Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, with our one on one tutoring, typically before tutoring begins, we pair you with a tutor who reaches out to you directly to set up a schedule that works for the both of you. If you want to give us a heads up before you sign up, you can always email us your schedule or include it as a note when you order whatever tutoring package you select. All of our tutors work in the USA but some are in different time zones, so we’ll take your time zone in consideration along with the days and times of day that you are available to figure out a schedule that makes sense.
Please visit the Courses web page and proceed from there. We have a help video behind the Guide on How to Pay button that can really explain things.
Presently, we price all of our courses by the hour. The hourly rate can range from $65/hour on the high end to $50/hour on the low end. Sometimes, we run a promotion for the month which will lower the hourly rate. For instance, right now, we are running a promotion using the coupon code “rv1600” which will take off 5% from the hourly rate. Also, all of our tutoring is one-on-one (one tutor with one student). We offer discounts to the hourly rate depending on what package you choose. Each package represents a bundle of hours. All of our packages can be found on the courses page. For instance, on the high end, the “Pre-Standard” package will range from 1 to 5 hours of total tutoring time and it costs $65/hour. If you pick the “Expert” package, then you will be pre-paying for at least 20 hours of tutoring and its hourly rate is $50/hour. We recommend that a student sign up for at least two one-hour sessions per week to be tutored under our standard program. If you would like to be more aggressive, then you can sign up for 3 or 4 hours per week. The more time that we spend with you, the better your overall score will be.
There is no money back guarantee that we provide. We would be able to refund any money that was unspent if tutoring concludes early. There are many factors as to why a student wouldn’t meet their goal in terms of overall exam score (late to the exam, feeling off/sick/tired, lack of focus, emotions, etc)– our tutoring speaks to these areas but these are areas personalized to the student and his/her environment that are largely out of our control. However, if you take our program, it is likely that your score will go up as we have excellent tutors and an excellent process. Some of our competitors that use “guarantee” use it disingenuously in that you the student are offered the ability to keep taking their program if you don’t meet the guarantee …. but its a problem of timing; normally, by the time you find out you don’t meet the guarantee, there is often very little time left to be able to continue tutoring. Working with our program has a high likelihood of helping you to meet your exam objectives.
Basically, Smart Minds Tutoring (SMT) packages represent a pre-bundling of hours at a fixed cost per hour. For instance, our “Pre-standard” package is appropriate when a SMT client only wants to pre-pay for anywhere between 1 and 5 hours of tutoring. This package is offered presently at a cost of $65/hour. However, the next-level package, the “Standard” package has a decreased hourly rate of $60/hour but it will range from 6 to 10 hours of prepaid tutoring. The total cost of a particular package will be the number of hours that the customer wants for that package multiplied by the package’s hourly rate. You will notice that the hourly rate of higher-hours-packages is smaller than lower-hour-packages – this is by design, we wanted to incentivize customers signing up for more hours since the complexity of these topics often are best handled with more hours applied versus less hours applied.
Yes, we take both PayPal and credit cards (AMEX, Discover, Chase, VISA, Mastercard, etc) for payment.
