I am looking for a private tutor in Houston area who can especially help me with bio and verbal. Does anyone know where I can find list of private tutors to contact?
When you ask about a specific location, you'll find that people in your area and at your school will have a better answer than a general web site. In our area, what I suggest to people seeking out a private tutor is to do the following.
1) Find at least three (through campus flyers or electronic bulletin boards) and schedule an hour-long trial session with each one. Email them questions in advance and see who comes best prepared and who you connect with. It's well worth the money spent to make sure you find the best tutor for you.
2) Never, ever do on line tutoring. Trading questions and answers over email from time to time is fine, but you need to see a person's body language to get a feel for how they are doing. Even with the advent of Skype, you miss a great deal of what is essential in the exchange. When a tutor has to physically come to meet you, they are more apt to be prepared than when all they have to do is turn on their computer.
3) Set a schedule for what you wish to cover. Do not let the tutor dictate what you do each time. Tutoring allows you to pinpoint areas of need, and that is best done by you. It also seems wasteful to drop $50 for an hour of writing a schedule together.
4) Email your tutor an agenda of what you wish to cover prior to meeting, so that your time is spent efficiently. With the amount you are paying, you want to make the best use of your time together.
5) If you are targeting a tutor who has taken the MCAT before, do not over-value their MCAT score. It is important that they know their stuff and the exam, but it's more important that they can communicate. If someone got a 39 on the MCAT but cannot relate to a tutee frantically working to break a 30, there is a disconnect. Frustration can undermine the session. Finding a good tutor with teaching experience who got an MCAT score at or slightly above what you are aiming for is ideal. If you want a 31-33, then a tutor who got a 34 is a good match.
6) Be smart about what you pay. Make sure that if they want $50/hour or more that they are qualified. Making $50/hour working full time equates to $100,000 a year. Tutoring company prices are generally much higher, and require signing up for a package, so shop carefully. Reviews.com does a nice comparison of different services and lists a price as high as $13,999 for 60 hours with one company (the extreme high end). Princeton Review got rated the best.
7) See what materials they use. If they are using materials from other sources (which it seems most do), then make sure you can use the materials you want to use. Getting a tutor familiar with the problems in the books you are studying from will help make it more time efficient.
