Low Pay: AJ advertises a high hourly tutoring rate (30-40 dollars an hour). This is misleading. Unfortunately, even if you work "full time," you will not get 40 tutoring hours a week. You will hover between 10-25 tutoring hours a week. This dearth in hours is because: 1) kids are out of school only on weekends, weekday afternoons/evenings 2) scheduling sessions back-to-back is nearly impossible, as your kids' schedules will never line up perfectly 3) kids will cancel sessions. Not only will you not tutor 40 hours a week, but there will be some weeks where you will not work at all or very little i.e. summer vacations and other vacations. Ultimately, even the most busy tutors make about 20,000-30,000 a year. Why slave away for the rich families of silicon valley for such little compensation? You can make more working in a public school. I am currently working at a public school in an economically depressed area and privately tutoring on the side at $100/hr (the rate AJ charges its clients), and I feel much more financially secure.
Weird Hours: As I mentioned earlier, you can only work on weekends and weekday afternoons/evenings. This weird schedule makes it incredibly hard to hang out with friends and family, make travel plans, etc. Your social and family life will suffer.
Sleezy Sales Tactics: Parents pay AJ $100 for regular academic tutoring, but AJ will push you into selling them test prep tutoring at $160, even if their kid doesn't need test prep tutoring. They justify the higher rate for test prep tutoring by saying they have "proprietary AJ materials" for test prep. This is misleading. Most of the time, we first use public SAT practice tests. Even if we get through those public SAT practice tests and start on the AJ materials, the AJ materials often have errors. And even though you are supposed to push these parents HARD on test prep tutoring, you only get a couple dollars more per hour for test prep tutoring. For a couple dollars more per hour, you can be part of the test prep mafia that fuels educational inequality!
Micromanagement: You have to meet with your team leader for an hour every week. Not only do you get paid $16 for this hourly meeting, your team leader will go through your student list, asking exactly what you're doing in each session, making sure that you've sold them on test prep. Your team leader will also scrutinize your time sheets to make sure you are not taking too many breaks or spending too much time prepping for students. They think that you should be able to lesson plan for a 1.5 hour session in less than 5 minutes.
