Academic Advantage Reviews

Pros

Still growing and recognized as a leader in the industry.

Cons

Growth has not always been well-planned or well thought out.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue aggressively looking to grow the business, but listen to the leadership team about the rate pace and amount of growth.

Pros

The pay is significantly high (nearly double minimum wage) and you are able to choose your own hours (sort of).

Cons

Although you can choose your own hours, your pay is highly dependent upon the parents of the tutored children. The service is free to them, so they feel entitled to cancel at the last minute. However, if you are unable to finish your hours, you are charged $27 per student. The cheap laptop provided randomly shut down multiple times, even though the battery was still full. You are put on hold for over 20 minutes when calling the company with questions or problems and are often transferred to another department, causing the wait time to be longer; I've also been hung up on "accidentally". The office is supposed to be open between 9 and 6, but nobody cares to answer the phone after 5:30pm. Automated emails, to which you cannot respond and only relevant to a select few tutors, are sent constantly, but it takes approximately 3 days to get a response after sending an email to an actual employee. Forget leaving a phone message (or 3), you never receive a response. It takes 2 weeks to receive payment, but the company is quick to withdraw funds without any explanation. The website is "under maintenance" for days at a time, so it is impossible to print out necessary paperwork. If your paperwork is lost in the mail, you receive no compensation for the hours completed.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire office employees that actually do their jobs as opposed to showing up solely for a paycheck.

Pros

high hourly rate: the rate is more than double minimum wage right now

Flexible schedule: because every each student is different, I can plan my schedule around my tutoring hours. i just make arrangements with the parent and I can plan my own things around those times.

Detailed handbooks: Iv'e done tutoring at other companies before and the guides they give you are a total joke. this place has a lot of paperwork, but everything's outlined and I can find the information I need in the handbooks.

They are honest about all the fines and possible problems if you don't complete the paperwork right. This is a big one. i see other reviews that talk about not getting paid and I don't have this problem. They were very upfront about it in their handbooks and guides so that's definitely a pro to me. I knew exactly what I was getting into.

Cons

SO MUCH PAPERWORK: Every single student you tutor has paperwork. There's the sign-in form that the parents have to sign for everytime you tutor. There's the progress that records how the kid's doing and then there's the lesson plan that outlines what the student will be learning. Every student you tutor has that. you can't avoid it. So all in all, it's a lot of paperwork.

You only get paid once a month: with all the paperwork, they say that it just makes the process easier for us the tutors and for them the company to process it once a month. even though that makes sense, I would like having two pay checks.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to lessen the paperwork -- maybe try to digitize everything so that there's less physical paper to worry about.

Pros

They hire you with no experience and if you are extremely careful in your paperwork, you might make SOME money.

Kids are great

Cons

They do not pay you for over a month IF you turn in all of your paperwork exactly correct with no mistakes, if you have one mistake they will withhold payment indefinitely. If you work for all of January you won't be paid until the second week of February (at the earliest)

If you make a mistake (or they claim you make a mistake) such as not putting "pm" next to the time or not having the exact date for the progress report, or not turning in the mountains of paperwork in the window they give you, they will withhold payment and charge you money for each mistake.

They won't reimburse you for gas or parking, or pay you for mandatory training or overtime hours (spent filling out paperwork or planning the tutoring lessons).

You will never get that many tutoring hours because you can only tutor after school and you have to drive to the places yourself. Parents will cancel often because it's free for them.

If you don't finish all of the 20 hours by the deadline, they will threaten to charge you $27 per hour per student, which can amount to thousands of dollars even if the student was dropped from your list through no fault of your own.

Do not work for this company they basically entrap you into indentured servitude.

Advice to Senior Management

LICK MY BUTTCRACK

Pros

About the only pro is that is isn't standing on your feet all day

Cons

Poorly managed, Over worked staff, staff does things at there own pace like all gov employees/contractors.
It's almost impossible to get ahold of their staff. I have waited more than 20 minutes more than once to get ahold of them and never even did.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more people with better cusromer service skills rather than a bunch of gossip queens showing up for the fashion show

Pros

I can make my own hours (within limits) and teach kids as I see they need it. The Academic Advantage gives tutors resources for use with their students, though they are the same resources that the kids have at school (which is also good for continuity). They provide a laptop to tutors so that they can bring a technological aspect to the teaching and learning experiences. Assessment of each student is required, which helps give tutors a place to start.

