How To Find The RIGHT Organic Chemistry Tutor

So you’ve decided that hiring an organic chemistry tutor might be a good idea. Great. Now let’s talk about how to find the right organic chemistry tutor, because while organic chemistry tutoring can cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, finding the wrong tutor can cost you not just money, but valuable time and, ultimately, the result.

Not All Tutors Help With The Same Problems

The thing I keep seeing over and over when it comes to tutoring is a mismatch between what students ask for, what they actually need, and what the tutoring provides, which ultimately doesn’t get students the result they want.

Not all tutors solve the same problems.

• Some are there to explain your homework.
• Some just answer your questions.
• Some can help you with mechanisms.
• Some might keep you accountable and make sure you stick to your schedule.
• Some will be able to diagnose why you are struggling in the first place.
• Some will help you prepare for the ACS or other standardized exams.
• And some are best at helping you cram before the exams.

Those are completely different services, and yet students lump them all together and assume any tutor can help with any of them.

What Do YOU Need From A Tutor?

So before we go any further, before we get to the vetting questions and how to find the tutor who is a good fit for you, the very first thing I want you to do is figure out what problem you are trying to solve.

Do you need help with the homework? Or maybe you need somebody to keep you accountable and on schedule? Or do you just need explanations? Maybe you need some exam prep? Or do you need a complete reset because you failed the exam, or you’re retaking the class and don’t remember what was going on there to begin with?

The thing is, not all of those goals require a tutor, and not all tutors will accommodate all of those goals. And if you cannot answer these questions, that is a signal in itself. Maybe you don’t need tutoring just yet, but what you do need is a diagnosis of why you’re struggling in the first place.

Where Do Tutors Come From?

Now, let’s talk about where you are going to find a tutor. There are three main venues.

First, your school tutoring center. These are typically staffed by other students who have taken the course before and earned an A, or maybe a B, depending on your school’s policies. They’re usually fine for homework help and maybe some advice about a specific professor or class. But don’t forget that these places are staffed with people who have just finished the course themselves. They’ve never taught the course; they simply passed it in the recent past.

Second, tutoring marketplaces. These are huge websites offering tutoring in pretty much everything imaginable. You’ll have filters to help you find a tutor, you might click on “Chemistry” or “Organic Chemistry,” you’ll get a bunch of profiles, and you’ll pick from those profiles whom you want to talk to and ask about tutoring.

Third, independent tutors, or independent specialists if you want to call them that. These are typically people who have their own platforms and have been doing this for many years. Although you can sometimes find them on tutoring platforms as well, many of them are fully independent, with their own infrastructure, their own social media presence, and so on.

None of these choices are automatically right or wrong, good or bad. They all solve different problems at different price points. That’s why it is so important for you to know exactly what you want from tutoring.

Important Questions to Ask

Once you’ve found an independent tutor or a tutor from a marketplace, there are a few questions I want you to think about and ask them to make sure they are a good fit. The answers to these questions don’t usually show up in a tutor’s website or profile.

The first one, and probably one of the most important, is this: does the tutor actually specialize in organic chemistry? The thing is, “chemistry tutor” and “organic chemistry tutor” are not the same job description. Somebody who teaches organic chemistry exclusively has a very different field of expertise and very different experience than somebody who teaches just about everything, with organic chemistry among other things.

Which brings me to the next question: how much experience do they have? I’m not just talking about years here. While experience in years does help, of course, I’m talking about the breadth of the experience rather than the length of it. A tutor who has taught material from the same school with the same instructor for many years might be excellent at explaining how that specific instructor works, their quirks, their testing style, and so on, but they won’t be able to help you much outside of their usual curriculum or the way that specific instructor or school operates. The more different experiences and the more different schools a tutor has worked with, the wider their expertise is going to be, and the more they will be able to help you regardless of the school or curriculum you’re in.

Alright, the next thing you might want to consider is how they actually teach. Somebody who just shows you how to solve problems versus somebody who makes you solve problems, walks through them with you, and helps you navigate them, those are two very different learning experiences. Nobody became a world-renowned pianist or an Olympic champion by watching somebody else play piano or perform sports. Organic chemistry is exactly the same. You’ve got to do the work, and you’ve got to do the practice questions yourself rather than just watch somebody perform them for you. If your tutor is just sitting there explaining how things work while you sit and watch, well, you might as well watch a YouTube video. And yes, you can ask questions and intervene from time to time, but the effectiveness of that type of instruction is marginal at best.

