FAQs
- What should the customer know about your pricing (e.g., discounts, fees)?
We pride ourselves on offering a high quality education for a reasonable price. When you compare us to our competitors, we think that you will agree with us. With High Peak Tutors, you have an expert, individual instructor who arranges lessons and content delivery around you and your ideal learning style, creates tailored lessons as you need them, and guides you through the material. We recommend that you start with the ten-session package, typically spread out over 3-4 weeks, since that gives us enough time to understand you as a student and you enough time to show improvement. For those who want to really focus on a difficult area, the 20-session package will be a better deal. It lasts for 2-3 months of tutoring and meets on your schedule two to three times a week. We offer package deals for multiple sessions at a substantial discount. The standard ten-session package is typically spread out over three to four weeks, while we work one-on-one to improve essays and test scores. The twenty-session package is typically spread out over two to three months. Tier 1: Academic Tutoring Includes most high-school and introductory college subjects (priced for one-to-one online lessons). $60 per 60-minute lesson. Tier II: College Preparation Includes SAT®, ACT®, AP®, IB®, college application essays, and some advanced or niche courses. $75 per 60-minute lesson. Tier III: Graduate Preparation Includes GRE®, GMAT®, and graduate-level tutoring. $90 per 60-minute session. Special Rates: College Application Essay Coaching Package: $695 Work one-on-one with a tutor over Google Docs and Skype to shape your Common Application Essay and up to two supplemental essays. Rate includes all work on these documents. Additional supplements are $100 each. Test-Prep Strategy Session: $175 If you're working on your own but want some help getting started, we offer a one-time strategy session with one of our most experienced tutors. It lasts for two hours and discusses your goals, analyzes your strengths and weaknesses, makes recommendations, and establishes a curriculum that you can complete on your own. Language Studies: $40 per session Due to the frequently long-term nature of language studies, we offer an additional discount for language and ESL studies with us, which is designed specially for web tutoring lessons. This rate cannot be further reduced. Languages we offer include English, French, Latin, Middle English, Old English, and Old Norse. Discounts: Package Discounts: We offer a 5% discount on the twenty-session package, which means one free lesson in the package. Web Tutoring: We frequently offer discounts for web-tutoring sessions, which allows you to connect with one of our tutors from the comfort of your own home. We'll use Skype and Google Documents in order to work together on essays, exam preparation, and subject-based lessons. Please contact us for a quote. (Discounts may be combined, except for the group discount below.) Referral Discount: If you refer a friend who books ten lessons or more (as a package or individually), you'll each receive a free lesson in tutoring credit. Extended Session Discount: Schedule any session of 90 minutes or longer and receive $10 off for that session. Group Discount: If you know other students working on the same subject, bring them with you! We'll give you each a discount of 10% off per student in the group up to five. So, if you have five students who want to be tutored together, it's half the price for everyone. (This discount may not be combined with any other discount.) Policies: Free Consultation: This is where we meet to discuss your intent and establish a tutoring plan, as well as get to know each other, and it is completely free. These sessions can be conducted in person, but it is often more flexible to do them online or over the phone. They usually take 20 to 30 minutes. Our Tutoring Guarantee: If you're not satisfied after your first session, we are happy to offer a complete refund for any unused lessons. Payment Policy: We ask for payment no later than the time of the lesson, please. Cancellation Policy: It happens. We do, however, have to charge for lessons canceled with less than 24 hours notice, since we have already set that time aside for you. Refunds, Transfers, and Expirations: All sessions are non-refundable once purchased, but they are completely transferable. If you wish to transfer your unused lessons to another student, just let us know. The value of all unused sessions expires after one year.
- What is your typical process for working with a new customer?
Free Consultation: This is where we meet to discuss your intent and establish a tutoring plan, as well as get to know each other, and it is completely free. These sessions can be conducted in person, but it is often more flexible to do them online or over the phone. They usually take 20 to 30 minutes. Our Tutoring Guarantee: If you’re not satisfied at the end of your first session, we are happy to offer a complete refund for any unused lessons. After that, we are only able to grant refunds as tutoring credit, but it is completely transferrable if you would like to give it to someone else. Recommendations: We strongly recommend at least ten lessons for subject tutoring in order to see significant improvement. For test prep, we recommend 20 to 30 hours of tutoring (usually 2 to 3 months of preparation) before the exam. Whatever you choose, though, we’re happy to help you and we’ll do our best with the time we have. Location: As long as you are within our travel zone of the Greater Portland Area (about a ten-mile radius from downtown and south of the I-5 bridge), we are happy to meet you in your home, at a local cafe or library, or another place you find convenient. If not, we also do a great deal of online tutoring, which lets you work from the comfort of your home and helps us to keep costs low for you. We are happy to offer a free demonstration of how online tutoring works.
- What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
I have a Ph.D. in English Literature from Purdue University, a Master of Education degree from Portland State University, a M.A. in English from Kent State University, and two B.A.s from Michigan State University, one in English and one in Ancient Studies (Latin and Greek). I taught for ten years in university and high school classrooms before moving on to individualized tutoring.