Pros
If you enjoy teaching and tutoring, this is a great job. You work as an independent contractor and Grade Potential calls you up and offers you clients- what's not to love? Most students are actually interested in getting their grades up and are easy to work with if you're proficient in the material. You are in control of your own schedule, so there's a lot of freedom for doing other work on the side or just enjoying life. Students and Families: 5 stars Independence: 5 stars
Cons
Compared to other tutoring opportunities in the Bay Area, this one doesn't pay top dollar and you only get paid once per month instead of biweekly. Not as much support and no training compared to other agencies in the area. Like in all seasonal gigs, there are months where you have a lot more work than others, and some months you barely have any work. Basically no room to advance professionally within the company. The company doesn't have an office for tutors, so there's a bit of a feeling of being a lonely satellite sometimes. Pay: 3.5 stars Support & Training: 3 stars Professional Mobility: 1 star The only truly bad experience I had at Grade Potential was when I was trying to leave the company for other opportunities- they simply wouldn't let me leave! The owner of the company even got on the phone with me and threatened to make me pay the company for any business that they might lose from me leaving. I had to ask for a complete copy of my old contract to point out that he couldn't do that and that I hadn't broken any agreements. To keep this in perspective, I left during the summer when I had (to my knowledge) no active engagements, but two weeks after I had already left, I got a call announcing that one of my former potential clients had signed up to work with me (presumably they signed up before I had left but I was not notified then) and were very let down to find that I had left the company. They were so let down that they were considering asking for their money back and Grade Potential either couldn't convince them to try out another tutor or didn't have another tutor suited for them. By then, I had already begun working at a different job, but it didn't stop the owner from calling me some six times in one day with various legal arguments about why I had to take on the client. Weird Threats By Owner: 0 stars.