All my life, I have been fascinated with piano music and have always dreamed of playing someday…read more After many years of pushing off lessons, I finally found a highly skilled piano teacher who could teach me to play classical music. I have been taking lessons with Mrs. Emilia for the last 6 months and it's been amazing! She has been inspiring me to build good techniques while pushing my playing to the next level. I highly recommend Mrs. Emilia to anyone who would like to learn how to play the piano.

We have been feeling lucky and honored to have someone like Mrs. Emilia as our piano teacher. She…read moreis not only a master-level professional piano player/performer/artist herself, but also dedicated and patient to teach what she knows and has experienced to the young kids (and their parents), in high quality! Her classes are inspiring and joyful for both the kids and the parents. It has been absolutely a treasure for the kids and parents to hear the amazingly beautiful music produced by her in classes and to learn how she makes it. Importantly, she can always easily come up with concrete and vivid examples, stories, pictures, etc, to help kids (and parents) to understand piano playing techniques and the essence of the songs! In addition, she can provide and come up with tons of practice methods to make practicing piano a fun and exciting process! Sometimes I doubt but then am surprised that my daughter is able to produce the amazing sound and melody, by practicing as she suggests! Along the way, I have witnessed and experienced that my daughter's sense and perception of music and sound has been greatly improved. More importantly, her piano playing techniques have been skyrocketed under Mrs Emilia training! Thank you!"

Arthur is a great tutor He is knowledgeable, flexible…read more And caring . Very devoted Tutor . Highly recommended.

My granddaughters were having some math problems in school, grades 6th and 7th grade. We were set…read moreup with Ruby, and she is very knowledgeable, and the girls are learning more from her than their school. We have had other tutors from other companies, but they seem to favor Ruby and thinks she is the best!! Now school is much more pleasant as they feel more confident in their skills.

We transferred to this Kumon center about three years ago after a difficult experience at another…read morelocation that was much closer to our home. While the previous center focused on pushing progress quickly, our kids were very stressed, often cried during homework, and their fundamentals were not solid despite being far ahead in level. Working with Ms. Edith has been a completely different experience. She emphasizes building strong fundamentals instead of rushing, and it has made a huge difference. Our children are still one to two years ahead of their school grade, but now they are more confident, less stressed, and no longer dread doing Kumon. Even though this center is a 20-30 minute drive for us, it is absolutely worth it because of Ms. Edith's thoughtful and caring approach. We are very grateful for her dedication and highly recommend this center to families who value a strong foundation and a healthy learning experience.

My son is 12. He started Kumon at age 7 in first grade at the Los Gatos center. He had a…read morewonderful teacher, Vivian L., who never failed to inspire him. Vivian sold the center and a new owner took over. We stopped for a break while he was at mid-F, two years above his grade level, according to Kumon. The reason we stopped was because my husband (an engineer himself), was sympathetic that the problems were needlessly brain-twisting with no practical application. We decided to give it a try a year later, hoping that with maturity he would have more patience to deal with the problems. He was doing well and actually was able to get through level F quite easily. But then he hit a snag and we noticed that the teacher was not working with him, just giving him the same lessons over and over, which was frustrating for him. I understand that Kumon is about children discovering on their own, and making their own connections, but making them suffer through failure without a little help does nothing but make the kids hate math. We thought this was the teacher's failure, so we took him out of the Los Gatos center and transferred him to the Saratoga Center. The owner, Edith Wu, convinced me that her center was different. She said that they had award-winning assistants from Saratoga HS who would help our son if he was ever stuck on a particular concept. He was at the Saratoga Center for three months, during which time that never happened, and he was never advanced. He was assigned the same lessons over and over and over. One particular lesson was given to him seven times, a point which Mrs. Wu vehemently denied, even though I had proof in the form of dates and scores. It got to the point where my son had memorized the answers on that particular set, and he didn't even have to do the problems. There was no reason for the mindless repetition because by the third time he was getting very few or no errors, completing them at an average of 2 minutes per 2-sided page. I hate to think that my son has been 'turned off' to math for life, but at this point when anyone asks him about his subjects, he always says that math is his least favorite. When he was working with Vivian, it was his MOST favorite. Currently he has all A's, but a B in math. Teacher or method ... you be the judge. I think Kumon is good for kids in early grades but I don't think it has much to offer past fifth grade. It isn't even synched with school standards. When we moved our son from a private school (Stratford) to public school in mid 4th grade, neither Stratford nor Kumon prepared him for public school math. He had to learn new terminology and concepts, which aren't even addressed by Kumon. One problem I found with Mrs. Wu is that she refuses to use email, and indeed I don't think she uses it at all, although she has an address. I have sent emails and she claimed not to get them. She told me that she and "everyone else" prefers to talk on the phone, but I found it difficult to communicate with her by phone. My phone conversations with her ended up with me hanging up the phone because she refused to stop talking when I told her I had to leave and had nothing more to say.

