What kind of tutoring do you specialize in?

PCH Tutors specializes in providing excellent private academic tutoring and standardized test prep services.

There’s no substitute for the quality of education and results students receive with individualized instruction from tutors who are both subject matter experts and academic mentors. This is why we’ve spent the last decade building a team of over fifty expert tutors to help students with the subjects they struggle with most.

Every day our clients trust us to do an exceptional job tutoring their students in algebra, pre-calc, calculus, statistics, physics, biology, chemistry, AP & IB courses, English, history, foreign language, and standardized tests such as the ISEE, CHSPE, GED, SAT, and ACT.

Our owner, Jake Adams, specializes in ACT & SAT prep and repeatedly helps students achieve scores within the top 1% of test-takers. Jake has trained each of our SAT and ACT test prep tutors himself and works alongside our test prep tutors in developing individualized prep programs.

Where does tutoring take place?

When we are able to safely resume in-person tutoring again we primarily provide our tutoring services in the homes of our students.

During the COVID-19 health crisis, we are currently offering 100% online tutoring. However, our ability to accommodate online tutoring clients nationwide will continue even after social distancing restrictions are lifted.

How do you match tutors with students?

We start every new client relationship with a phone call to gain an understanding of their student's needs, academic background, and what is making learning difficult for a student in their classes.

From there we discuss the student's scheduling needs so that we can help to facilitate a long term tutoring relationship with one of the tutors on our team. It's always more helpful to work with the same tutor each time, so we try to make sure that schedules align from the start between tutors and students.

Finally, we ask parents what kind of personalities their student responds to best and what their student's learning style is like so that we can offer them the option to work with one or two tutors we feel are perfect for the job.

It typically takes us 1-2 business days to check-in with our team and find the right tutor match. However, we have an excellent staff of over 50 quality tutors and can definitely make last minute tutoring arrangements work for clients in a pinch.

What if we don't feel that the tutor we are assigned is the right fit?

If you don't feel that the tutor we've assigned is the right fit for your student just let us know, and we'll be happy to re-assign a new tutor who we feel can meet your student's needs. We'll of course want to discuss what you feel did not work for your student so we can improve our tutoring service as well as how we match your student with any future tutors.

Am I in your service area?

When we are able to safely resume in-person tutoring again, our service areas will include the following cities:

Malibu, Thousand Oaks, Woodland Hills, Westlake Village, Agoura, Calabasas, Monte Nido, Tarzana, Encino, Topanga, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Brentwood, Westwood, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills

During the COVID-19 health crisis, we are currently offering 100% online tutoring. However, our ability to accommodate online tutoring clients nationwide will continue even after social distancing restrictions are lifted.

What sort of tutoring program do you recommend?

The short answer is that it depends on your situation and the outcomes you hope to achieve with a tutor.

We typically address this question in our client intake process. We use the information our clients provide us about their students’ unique situations to create an individualized tutoring plan to help their students achieve their academic goals.

Generally, students interested in maintaining an A or high B average will only need one or two sessions per week with a tutor, if they’re working to improve their understanding of a single subject.

Students struggling to keep Bs or Cs in a subject will generally need tutoring at least twice a week to improve their grades by a full letter grade.

If your student is failing a class, we’ll first need to determine if passing the class is possible before we begin tutoring. If passing the class is an attainable goal, we'll work to outline a plan for earning credit in the class and make our very best attempt to help your student pass.

Can your tutors help my student with organization and time management?

All of our expert academic tutors have had to develop effective organizational skills and time management practices to achieve excellence in their fields, so naturally our tutors will be able to support your student by helping them develop these same skills throughout the course of tutoring.

We make it our goal to teach students how to plan ahead, how to create effective study plans for their next big quiz or test, and how to organize their book bag so they’re not misplacing important information or homework .

If you are looking for a tutor who can focus solely on working with your student to develop their organizational, planning, and prioritizing skill sets, you’ll find great success in working with one of our executive functioning skills tutors.

How is PCH Tutors responding to the current health crisis?

At this time, PCH Tutors is offering 100% online tutoring in an effort to ensure that our clients have continued access to our team of expert tutors and academic mentors.

We’ve spent the last two years perfecting our online tutoring solution, and we can confidently say that we’ve developed an online tutoring experience for students that is both intuitive and truly interactive.

Our online tutoring solution allows your tutor to interact with your student within a shared virtual whiteboard on their PCH Tutors iPad while utilizing a video feed to maintain the face to face interactions of in-person tutoring. PCH Tutors can provide your student with a rental of the newest version of Apple's iPad and an Apple Pencil so that they can write, draw, and interact digitally with their tutor in a seamlessly simple way online.

You can see a demo of our online tutoring solution within the videos section of our Google business profile.

How does PCH Tutors vet its tutors?

Here’s a summary of our process.

Stage 1: Pre-Screening / Phone Screening We only engage with tutoring candidates who have proven to be outstanding academic mentors with a record of academic success. This stage eliminates 85% of applicants.

Stage 2: Skill Assessment/Proficiency Testing Next, we work to gain a deep understanding of a tutor’s academic proficiencies. We review highschool and college transcripts and administer proficiency exams for the subjects candidates wish to tutor.

Stage 3: Emotional Intelligence Interview/Background Check Finally, we get to know candidates better as individuals and determine whether they have the soft skills required to succeed as tutors and academic mentors. We also ask candidates to demo their teaching and tutoring methods. For qualified tutors we conduct an official background check and speak to their references.

When you hire PCH Tutors, you’re tapping into a remarkable team of educators dedicated to your student’s academic success.

What are your business hours?

PCH Tutors offers one-on-one tutoring services from 9am until 9pm every day of the week, including weekends. If your student needs help outside of our normal hours, we may be able to make an adjustment to this availability based on the availability of our individual tutors.