Varsity Tutors Key to Academic Champions

Charles Cohn, BSBA ’08

Charles Cohn founded Varsity Tutors, an award-winning tutoring company he started as an undergraduate student at Olin Business School. (Joe Angeles)

“Thank you, thank you, Varsity Tutors. We started your services and have felt it was money well spent. Our daughter improved her SAT score by a whopping 200 points. The tutor you paired her with was perfect. They communicated well with each other, which made the learning process a success. The tutor was kind and flexible with her busy schedule. Thanks again; we will be calling soon to schedule tutoring for our next child.” — Posted at the Varsity Tutors website by a parent of a 12th-grader at Saguaro High School, Tucson, Ariz.

Charles Cohn, BSBA ’08, is the founder and owner of Varsity Tutors, an award-winning tutoring company he started as an undergraduate student at Washington University. The 25-year-old entrepreneur credits his classes — and his classmates — at Olin Business School as factors in his organization’s success.

Cohn, a St. Louis native, recognized a need for high-level tutoring in high school as he fruitlessly searched for someone to help him with his Advanced Placement classes.

Later, as a student in finance and ­entrepreneurship at Washington University, he was struck by the thought that two of his good friends, David ­Rickard, BSME ’08, and Lewis Thomas, AB ’08, would make great ­tutors. “They were brilliant, friendly and could explain difficult concepts,” Cohn says.

This realization led him to establish Varsity Tutors during his junior year, and he ­enlisted Rickard and Thomas as the company’s first ­tutors. “They loved the idea of helping students succeed as a way to earn a little extra money,” he says.

He honed his business ideas with each course he took at Olin. For as long as he could remember, Cohn had dreamed of ­being an entrepreneur, and he chose to attend ­Washington University because of Olin’s national reputation. “My ‘Introduction to Entrepreneurship’ classmates helped me think through many of the challenges I was likely to face,” he says, “and in ‘Business Law,’ I learned to sidestep some messy issues I might have otherwise overlooked.”

“My vision for Varsity Tutors is to be the premier tutoring company in the top 25 U.S. cities,” he says, “measured not only by the number of clients, but by how well we help them meet and ­exceed their academic goals.”

Outside the classroom, Cohn participated in the Washington University Student ­Investment Fund, a student investment club that manages a financial portfolio using ­monies from the university’s endowment. “It was a fun, interesting group that spent a lot of time thinking of innovative business ideas,” he recalls.

Since graduation, Cohn, using his ­knowledge of business and technology, continues to grow Varsity Tutors at a steady clip. The company now operates in St. Louis, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix and Tucson with a team of 400 tutors.

“We’re a virtual company,” he says. “We have no offices, only eight employees; we run very lean. We pass on the cost savings to our customers, charging less than the big national tutoring services.”

Cohn’s perception that tutors should be both smart and personable is the key to the company’s success. Most of the company’s tutors are recruited at top-level schools like the University of Chicago, Rice University and, of course, Washington University in St. Louis.

A candidate who possesses the right ­combination of brainpower, personality and communication skills is engaged as an independent contractor. The company website, varsitytutors.com, then posts his or her photo, areas of expertise, educational degrees and institutions attended, standardized test (ACT, SAT, GRE, etc.) scores and a personal statement.

The company’s services cover K–12 and postsecondary academic tutoring in a wide range of subjects, plus test preparation at all levels. Students and parents can go online to search available tutors, schedule appointments and make payments.

Even without a real marketing budget, ­Varsity Tutors is growing steadily through ­referrals from satisfied clients and media ­coverage, including a “2010 Best Tutoring Company” award from the Houston Press.

Cohn revels in the challenges and growing pains of his expanding company. “My vision for Varsity Tutors is to be the premier tutoring company in the top 25 U.S. cities,” he says, “measured not only by the number of clients, but by how well we help them meet and ­exceed their academic goals.”

Lisa Cary is a freelance writer based in St. Louis.

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