The Cambly Tutor Rating System

I think this topic more than any other is the most talked about on Cambly Corner. Tutors will anxiously wait for Thursday to roll around to see if their rating has changed. In just the last few weeks, my rating has gone up and down like a kid on a pogo stick!  I was a 4.94, then a 4.92 and now I’m a 4.93.  So today;s post is about your rating, what it is, why it’s important and how can you improve  it?

So let’s start with what is a tutor rating? If you visit Cambly corner, you’ll see lots of opinions on how ratings are worked out and why they rise or fall. It’s probably one of the biggest conspiracy thoeries since who shot JFK.

• “Yeah, I know how the ratings work. If the Cambly admins don’t like you they can cut your rating!”
• “If you miss a reservation or cancel a class, your rating will go down”
• “Your rating is affected by how many PH’s you take”
• “I had all regulars last week and my rating went down. It’s a fix!

How ratings are calculated

OK guys, I have the scoop on ratings. I can honestly tell you that I have some inside info from a Cambly admin that I contacted when I first started, and I know how they are calculated *looks around furtively*.  So here it is…. Ratings are an average of how students rate each of your classes!  Yeah I know, shocking huh. It really is as simple as that.  When I wrote in and asked if my rating went down because I canceled several classes at the last minute, I was told “There is no secret formula for ratings, it’s just an average of how students rate your class”.  I have no reason to believe Cambly support was lying, and more than that, I have an idea of how averages are calculated and how a few bad ratings can take ages to be recovered! So let’s look at how these averages work.  I used an online calculator to work out how various  ratings would affect an overall score. Here’s a few pics to help.

The first pic is an example  and shows a hypothetical rating of 4.9 and the  scores needed to get that. The second pic shows that if a student now gives a rating of  one, it will drop your overall rating down a point. The third shows that to regain that point from that one bad review, 26 five star reviews are needed!   If you want to play around with review scores, this calculator can be found  here.

While you may think that after a bad review it would take one or two good reviews to cancel it out, you can see that it actually takes a great deal of positive reviews just to bring that back  Even if  a tutor had 30 regular students and assumed they all gave  5 stars that week (bringing the total of five stars to 356) the rating would jump from 4.9 to 4.907. So the tutor is still a 4.9 and those 30  five star reviews seem to have had no effect! So off they go to Cambly corner and complain!

To all the CamFam out there, let’s see less  CamDram on a Thursday and more of an appreciation of how the ratings actually work.  There is no secret or hidden rules, it’s just an average.

Why are ratings important

If you’ve ever bought something on Amazon you’ll know the importance of ratings. If you see a phone case with a review of 4 and another with a review of 4.9, you’ll instinctively look at the 4.9 first. It’s the same with students looking for a tutor, they’ll gravitate towards the higher ratings. Even Cambly recognises the importance of ratings and gives special attention to those over 4.9 with over 700 reviews (supertutors).  Supertutors were recently given extra minutes if they worked PH’s at the weekend, and while ‘normal’ tutors were also given extra minutes, the Supertutors were given more. Supertutors will also be given the chance to apply for  Cambly admin jobs, but this supertutor has failed three times so far, and has given up applying!!  See post here. 🙂

Improving your rating

It would seem to make sense that if your tutor rating is an average of class ratings, the way to improve that rating is to improve your classes.  I’ve already posted on how to be a better tutor and improve your classes, so while I wont repeat that, I will give you the link to the post here.

Until next time. Alice.

“The best way to explain it is to do it.”