fbpx
How to find the best MCAT tutor

Finding the Best MCAT Tutor

Guest Blogger: MedEdits’ Lead MCAT tutor, Garrick

Interested in working with MedEdits MCAT Tutors?

All premeds must take the MCAT to get into medical school. For many, finding a strong MCAT tutor is the best way to earn a high MCAT score.

We realize that selecting “the best” MCAT tutor is a daunting and perhaps a quixotic endeavor. In truth, there probably isn’t a “best” tutor, but rather ones that are better than others. There are many wonderful MCAT tutors, and although there might be some unicorns who see huge point increases for every student, trying to verify the claims of that tutor will be very hard and that tutor will often be way outside most budgets (note: price does not mean quality). In reality, many tutors have great track records of helping the majority of their students achieve higher scores.

But please keep in mind that a tutor is only one part of a student’s success. Score performance also depends on the student, how they study, how they receive and adjust to feedback, and what happens on test day.

All that said, there are some things all students and families should consider when deciding which tutors might be better than others. When selecting an MCAT tutor with whom to work, students and families need to think about the characteristics they want in a tutor as well as know what you want out of tutoring .

We realize you may know the answers to these questions so let’s discuss in further detail what to think about.

Characteristics You Want in an MCAT Tutor

Hiring a tutor is like hiring any employee. Yes, there are certainly bad and unqualified job candidates, but often the majority of candidates applying for a job are competent and can do the job. It becomes important, therefore, to evaluate both the experience of a tutor and their soft skills like communication and listening skills.

Here are some traits you should look for in a MCAT tutor:

  1. Has good listening, observation, and communication skills
  2. Has mastery of the science content
  3. Has mastery of the test style, format, and the ways that the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) asks questions
  4. Is able to help a student defang the test and make the MCAT more approachable
  5. Has excellent “coaching” skills: has perceptive analytical skills to evaluate what might be going on with a student’s performance and make recommendations for adjustments that will hopefully lead to higher scores. 
One-on-one tutoring sessions are all about communication between the student and tutor. If it’s clear from an initial meeting that the tutor is not able to listen and respond to the student, then there is little hope for the tutor to listen and respond to the student during sessions. In defense of some tutors, it is often the case that the student or parent’s thoughts or ideas are novice, and the tutor with more experience is able to identify a different issue or solution, but this should not be a carte blanche for the tutor to ignore concerns and questions. Both the tutor and student should be receptive to new information.
Of course, the tutor should know the MCAT content well. This is hard to evaluate when selecting a tutor, so you probably need to lean on knowing their experience and background.

Most parents (and some students) mistakenly think that the more time and energy put into studying MCAT content, the higher the MCAT score. This is absolutely false. Yeah, ok, students should know content, but knowing content can only take a student so far.

Students who do well on the MCAT have learned how to approach the MCAT passages and style of questions which are completely different from the types of questions they encountered on midterms and finals. The MCAT is about applying what you know, whereas a college final is about demonstrating command of particular knowledge. There is a subtle yet important distinction, so it is critical you have a tutor who can help reveal that distinction and recognize the limits of content studying.

Applying to medical school is much harder than it should be, and the MCAT can feel like an insurmountable task. Just like a premed advisor, a tutor should help the student manage that stress. The MCAT is important, but it’s not the only factor in the application process. Trying to perform well while feeling stressed is a recipe for underperformance. Tutors should help to lower anxiety and foster the confidence of a student.

More than anything, a good tutor is akin to a good coach. Elite performance is not about putting in 10,000 hours. It’s about evaluating past performance and looking for adjustments in conjunction with lots of practice. For example, a basketball shooting coach might notice an elbow that could be tucked in or a wrist placement that could be altered. The same should be true about a MCAT tutor. Now, it’s not always as easy or obvious why a student is making mistakes, but both the student and tutor should be looking for patterns or trends and provide feedback and suggestions to alter the approach on future practice questions and tests.
The number one reason—perhaps the only reason— people search for a tutor is to improve scores, but how do you want the tutor to engage to make that happen? What role do you want the tutor to have? Students learn in different ways and budgets can vary, so to find a good tutor, you need to know what services you want a tutor to provide

Determining the Scope of MCAT Tutoring

Here is a non-exhaustive list of tasks that tutors can help with. Some students want help with it all; some want help with something specific. 

  1. Help teach content including providing lectures on specific or every content area
  2. Answer more one-off questions about content as they arise.
  3. Help develop better test taking approaches
  4. Help shepherd a student through the entire process or just be a sounding board when the student has questions about the process
  5. Work on a particular section(s) or all sections
  6. Help create a study schedule and preparation plan.
But be careful. Parents and students may have idealistic ideas of what services they think they want, and a tutor who has worked with hundreds of students may have different ideas. Be open to suggestions from a tutor.
For example, I often hear requests to provide hundreds of problems or weekly practice tests. Although there is value in doing practice problems and tests, it’s always about quality over quantity. By the end of the process, a student should have completed close to two thousand questions if not more. However, it’s all about the quality of practice: doing a smaller set of questions where a student is actively learning and applying new approaches for the next set. Plowing through thousands of questions to just complete them is an exercise in performative studying and engrains bad habits.

Larger vs. Smaller MCAT Tutoring​ Company

If you have specific tasks you want the tutor to do, make sure to ask. Tutors that are affiliated with large companies may not have the same flexibility that a solo tutor or one affiliated with a smaller company like MedEdits has. A larger company may dictate a prescribed program. This doesn’t make them bad tutors, but if you want something specific, you might need to turn to a smaller company or individual tutors who can be more flexible and provide only the tutoring you desire.

MCAT Tutors don’t have Magic Wands

Lastly, a MCAT tutor is not a magician. MCAT tutors do not have a magic wand. Students who perform the best take ownership of their studying. Yes, a tutor should help facilitate the prep process, but the biggest gains come from students who wrestle with the material and arrive at tutoring sessions with a set of questions based on their studying. These students are the captain of their studying ship, but they are also receptive to feedback and adjustments from their tutor who has more experience navigating the MCAT waters.

JESSICA FREEDMAN, M.D., a former medical school and residency admissions officer at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is the founder and chair of MedEdits Medical Admissions and author of three top-selling books about the medical admissions process that you can find on Amazon.

(914) 909-3915 Free 15 minute advising session
phone Free 15 minute advising session