Sylvan Learning Reviews

Sylvan is easily accessible. All I had to do was text them and they would respond the same day or the next day if I texted them after hours. If I saw my son's grades and I felt there needed to be a little bit more emphasis on writing, then they would adjust to that. They would also call you with an assessment to let you know how they felt your child was doing and if there were any areas they wanted to know if you wanted them to focus on. Because my son also had SOLs coming up, I emphasized that I wanted them to help him with testing strategies and they incorporated that into the program as well.

My son is a hands-on learner and he loves education. He enjoyed the rewards program that they have. I'm an advocate of the Sylvan learning program. Communication is very important and they shape the program to what you feel your child's needs are. They mix that in with their professional expertise as well. They do a good job of breaking down the areas and not just say your child needs to work on his math. They'll say what areas they are going to focus on, like decimals, fractions, or three digit multiplication. It's not just an overall focus. It is very specific to your child's needs.

I like the way that Sylvan caters to the child's strengths as well as the areas where they need to improve. They also want you to be a part of the process and welcome your feedback because they wanna make sure that they're focusing on what you're paying for, and that they're targeting the areas that you are concerned about. It's almost like an a la carte program where you tell them what you want and they build the program towards what you feel the needs are for your child.

Sylvan is very helpful at motivating my kids and feeling like school is a priority and fun too. They never balk at going. In fact, they enjoy going to sessions. They earn points when they excel in something or complete something or they've done extra work. They get excited about earning these points. They're motivated to do outside extra work that supports their general foundational knowledge. They think about all the things they wanna get when they get there. They're learning and incentivized to learn more because of the outcome that they get.

I'm very pleased that Sylvan has been flexible with us when we've had to arrange breaks because of vacations. The communication is very reasonable. I have a warm feeling of being supported. We were gonna stop Sylvan because of financial issues but our children asked us to not stop Sylvan. My daughter said she feels stronger and she can ask questions that she can't ask in school. My son feels connected to the people there. He's got some issues with communication and there’s a lot of negative feedback at school sometimes. Sylvan gives him a more positive feedback. They're able to help him calm down and to focus and complete things. That also helps him to be grounded in his knowledge base and confidence.

I'm grateful that I have this resource because my time is very limited. It's super helpful to have folks who are trained to teach my kids in a way that they can receive the information in a very efficient manner. It covers gaps that have been missed from the COVID era. Having them scanning for things that have been missed so that they still have a good foundation is nice.

Sylvan focused on English and Math in the past but right now, he's not focused on either one of those. He does not have the time to try to get ahead. He likes Lynn, the one that he works with right now in Tiffin, Ohio. They seem to mesh well. He’s at the level he should be. But we haven't done a lot of testing here recently because he's going to a public school and just getting help on homework. It's been an adjustment and a different school too. He's in a church school. He was homeschooled for two years so it’s been a difficult thing. He's in eighth grade and the older they get, the harder it is for them to teach themselves. When we were trying to get him caught back up as far as when he got behind, you could see continuous progress so he was more up to grade level. He was down quite a bit and I had that feeling he was. He was telling me he was struggling. But for an eighth grader, he is tuned in to everything.

My grandson goes from 5:00 to 7:00 at night to Sylvan and by the time I get him back home anywhere between 7:30 and a quarter till 8:00, that's getting late and sometimes, he still has homework to finish when he gets home. That's been a little bit of a complaint with his dad. My grandson works a little slower and sometimes he's gotta wait for the teacher because there's another student in there. When he was doing Math and trying to catch up, I saw a lot of good and it was more worth it. But we cut back to one day. I can’t take him that many days. It's just too much. It's been a discussion. It's not terrible drive time but if they have a lot of homework, he should be just sitting there and working on it.

I usually pick him up at 4 o'clock from his house because I take him to get something to eat before he goes. And then I make sure he's there by 5:00. So, there's an hour. And by the time I get him home, it's another 45 minutes. But he likes Sylvan and he would like to go. So, I just bite the bullet and do it. But I didn't buy any more tutoring. I've got a lot of money in what I have done though and when this runs out, I'll have to probably see what happens next, when he starts in the fall.

We go to a satellite office in Tiffin, which is small, and they’ve had changes recently. I had dealt with a couple of women who were in there consistently since he was going and they both left at the same time. But customer service-wise, I haven’t had trouble. For the most part, it's been very good dealing with people. It's not perfect but we're not in a perfect world these days.

