Care.com presents: The 2017 college tutors bracket

Good news, sports fans — March Madness is finally upon us!

In a few short weeks, one lucky team will have its “One Shining Moment” as it cuts down the nets under a sea of confetti in Phoenix. And as we watch these talented athletes battle it out on the court, we also wanted to take a moment to shine a spotlight on another group of all-star students at these schools — the tutors!

Care.com has ranked the N.C.A.A.’s top 64 colleges based on where tutors are scoring the best jobs. In order to do this, we designed a bracket-style competition that pitted all of this year’s tourney schools against one another to determine which ones give their tutors the best opportunity to make bank.

For our epic “Battle of the Brains,” Care.com analysts created a “Tutoring Rank” using three primary metrics:

The average hourly rate for tutors attending each N.C.A.A. school participating in the 2017 March Madness tournament;
The average response rate to job applications submitted by those tutors; and,
The average premium earned compared to typical tutoring rates within a 10-mile radius of each university.

Using each school’s Tutoring Rank, along with their seeds in the March Madness Tournament bracket, we determined which school would win each match-up until a Tutoring Champion had been crowned.

The Battle of the Brains Finalists

So, how did our book-smart bracket play out?

In our version of the “Final Four,” we have Princeton’s tutors leading the charge in the West — there, they can make an astonishing $19.66 an hour.

In the East, Duke emerged as the highest scorer both on and off the court. There, Blue Devil tutors can pull in an average of $15.00 an hour.

In the South, we have the University of Dayton’s tutors reigning supreme. Even though their average hourly rate of $12.57 lags behind the rest of the Final Four, Flyer tutors have the highest response rates to their applications — which means they have a higher likelihood of getting a job interview.

Finally, head on over to the Midwest and you’ll find Creighton University’s tutors absolutely dominating the paper — they’re making five percent more than competitors at $13.77 an hour. Creighton tutors also come in second place when it comes to the best response rates to job applications.

But in the end, there can only be one…

The Championship Round

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! It’s the Battle of the Brains Championship Round.

The teams: Princeton University and Creighton University.

Both schools started off ready to dominate, but the Tiger Tutors slowed down the ‘Jays tempo with their unbeatable full court press: their average hourly rates. This, paired with Princeton’s higher Tutoring Rank, was the one-two blow the Tigers needed to knock the ‘Jays out of contention and clinch the championship title.

Want to know how your school stacked up on our bracket? Take a look:

If you want to see how each school stacked up in terms of Tutoring Ranks and hourly rates, take a look at the data table below.

(And if you’re a tutor at one of these schools, you can click on your school’s name to check out any open jobs in your area!)

Tutoring Rank	College Name	Hourly Rate
1	Princeton University	$19.66
2	Bucknell University	$15.78
3	Creighton University	$13.77
4	University of Dayton	$12.57
5	Gonzaga University	$12.43
6	Duke University	$15.00
7	Southern Methodist University	$15.57
8	Oklahoma State University – Stillwater	$10.93
9	University of Maryland – College Park	$15.92
10	University of Miami – Coral Gables	$15.90
11	University of Notre Dame	$13.17
12	University of Michigan – Ann Arbor	$13.94
13	Michigan State University	$11.98
14	Iona College	$16.60
15	Saint Marys College of California	$13.27
16	University of California – Los Angeles	$16.26
17	University of Southern California	$14.76
18	Villanova University	$14.26
19	Marquette University	$12.47
20	University of Wisconsin – Madison	$11.91
21	University of Oregon	$11.45
22	Vanderbilt University	$13.49
23	Northwestern University	$14.55
24	University of Vermont	$12.79
25	Xavier University	$12.25
26	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	$12.12
27	University of Arkansas – Fayetteville	$11.15
28	West Virginia University	$11.28
29	Iowa State University	$10.83
30	University of Kansas	$11.55
31	University of North Dakota	$10.30
32	University of South Carolina – Columbia	$11.94
33	Florida Gulf Coast University	$13.88
34	Baylor University	$11.84
35	University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill	$12.97
36	University of North Carolina	$13.29
37	University of Cincinnati – Cincinnati	$12.30
38	University of Minnesota – Minneapolis	$11.95
39	Purdue University – West Lafayette	$11.30
40	Kansas State University	$11.05
41	South Dakota State University	$9.79
42	Virginia Commonwealth University	$12.55
43	University of Florida	$11.92
44	University of California – Davis	$12.86
45	East Tennessee State University	$11.25
46	Seton Hall University	$14.84
47	Kent State University – Kent	$12.14
48	University of Arizona	$11.64
49	University of Louisville	$11.30
50	University of Nevada – Reno	$11.25
51	Butler University	$11.76
52	Winthrop University	$11.77
53	University of Kentucky	$11.04
54	University of Virginia	$14.71
55	Middle Tennessee State University	$11.35
56	Florida State University	$11.16
57	Mount Saint Mary College	$14.22
58	New Mexico State University – Las Cruces	$10.97
59	Jacksonville State University	$10.42
60	Northern Kentucky University	$11.03
61	Wichita State University	$10.27
62	University of Rhode Island	$13.90
63	Texas Southern University	$12.70
64	Troy University – Troy	$10.35

Methodology

Care.com analysts created tutoring scores based on profiles of tutors listed on Care.com in 2016, who were attending each college.

Each college was ranked on three tutoring categories:

Average hourly rate for tutoring
Average response rate to job applications
Average premium over tutoring rates within a 10-mile radius.

The final “Tutoring Rank” combines these three measures with equal weighting. The schools with the highest tutoring scores are the places where tutors have the best wages, overall and relative to others in their area, and are most likely to get an interview when they apply for jobs.