Tutoring and Test Prep, With Just a Dash of Condescension

Hunter A. Maats ’04 knows a venti when he sees one. He can tell the difference between a latte and a café au lait. So a job at Starbucks would seem perfect, no?

“If you have a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, you can’t work for Starbucks,” Maats says.

After being rejected by the gourmet coffee trade, Maats joined up with three other classmates to create Overqualified Tutoring, a tutoring and mentoring program in LA and New York. The tutors’ real interest is in showbiz, but tutoring lets them rake in the big bucks on the side. According to Maats, Overqualified offers a fresh alternative to test prep crash courses that use, as he says, “bullshit phrases” like “Crack the SAT.” All Overqualified employees have Harvard degrees, which Maats says grants them “instant credibility.”

For a mere $75 an hour, a student can get tutored in a tough academic area, hone resume-writing skills, or even practice college interviews.

And in some cases, voice lessons are thrown in on the side. Farrell R. Ulrich, a senior at Chaminade College Preparatory School, heard Maats humming a tune while she was doing her Spanish homework. She asked him if he moonlighted as a singer, and he said yes. He immediately broke out into a melody, serenading Ulrich as she conjugated her verbs. “He’s a superstar,” says the wooed Ulrich of her mentor.

Soon, perhaps more girls will be added to Maats’ list of admirers. At the end of March, the brain behind the tutoring company will appear on the WB’s new reality series “Survival of the Richest.” Who needs Starbucks when you have a company under your belt and network TV fame?