My grandson had a few tutors who weren't up to snuff but it's going good again. So, for the most part, he's had ones that he was happy with. He's had a few that just did not help him. They didn't have the knowledge. I probably should have called and said something, but it was during that time when things had just changed and I was trying to wait it out and see if it would even out and get better. I shouldn't probably do that, but I did, not with the price you pay for it. If you get in on that fall or winter, Sylvan has a sale. It's much better if you buy a package and get that discount. But if you just come in and buy it at any time, it's pricey.

It's great that Sylvan is available through text. Most of the time, they respond very quickly. But there's a lot of miscommunication through text. When we schedule my child and we want a certain schedule, it's confirmed and someone says, “Oh, it’s confirmed through the text.” But when my child shows up at the confirmed time, they say, “Oh, no. He's not scheduled.” My husband was there and he showed the text on our phone that someone confirmed it. So they said, “Okay. We'll take him in.”

There was also an instance when my child was scheduled for a two-hour block. When I dropped him off, I said, “Oh, is he confirmed for this two-hour block? Because I won't see you until two hours. I'll pick up in two hours.” They said, “Yes, it is.” Then about an hour later, I got a text saying, “Oh, sorry. Your child is not actually scheduled for two hours. He's waiting in the lobby to be picked up.” No parent wants that text, especially if it was already previously confirmed. Plus, reconfirmed when I dropped him off.

Another issue is that sometimes they don't pick up the phone. It's hard to get someone on the phone. So, at the time of the two-hour block, I was calling them while driving on the way to pick him up but no one was answering the phone. But when I got there, he was in a session and then I spoke to the person there who texted me and she explained, “Oh, sorry. It’s actually a someone who called in.” But I told them, “If you had to leave him outside, can you please call the parent? Not a text?” They should call for urgent matters. If they left the child outside, I would pull them off from Sylvan. But then because we talked it out and he was in a session, I'm giving Sylvan another chance. They should work on communicating with the parents. They should text more accurately.

He was excited to go to Sylvan and we live about 20 minutes away from there. So, I had to set up his sessions where they would be right after school and I had to drive him straight over there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And each session would be for an hour. So, I would pay for four hours, then again four hours once the four hours were all done. It really helped him a lot to get a better understanding of what he was doing because he would take his homework and write down questions when he was in class so that he would give them to the tutor there at Sylvan.

Cody was so happy with the guy there and he said he wanted to keep coming because he helped him understand his lessons. Every time we go, he's excited to go to Sylvan. He told me that they have one tutor and the tutor has Cody and three other students with him. And the students could be a high school student, elementary and middle school, and that one tutor is working with all four of them with whatever struggles they might have in Math where they need to get. So, Cody would tell me he does his part and when the tutor comes around to him, then he'd help him then he'd go over it. But because the environment was quiet, he's okay and he does well. At his school, he can't stand some of the classes because the students are very loud. There's a lot of disruptions from unruly students talking back to the teacher and kicking around things. And Cody gets frustrated.

Other than that, the customer service at Sylvan is not there. When I went on the first day to take Cody to his tutor, a young guy opens the door, with a hoodie and shorts. I though he was some teenager. When he opened the door, he confirmed it it was Cody and when I said yes, he told him to get inside. I asked him who he was because he was just going to take Cody. He gave me his name and asked who was Cody's tutor. I said I would like to meet them before I drop Cody off and I wanted to know who they were. He said that he was the tutor and he wasn't smiling. If anything, he almost felt like I was asking too much. I asked if he was certified and he said, if it helps, he was going to school for that. But it didn't matter to me what school he was going to and he wasn't being forthcoming.

I was thrown off and I felt really bad because I had no idea he was a tutor and he didn't give me the right information so that I could change my attitude towards who he was. His attitude wasn't very professional for me. I also went outside to wait for Cody that day and I was really upset because if I was going to pay $48 an hour, I would like some feedback to know what it is they were going to do. The response I got was that he was not on a program and that he was going to be doing homework. That's subpar. So I stayed and when I asked Cody how his first hour was, he said it was really good and he really got a lot of help. So, as long as he was okay with that guy helping him, then I was okay.