We cannot recommend Emersen enough! My son's confidence in math has completely turned around, and…read morehe is currently doing the best he has ever done in the subject. Emersen has a remarkably calm demeanor and a gift for breaking down complex topics. They have a knack for pinpointing exactly what my son is having trouble with and helping him totally nail it. In fact, my son told me that his sessions with Emersen are far more helpful than his actual teacher at school. If you want a tutor who truly understands how to teach and connects with students, Emersen is the one!

Overall, the tutoring service was helpful and effective. Concepts were explained clearly, and the…read morematerials provided, such as worksheets, were useful for practicing and reinforcing learning. The sessions helped improve understanding of the subject

Dear Janet, Our son was admitted to Purdue University last…read moreFriday. I can't stress enough that it was a big success from your tutoring on his SAT and all the essays including additional essay that he wrote to Purdue after university deferred him. Big thank you for your support and encouragement to our son! Will always refer my friends to your tutoring! Best regards, Natalia Belova

Our son really enjoyed his time with Janet! He's a sharp math student with straight As and was…read moredisappointed with his PSATs being in the 1300s- he wanted to get in the 1500s. He was skeptical on going to an SAT tutor- but Janet was great in helping him see that his issues weren't what he thought they were- he was making sloppy mistakes. So she practiced a couple different approaches with him over the 5 or 6 sessions until they found what really worked. He got in the 1500s- and actually enjoyed his experience practicing the SAT skills thanks to Janet!

We were looking for an excellent tutor to help my niece with Chemistry Honors and Pre-Calculus for…read morequite a while. Thrive Tutors really has some great tutors that love their job! Our tutor has been tutoring my niece, a sophomore at Homestead High School, for the past year and a half now. We have developed a great relationship with her, and as much as I hesitate recommending her for selfish reasons (we want her all for ourselves!), she has been so great to us that I feel this is the least I could do (I'm not giving out her name though!). As most of us know, many times students run into "academic emergencies", whether it be a quiz or exam they have the next day, project overload, or any other major school-related crisis. We've had our fair share of those, and each time our tutor has been there to save the day. I mean, literally save the day. We've had her come to our house at 9:00pm the night before an exam, with a calm, understanding smile on her face, and leave an hour later with plenty of tips and words of encouragement for my niece. My niece responds very well to her encouraging style of instruction, and always goes to her exams feeling confident after tutoring sessions. I've also noticed my niece's study habits improved dramatically since we started working with our tutor. She is a lot more organized and knows how to approach difficult concepts - something she has always struggled with. Last point - I've worked with tutoring companies where we've paid 80 - 90$ an hour for a tutor (which I find ridiculous), and this company definitely does a much better job for half the price.

My daughter needed algebra 2 tutoring and we found Dana's company on yelp. Dana sent us biographies…read moreof tutors and we immediately found one that we felt would be a good fit for my daughter. She came to our house and not only answered my daughter's questions, but gave her excellent study tips to help her pass her exam. We started working with the tutor every week, and my daughter's grades improved in every class! I decided to use the tutor for my son as well, who was in chemistry honors. Overall I felt the tutors Dana provided (our tutor left for college the next year so we got another one) were excellent, the price was very, very reasonable, and the whole process was extremely convenient. We developed a great relationship with both Dana and the tutors, and I really think it made a huge impact on my kids. Their grades really improved.

My son was struggling with a particularly difficult pre-calculus teacher who both included advanced…read morematerial and enforced a difficult grading scheme. Michael helped my son to not only get through that course, but also to be prepared for calculus this year, where he is succeeding remarkably. Additionally, Michael offered general advice and specific practice techniques for the SAT, and he shared his expertise on essay writing, both for the exam and for college applications. Michael has been very flexible and understanding in addressing our questions and concerns, and is both professional and friendly to work with. While he charges more than some private home tutors you might find on Craigslist, he is a full-time professional tutor who charges comparably to, or less than tutoring centers. We definitely value the added convenience of having him come straight to our home at times that meet our schedule. We have enjoyed working with Michael and look forward to working with him again as our son prepares for college next year, and can strongly recommend him for any parents concerned about their child's progress in math, science, or preparing for college.

My heart is so full as I write this review for Michael. I first found Michael in 2016 to help with…read moremy son who was student Willow Glen HS and was struggling with Calculus and I wanted him to stay an A student. It went so well, I hired Michel to tutor my daughter who was on an IEP (auditory process disorder and speech delay) and struggles with any new task. I never told Michael she was disabled because I did not want a different style than he provided my son. I was worried for my daughter at first because I saw nothing in his review about how he worked with kids with special needs and my daughter was so behind in math. He started tutoring her well over three year ago and we saw such an amazing transformation in her math work and grades in just 3 months. My daughter was quiet and somewhat stubborn and yet he had the patience to work with her 2-3 times a week (1-2 hours a day). Maya just graduated from Willow Glen she will attend University of CA Dominican this fall, and her math placement test work placed her in highest entry for freshman math. We feel very lucky and blessed to have had Michael on our side. Thank you, Michael, for all you have done for my family!! You are doing the right work, you rock we couldn't have done this without you.