Now, here’s something you’re going to see very quickly, within your first or second session: can they explain why rather than just what? What I mean is, whenever you are working through a problem, can your tutor explain why you use this or that reagent, or why you use one approach and not another that seemingly does the same thing or gives the same result? In organic chemistry, we might have multiple different pathways to get from point A to point B or C or D. Not every pathway is equally good, and the tutor needs to be able to explain why one pathway is better than another. “Because I said so” is not going to cut it.

Next, do they have a plan for you? Most tutoring is reactive. The student comes in, asks a question, the tutor explains, rinse and repeat next week. While this type of tutoring might feel like it accomplishes something, you do get answers to your questions, it’s actually not very effective. Unless you are working towards some sort of goal, like becoming better at synthesis, improving your mechanistic thinking, or being able to independently approach a certain type of problem, simply asking questions and getting answers is not going to have much of an effect.

And finally, can your tutor tell you when you don’t need tutoring? A lot of students don’t need tutoring; they need a study buddy. They need somebody to help them from time to time when they have questions. They need somebody to keep them accountable, and so on. Many of those things don’t require a tutor. They require sometimes a babysitter, sometimes a friend, sometimes just a study buddy you can work with and bounce ideas off of to make the information a little easier to comprehend and sort out. That’s why hiring a tutor just because you’re struggling is not always the best idea, especially if it’s simply the only thing you can think of. I keep coming back to the same idea: why do you think you need tutoring? Answer that question for yourself first, and then you’ll know whether you actually need a tutor or something else, some other style of help, to succeed in your class.

A Note On Pricing

Before we move on, there is one other thing I want to mention, and that is the price. While price generally is not the best indicator of quality, there is some correlation, and I want you to be very mindful about it, because “expensive” doesn’t necessarily mean “good,” and likewise “very cheap” doesn’t necessarily mean “awful.” Yes, independent tutors with years of experience and good credentials will typically ask for higher fees. But also be very careful with tutors who ask for very low fees. Generally speaking, if you think about it, somebody who teaches organic chemistry is not going to be able to do it very cheaply, simply because of the amount of experience, work, and knowledge it takes to get to the point where you can actually explain the hardest topic in the college curriculum. You would probably be very suspicious if somebody told you they could give you a full-sleeve tattoo for just 50 bucks in one night. That just doesn’t fit; it doesn’t sound right. When it comes to tutoring, the idea is much the same.

At the same time, many experienced tutors are extremely efficient. Consider somebody who charges only $40 an hour but requires you to work with them for 30 hours to get to the point where you are comfortable with the next exam, versus somebody who charges $200 an hour but needs only 6 hours to get you to the same point. Are you really saving by taking the cheaper tutor? Something for you to ponder.

Red Flags

Now, let’s talk about some red flags. If you’re looking for a new tutor, or maybe you have already started working with one, there are several red flags you have to be extremely careful about.

The first one: your tutor guarantees that you are going to get an A. Nobody can guarantee an A. That is magic. If your tutor guarantees that after working with them you’re going to get an A, run.

If your tutor offers to do your homework, that is another red flag. Plus, that is a violation of academic honesty. So if something like that happens, go in the opposite direction.

Another red flag is that your tutor is just giving you answers instead of explaining things and helping you build your skills. If every tutoring session looks like you come in, you ask a question, they give you the answer, and the same thing happens next week, that’s not actually tutoring. You’re just paying somebody to do your homework. See the previous point.

Another big one: your tutor does not ask you questions. If your tutor doesn’t actively ask you questions to probe your understanding, and I don’t mean just asking “Does that make sense?” or “Do you understand?”, then your tutor is just reciting a script, so to speak. They’re repeating the same things they’ve repeated before, over and over again, and they’re not really teaching.

And finally, your tutor cannot explain the same concept differently. This one is pretty simple. People learn things differently, and they sometimes need a slightly different approach and a different explanation. If your tutor is just doing that old dad joke of explaining the same thing again but louder, well, that’s probably not a good sign. So don’t hesitate to ask your tutor to explain things in a different way, using different terms or a different example. If they cannot, then once again, they’re just reading a script. They’re not really teaching, and they probably don’t understand the topic all that well themselves.

Concluding Thoughts

So as you can see, the goal is not to find the best tutor, but rather to find the tutor who works for you and fits your needs. First, figure out for yourself what exactly you need help with. If that’s one of the things a tutor can help with, then go ahead and get yourself a tutor, ask them some of the questions I’ve proposed here, and get the grade you wanted.