT is a strange little creature that features a painfully broad variety of questions. Sometimes, it feels like the GMAT is a test of psychological strength, not just a test of verbal and math skills.
You might assume that every private GMAT tutor is intimately familiar with this element of the exam. That’s certainly true of the best tutors: any legitimately great GMAT tutor understands what it feels like to struggle through the GMAT, and completely understands the physical and psychological stressors unique to the exam.
But if your tutor hasn’t taken the exam often enough, it’s unlikely that they deeply understand how to help you succeed on the test. So make sure that your GMAT tutor can have an intelligent, detailed conversation about their experiences in the testing room before you hire them for a tutoring session.
HIRE A TEACHER, NOT JUST A TEST-TAKING WIZARD
Although you definitely want to make sure that you hire a GMAT tutor who regularly takes the exam, you should never hire a private tutor based solely on a high GMAT score. Just because a tutor earned a high GMAT score doesn’t mean that she’s great at teaching the GMAT – or anything else.
Think of it this way: many people who get extremely high GMAT scores actually think that the test is pretty easy. If a particular individual doesn’t struggle with the exam, it’s possible (or even probable) that she would struggle to figure out why somebody else might find the GMAT difficult. And if a GMAT tutor can’t understand why the GMAT is difficult for you, you’ll probably waste your money by hiring her.
Obviously, you want to make sure that your GMAT tutor knows the test well enough to earn a high score, but don’t fall in love with a tutor just because she scored a 785 or an 805. Instead, make sure that your GMAT tutor is an experienced, dedicated teacher who can clearly describe her teaching strategies.
LOOK FOR A PRIVATE GMAT TUTOR WHO IS ADAPTABLE AND FLEXIBLE
If you’re interested in hiring a private GMAT tutor, you probably decided that a one-size-fits-all GMAT prep course isn’t the best thing for you. You probably also understand that your challenges and strengths and weaknesses might be different from those of your test-prep course classmates.
In other words, you know that everybody has a different way of learning. But does your GMAT tutor really know that?
If you speak with a GMAT tutor and he offers a rigid “plan” or “program” that he uses for all of his GMAT students, you might be wasting your money. The whole point of private tutoring is to receive a customized program designed specifically for your needs. If you speak with a tutor and he doesn’t seem terribly interested in adapting his teaching to suit your specific needs, it’s probably best to look elsewhere.
The bottom line: make sure that your GMAT tutor is willing to have a detailed, engaging conversation about your specific needs. He definitely shouldn’t have all of the answers based on a phone call, but he should be able to broadly outline an approach to GMAT tutoring that’s tailored specifically to your goals, strengths and weaknesses.
DON’T LET THE PRIVATE GMAT TUTOR’S PRICE FOOL YOU -- IN EITHER DIRECTION
Many people make the mistake of thinking that high prices and high quality always go hand-in-hand. In the wonderful world of private GMAT tutoring, I don’t think that this is necessarily the case.
During my years as a private tutor, I’ve met some spectacular teachers who massively undercharge for their services, and I’ve met some great teachers who charge a small fortune. I’ve also met crappy teachers who charge $20/hour, and horrendous teachers who charge several hundred dollars per hour.
To be honest, tutoring prices sometimes are remarkably unrelated to the quality of the teacher. Don’t assume that a high-priced GMAT tutor is necessarily good at what she does, and don’t assume that an inexpensive tutor is an unseasoned rookie. Some people are simply more aggressive than others from a pricing and marketing perspective — and aggressive pricing often has nothing to do with the quality of their teaching.
In the strange world of private tutoring, you don’t always get what you pay for. Ask the right questions, and you might be able to find a great GMAT tutor at a reasonable price.
DON’T HIRE A GMAT MIRACLE SALESMAN
Improving your GMAT score inevitably involves lots of hard work, and any great GMAT tutor will acknowledge that fact. If your GMAT goals are ambitious and you hope to gain 100 or more points on the test, you should probably be prepared for a long, hard battle. The best GMAT tutors will always make that battle much easier, but if a private tutor tells you that you’ll be able to gain 200 points in a few weeks, you should definitely call somebody else.
Also, be very careful with score score improvement statistics, which are frequently manipulated by test-prep firms. If a GMAT tutor claims to have an average score improvement of, say, 120 points, you need to look more closely at his claims. Many GMAT tutors and test-prep firms use questionable GMAT diagnostic test data as the “before” scores. The unfortunate truth is that we rarely have legitimate, accurate data on our students when they begin working with us.
Think of it this way: if a student has never taken the real GMAT test before hiring me as his tutor, how can I possibly take credit for a specific score improvement? If a student took the GMAT, then took a mass-market GMAT prep course, and then contacted me for tutoring, how do I know how much of her score improvement was due to my efforts, and how much of the improvement was a result of the GMAT prep course?
The bottom line is that statistics simply aren’t all that useful in the wonderful world of GMAT tutoring. Hire an honest person who willingly shares stories and references, and you’ll be much less likely to get burned by an ineffective GMAT tutor.