jordan15 wrote:
Has anyone done it? I've heard you can make $100+/hr if you have a score above 170, is this true?
I currently tutor, and if I say so myself, do it very well though I don't charge anywhere near $100/hr. However there's no way I'd even think of doing it in law school.
Based upon your previous posts, you have yet to take the LSAT, as a result are not enrolled in law school as of this post, and your statement that a school's budget is insufficient is incorrect in my opinion. But I'm going to overlook the implications of those issues and focus upon the underlying assumption of your question: that people
will pay you above market rates to tutor them.
To answer your question, yes it is possible to make over one hundred dollars per hour if you have a score above 170. However possibility should not be confused with probability in this instance. While it is theoretically possible, merely having a score above 170 may not be sufficient to charge over a hundred an hour. In fact, because you probably do not have any prior LSAT tutoring experience, I'd argue it's unlikely that you could charge anywhere near $100/hr, work only six hours a week or less, and gain business from that.
The first barrier to entry in the tutoring business is demand. Depending upon your market, you may not have many, or any students willing to pay you more than 50$/hr to tutor them, let alone $100/hr. This is because most people don't place a high enough value on top scores, even though it's
painfully obvious that higher scores can lead to increased opportunities in the future. In addition, tutoring the LSAT is a cyclical position, the supply of students willing to work with a tutor ebbs and flows, for example the February test will probably have a lower supply than October or December. Because demand will probably be low, and because you haven't built a sufficient reputation through experience or advertising, you will need to lower your prices.
Next, you seem to assume that tutoring is easy and not a significant time committment when in reality it is both complicated and time consuming. In order to charge students more than $50/hr you need to take an interest in their progress, goals, and work hard for them. In addition, the amount of time you will need to devote to your students depends at least in part on their level of understanding.
For example, if you are working with an advanced student (someone who understands the concepts and needs help applying them efficiently and correctly), you'll mainly be analyzing and correcting their PTs among many other things. But you'll still need to email your students before every session reminding them to show up, you'll need to email them after each session with things to review, homework, links emphasizing certain concepts, be available to answer any and all questions via phone or email, and send recommendations to them. You'll also need to take and review everything that you tell your student to do. So every PT you go over during your sessions, you'll need to take under timed conditions, and analyze. Keep in mind that, unless you work for a company, the time you spend outside of class is unpaid.
On the other hand, consider the case of a beginning student (one who lacks an understanding of the fundamentals), you have to build these students from the ground up. Whereas for an advanced student you just go over PTs, analyze them, and make recommendations, for beginning students you have to consider what to teach, when to teach it (Assumption family first or Inference family, or Global RC questions, etc.). Thus, in the case of a beginning student, you'll have to make a schedule for them, and still do all of the stuff above while making the sessions entertaining via continuous questions, insights, jokes, and examples.
Also, consider the fact that because you'll be in law school, and assuming people are interested in working with you, you will probably only have enough time to work with one student, but that student may not sign you for more than a few sessions, or just a few months. And you will inevitably have to turn students down because you simply don't have enough time to give them your best effort. You don't want to take too few students but remember that inquiries are not the same as people paying you. As far as I'm concerned my schedule is open to students until they sign with me because there's always students who call you but don't sign and you can't turn students away, or change your schedule until someone takes up your time via contract.
In conclusion, tutoring the LSAT is a very inconsistent and time consuming position. Don't make the assumption that students will contact you, and definitely don't make the assumption that you'll only be working four to six hours a week.