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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Someone commented on another thread: "I’m an SAT tutor. You can’t tutor a mediocre kid into a 1500+ kid. Sorry, but don’t waste your money."

So how much does it really help? And when is it useful to begin tutoring? For example, if you hired a tutor for your 9th grader and have him work with the coach weekly for a couple of years, is your 9th grader going to do worlds better than he otherwise would have due to the prep?[/quote]

A good one-to-one tutor can help a kid achieve their actual level.  But yes, nobody can tutor a kid to a 1500+ if they are not that intelligent.

I would do the tutoring during junior year and I wouldn't spend too much time/energy.  
For example, my kid started Feb of junior year (it was covid so late).  Their tutor had them take a real test at 8am on a Sat (from home).  Tutor graded it and went over the areas they had errors. My kid had a 1320(620V/700M).  Recommended 4 hours of tutoring: 1 for math and 3 for verbal areas. Each hour focused on a specific area, identified the silly mistakes/careless errors and gave pointers for how to approach the test (the "tricks" of testing).  My kid then took another practice test 2 weeks later (after the 4 hours of tutoring and maybe 2 hours total of at home studying/going over the info learned in the tutoring).  My kid landed at 1480 (700/V, 780M). 
Could have stopped then. But did a few more tutoring sessions and practice tests then took two real SATs.  In total took 10 hours of paid tutoring, 1 Baseline SAT and 4 more practice tests graded by tutor.  Every test after the baseline was near 1480.  So basically, those 4 hours of targeting tutoring and 2 hours of my kid practicing/studying on their own and my kid reached their ultimate score.

That is what a good tutor should do---get you to your best potential score quickly.  Sure could my kid score higher?  Probably, if they did intensive verbal tutoring and worked to not make 1-2 careless mistakes in math (they are capable of an 800 and did on one practice test).  But would it be worth 10-20 hours of tutoring and intensive studying to get another 40-60 points on verbal?  We said nope that is crazy.   And were done.

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