John S. “Sam” Abbott, who”™d like to try Wall Street after college graduation ”“ though he”™s hedging some these days ”“ came home from Harvard to Irvington this past summer as an enterprising branch manager with a product much in demand in Westchester County: tutors. His company is one of two tutoring services with distinctly different business models to open here this year.
Abbott”™s kind are test-prep tutors ”“ score-raising, all-Ivy League ones from Ivy Insiders. The Cambridge, Mass., company was founded five years ago by a 2007 Harvard graduate who, like Abbott, majored in economics there and in high school aced all his SATs to smooth his college admission.
A 2005 graduate of Irvington High School, Abbott opened the nationwide company”™s 120th branch in Westchester this past summer, managing four other Ivy League students and tutoring as well in the River Towns. “We built up the Westchester branch pretty much from the ground up,” he said from his campus room last week. “In the beginning, we embarked on a pretty big marketing campaign” with direct mail, e-mail and phone banking. “It developed pretty quickly” and attracted 20 to 30 students. “The last two weeks of the summer, we were getting more calls than we had all summer.”
Ivy Insiders expected to start here with classroom courses for college-bound students, priced at $599. Instead, “We ended up doing mostly private tutoring,” Abbott said. One-on-one sessions range from $999 for a 12-hour package to $2,299 for a 30-hour package, according to the company”™s Web site. “Private tutoring seemed to meet student”™ needs. I think that”™s largely because of the market that was going before we came in. It was largely based on private tutoring,” Abbott said.
In the last two years, “We”™ve seen a huge spike in demand for the private tutoring sessions,” said Nicholas R. Green, founding CEO of Ivy Insiders. In Westchester, that demand has been “overwhelming.” With a waiting list of about 20 parents, Green recently made the Westchester branch a year-round operation. “Our hardest-achieved position was the first five customers,” he said. “After that we”™ve had the multiplier effect.”     Â
Green started the business with 80 students while still in high school in his native Minnesota. In 2006, the business took off after he hired a dozen Harvard undergraduates to run his game-theory-oriented summer courses in their hometowns. This past summer the company”™s instructors worked with more than 1,700 students nationwide, he said. In the metropolitan area, Ivy Insiders also operates branches in Greenwich, Conn., and in Bergen County, N.J.
Financially, “We are completely bootstrapped,” said Green, though the company might for the first time seek investors as it ventures further into the growing area of online tutoring. “One of the luxuries of developing the program in college was I could start it up slowly.” He anticipates company revenue this year “in excess of $1 million. We”™ve more than doubled every year of our existence.” Â Â Â
All Ivy Insiders tutors are either undergraduates or recent graduates of Ivy League schools and all are under 25. All scored in the 99th percentile on their SATs and a majority achieved a perfect score in at least one of the three test areas. About one-fourth of last summer”™s tutors scored a perfect 2400 on their SATs. In this youth-driven business, “We want someone that”™s going to relate to students less as a teacher and more as a mentor and peer,” said Green.
Green said Ivy Insider takes a different approach to preparing for the SAT than its major competitors, leveraging the “highly predictable, standardized nature” of the tests to focus on specific concepts always included rather than broad areas of study. The approach treats the SATs “more like a game” and opportunity for students than a feared obstacle. “If you learn the game and you learn the rules and you learn the right strategy, you can beat SAT just like you beat a game,” Green said. “Its fun. it”™s edgy. It”™s a little irreverent toward the SAT.”
Green said the average overall improvement in scores on practice SAT tests by Ivy Insider students last summer was about 240 points; the average jumped to about 320 points for students prepped by the top 10 percent of tutors, who are ranked and in part paid according to their students”™ score improvements.
“It”™s a huge incentive for us to do our jobs really well,” said Abbott, whose summer pay was determined by the number of students he picked up in the county and the size of increases in their test scores.  Â
“We see Westchester as a perfect market,” Green said. “You have highly motivated students, a community that really values education and a college-preparation culture. People care about what schools they get into and they”™re competitive in that process.”
In Bronxville, three business partners recently launched an online matching service to supply parents in that thriving market with a broad range of private tutors.
At improvA ”“ online at www.improvA.com ”“ parents and students in Westchester and Bergen County, N.J., can freely browse through a network of screened independent tutors variously qualified for all academic subjects and grades and test preparation as well as college admissions counseling. Most tutoring will be done in students”™ homes, said improvA Business Manager Betsy Howard.
With about 100 tutors already signed up for the network, the company”™s service will give parents numerous options in their search while giving tutors access to potential clients. “Independent private tutors often have a hard time delivering their service and communicating professionally,” Howard noted. For them, “There”™s nothing like” improvA.
The online search service is free of charge. The company will draw its revenue from 15 percent transaction fees for credit-card billings for tutor hirings and plans to later charge membership fees for tutors, Howard said.
The company was founded by Yves Coleon, its president. A government trade adviser in his native France and a Bronxville resident, Coleon also is the founding president of Transmark Partners L.L.C., a business development consulting company that helps European companies enter the U.S. market. Prior to forming that company in 2001, Coleon was president and CEO of the North American subsidiary of Lalique, the French consumer luxury brand. The newly launched tutoring service shares office space with Transmark Partners at 65 Pondfield Road in Bronxville.
Howard, a business consultant to nonprofit groups and the mother of three teenagers in Bronxville, has shopped for her family in that expanding Westchester market. “I found with my own children that when I hired a tutor, it demystified the process” of learning a subject “and really enhanced their success,” she said.Â
