Dan's Papers - June 13, 2008 - Adding a Tutor to Summer Activities

For New York City's stressed out and overscheduled students, summer signals the beginning of a well-deserved break. With final exams a distant memory and the next round of standardized tests safely scheduled months away, the middle of the summer is hardly the time to be thinking about the Pythagorean Theorem...or is it?

Summer in our neck of the woods has traditionally meant tennis, riding, sailing lessons, summer camp and, of course, endless hours at the beach. But increasingly, it also means a continuation of the academic, SSAT and SAT coaching that supplement kids' education during the school year.

Fierce competition for the few spots at top high schools and colleges is prompting more students to make room amidst their summer activities for the type of instruction that will ensure them the highest grades and test scores in the fall. While this may sound like a drag, many parents and students are discovering that summer fun and summer tutoring can coexist peacefully.

In previous summers, tutoring might have required that a student give up the Hamptons vacation in order to attend a class in the city every Saturday morning. However, some savvy parents are now figuring out how to balance their child's need for relaxation with the realities of the competitive admissions process. These parents have discovered a small cohort of tutoring companies that have made their way from the city to the East End to provide the same one-on-one service at home. Now, tutoring sessions are scheduled between morning sailing lessons and afternoon riding, or just during the three weeks between summer camp and the trip to Aspen. And since the tutors come to the students' summer homes, students are able to juggle the schedule without wasting time in traffic on 27 East.

Students say they find spending a few hours a week working with a tutor not nearly as stressful as cramming tutoring sessions in during the busy school year. One student, who was initially opposed to the idea, but went along with it when he found out that he didn't have to give up his surfing lessons, now says, "My tutor's actually a cool guy. He knows that I'm on vacation, and I'm learning how to write better essays with no pressure." Parents are similarly relieved to be able to get the tutoring their kids need without feeling like they're robbing them of their summer.

Along with the increase in summer tutoring on the East End, there's an emerging shift in focus away from test preparation towards academic skills development. Driven, in part, by reports that even perfect test scores don't guarantee admission to top schools without excellent grades and a slate of extracurricular activities, parents are hiring tutors to work on material for difficult classes, like chemistry or math. One parent, describing her daughter's math class this past year as a disaster because of a rocky start, said she is now having a tutor pre-teach the beginning of next year's math class to ensure that her daughter is ready on the first day of school.

Some parents are concerned that allowing tutoring to bleed into the summer could raise the competitive bar for students, resulting in all students needing to get on board just to keep up during the school year. While it remains to be seen whether this fear will become a reality, it's clear in the short term that those students who are bringing their tutors out to the Hamptons are angling to gain an advantage in the fall. And most parents say their children have been able to seamlessly integrate studying into their otherwise activity-packed summers without too many headaches or sacrifices.