What You're Actually Buying With a North Avenue Scholars Membership
A Scholars membership isn't a bundle of sessions. It's one ongoing relationship with a team that knows your student, led by a Program Advisor who holds the whole picture so you don't have to. Here's what's included, how the tiers work, and how to get the most out of your first few months.
You don’t want to sign up for another service provider. You want to sign up to stop being the one who keeps track of all providers.
So what are you actually buying when you enroll in a tutoring membership with North Avenue? The short answer is not sessions. It's a relationship.
Most of the families who join us aren't looking for remediation. Their students are bright, often juggling more than one demanding thing at once, and the gap isn't ability. It's bandwidth: yours, to keep coordinating every piece of academic support yourself, and your student's, to hold it all without an expert steadily in their corner. A membership is built to close that gap, not to fix something broken.
The Problem a Membership Actually Solves
Most families come to us already managing a small constellation of academic support on their own: a subject tutor here, an executive function coach there, an SAT class booked separately, an essay reader found through a friend of a friend. Each piece might be good on its own. Coordinating all of it, remembering who knows what, re-explaining the same context every few weeks, is the actual job. That's the job a Scholars membership takes off your plate.
A membership is one ongoing relationship with a team that already knows your student: their learning style, their course load, what motivates them and what shuts them down on a Tuesday after practice. That includes students with learning differences, ADHD, or executive function challenges, where continuity with a tutor who already understands how they work matters more than almost anything else. At the center of that team is a Program Advisor, whose job is to hold the whole picture, not just this week's session, and adjust the plan as your student's needs shift, before you're the one who has to notice and initiate the change.
Additionally, our more comprehensive tiers include a natural path to address shifting needs: a quarterly conference call with your Program Advisor.
The Three Tiers, in Plain Terms
Which tier fits usually becomes clear on the first call, but here's the shorthand.
Middle School memberships are built for the years when study habits get set. They provide subject support and executive function coaching, aimed at building rhythm and independence before high school raises the stakes.
Academic memberships add AP and IB tutoring for students carrying a heavier course load, with study skills and executive function coaching still built in for students who benefit from both, and this is where most middle and early high school families land.
College Prep memberships layer SAT or ACT prep and college essay coaching on top of everything in Academic memberships, for students actively working toward admissions and juggling test dates, coursework, and applications at the same time.
Within each tier, you're also choosing a cadence: three sessions a month or six. Three tends to fit a student building rhythm across one or two areas. Six fits a student carrying more at once, whether that's a genuinely demanding semester where test prep, coursework, and an essay draft are all competing for the same few weeks, or a student who simply does better with more frequent touchpoints and steady accountability. The six-session tier also includes a quarterly strategy call with your Program Advisor, a standing checkpoint to zoom out and confirm the plan still matches the moment your student is actually in, not the one you scoped a semester ago.
Perks That Aren't Really Extras
The rest of what comes with membership isn't designed to pad the offer. Each item on this list started as a small breakdown we noticed under the old, piecemeal way of doing this, and got built out on purpose.
Move between subject tutoring, EF coaching, test prep, and essay work from month to month with no new agreement to sign
Priority scheduling, so a rescheduled session doesn't turn into a two-week wait
Email access to your student's tutor between sessions, for the quick question that doesn't need a full hour
Proctored practice tests built into the plan, so progress gets measured on a schedule instead of only when a real test date is bearing down
One or two waived late cancellations each month, because a household with a teenager in it does not run on a fixed schedule
A discount on classes and workshops, if your student wants to add one
None of it is meant to make the membership feel bigger. It's meant to make the friction around it smaller, so the parts you'd actually notice—an unreturned email, a session that quietly falls off the calendar, a tutor who has to relearn where your student left off—simply stop happening.
Getting the Most Out of Your First Few Months
A few things are worth doing early, whether you're a new member or still deciding.
Loop your Program Advisor in on the small stuff: a report card, a teacher email, a shift in how your student talks about a particular class. That's exactly the kind of signal that lets the team adjust before a small issue turns into a bigger one, and it's the reason the advisor role exists in the first place.
Treat the first practice test as a baseline, not a verdict. Its only job is to tell your tutor where to spend time, so a lower-than-expected score is information, not a setback.
Let the tutor set the homework rhythm where you can. Part of what you're paying for is a second, expert set of eyes on how your student actually works, and that view gets clearer the less it's filtered through you.
If you're on the six-session tier, actually use the quarterly strategy call. It's easy to let a standing meeting slide when things feel fine, but that call is usually where the next few months of the plan get decided, well before a change is urgent.
The Guarantee That Matters
We don't guarantee increased grades or test scores. We guarantee expertise: a team that will tell you honestly what your student needs, even when that answer changes mid-year. If a tutor isn't prepared, we'll find one who is. If the plan needs to flex, your advisor flexes it.
That's also why membership tends to work well across years, not just a single semester. The relationship, and the context it carries, is what lets us support a student from a shaky start in ninth grade math through a college essay four years later without starting over each time.
You already made the harder decision when you chose to stop managing this alone. Everything above is just the mechanics of how we make good on it.
Questions about your specific plan? Reach your Program Advisor directly, or call us at 503/468-6905.