Cons

The paperwork is insane. The getting-started process is slow, as they require assessment. I agree that assessment is tantamount, but it is difficult when the tutor lives far away from the students. Only most of the hours worked are paid for, and the payment process is convoluted. If timesheets are lost in the mail (the only option for submission), tutors do not get paid for their work. No matter what. Tutors are automatically assumed to be at fault. Tutors were told at the beginning of work that they would be provided with envelopes and copies of paperwork, but that is delayed or non existent.

Advice to Senior Management

The very first thing I would suggest is offering a fax number for timesheet submission. If a first timesheet can so easily get lost in the mail and used as a flimsy excuse to withhold payment, it is not worth it to rely on outside factors.

Pros

Co-workers are cool, pay is ok but could be better for the amount of work you are expected to do. Excuetive Director has great ideas when you speak with him personally for help & he is very personable and will take the time out to stop and see how things are going with you and your schools. The man they having working on creating the excel workbooks is phenomenal. And should not be working there at all, way too over qualified. He makes the excel workbooks very easy and user friendly. Makes for great organizing of important info.

Cons

Overworked staff, constantly threatening jobs, management no good, alot of favoritism, payroll dept is terrible, will be yelled at & humiliated, unprofessional! Not enough workstations for all to work at. Incompetent directors (not all but some). No real direction from (some) directors. Penalized for student attendance, for the amount of students registered even if there are certain variables against you at your schools. No benefits. No raises unless you are a favorite or get lucky and get a great school and meet your goal of students registered. Everything is last minute with this company. Unorganized, very gossipy, office staff unhelpful at times, alot of fakeness, people will talk about you behind your back and smile in your face. Field directors a bit snooty. You will have to dedicate your entire life and waking moment to this job and for the pay rate its not worth it unless you are desparate of course. It has its ok points but mostly bad. Its a nice stepping stone if you can handle the high stress level. Good luck if you are planning to work with this company.

Advice to Senior Management

Great ideas are had here but too many politically incorrect things going on for it become the company that it should've became. A whole lot of things would need to change for that to happen. Like stop hiring family members & friends. Business & pleasure don't mix well at all. Stop expecting unreasonable things of the staff. Change like 80% of the internal staff who sit around and talk all day when supposedly they have so much work to do. Give incentives to your staff if you want goals met or exceeded. Dont threaten peoples jobs. Make it a less stressful place. Monitor your directors not just by having meetings with them. See who are really directing (not just acquiring schools) & who put up a good front like they are doing some work when they aren't.

Pros

Great staff and very helful

Cons

This program is meant to help the kids of the community and I love doing that. The paperwork is not great, but there is paperwork for any other job.

Pros

This job gave me the liberty of making my own schedule and working near my house. I tutored kids that were only a couple of blocks away from me. The kids are fun to work with and its nice to help kids from my community.

Cons

Cons are that you need to turn in forms for each student you tutor and that could add up a bit.

Advice to Senior Management

Less paperwork would be nice.

Pros

The company seems to have lots of work and you are free to select students reasonably near your home.

Cons

The paper work is tedious, but I was familiar with it from other tutoring jobs. One really annoying thing is that they send out mass emails regarding deadlines, etc. even if they don't apply to all of us. I worked tutoring on laptops and the equipment was cheap and undependable. The worst thing was that they claimed I hadn't sent in paperwork for one student over three months after I'd been told all my tutoring was complete. I still had copies of my paperwork, but ended up not being paid for six hours of work. There is no accounting of hours we were paid for and no way to know if we've been paid accurately

Advice to Senior Management

There is no accounting of hours we were paid for and no way to know if we've been paid accurately. Even independent contractors should be given an accounting of their earnings.