Is Brainfuse a Scam? An Online Tutoring Company Reviewed

Brainfuse, found on Brainfuse.com, is an e-learning and tutoring platform that caters to two kinds of people: the students and the tutors. The income opportunity focuses on the tutors. 

The company focuses on students belonging to 3rd grade and up to the 12th grade. 

They also offer higher education and career services to students from around the USA. 

The company was founde by Alex Sztuden in New York City, NY in 1999. 

His resume is just as impressive, which you can easily view on his LinkedIn profile. 

Before creating Brainfuse, Sztuden was an attorney for Baker & McKenzie for 3 years. He attended Columbian Law School and became an Editorial member of the Columbian Law Review and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. 

With credentials like that, it’s no wonder why Brainfuse has been around for more than a decade now.

You can join Brainfuse as a student or a tutor, but you will only make money if you sign up for the latter.

You’ll be required to submit your resume, in PDF format, through their site. If they consider you, you’ll be emailed to discuss the job. You’ll also be required to take the Brainfuse Tutor quiz before you can proceed with the application. These quizzes will depend on the subject that you’re applying for. You can also apply for multiple subjects, but you’ll have to take the corresponding quiz. 

Here are some of the subjects that Brainfuse’s offers:

1. Math

2. English

3. Writing

4. Chemistry

5. Physics

Unlike most tutoring companies, Brainfuse allows you to retake the tests in case you fail it. You don’t need to request to retake it because the test results show up automatically. 

Assuming that you pass the tests, you’ll then go through their training before you can start the actual tutoring process. 

What Hours Can You Work on BrainFuse?

Brainfuse hires you an independent freelancer and not as an employee, so don’t expect any employee benefits when you’re hired here. 

Typical of any freelancing job, you get to decide what hours you want to work on, and how many hours you want to work. 

With that being said, your hours are only flexible to a point when there are tutoring jobs. You may have to adjust your work hours if you need more students in your session. 

What’s The Typical Day of a Brainfuse Tutor?

Your day as a Brainfuse tutor starts off with you logging into your account and checking whether or not you have students to tutor on. 

If you do find students to tutor, you’ll then be taken to a dynamic platform that allows you and the student to interact. It also comes with a writing lab that allows you to review student documents and consult with them one-on-one. 

This is how their platform works from a tutor’s perspective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP1_H-jDM_E&feature=emb_title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J-MYIxkndw&feature=emb_title

How Much Does Brainfuse Pay?

All right, now comes the main topic for this article. How much are you getting paid for tutoring students on Brainfuse? 

All classes are about one-hour long, and tutors are earning $11 to $13 reportedly per session. Your payment is deposited every 2 weeks through PayPal or direct deposit. 

Brainfuse Basic Requirements

Here’s the list of requirements to apply for the Brainfuse tutoring position: 

1. Must be a resident of the USA

2. Must agree to do a background check

3. Must have a Bachelor’s degree at the minimum

Two things to note here. 

There are some third-party sites mentioning that tutors need to have a Master’s degree in order to be considered. But upon checking Brainfuse’s official site, there’s no mention of anything about having a Master’s degree. 

Note that it might take some time before your application can be considered, so if you’re in a rush to land a job, then this might not be it for you.

#1 Tutors Can Get Fired For Stupid Reasons

Just like the online tutoring programs that we’ve reviewed, Brainfuse doesn’t really favor their tutors in terms of handling disputes. Most of the time, Brainfuse tutors can get fired for the stupidest reason, such as mispelling a single word on group chat or spending an “unreasonable amount of time” teaching a student. 

Of course, there’s going to be two sides of the story, but if it just so happens that Brainfuse favors students’ feedback more than tutors, then this is cause for concern. 

#2 Students Entering The Wrong Class

We don’t know if it’s the platform itself that’s having this problem or it’s being caused by other things. But there are complaints about tutors claiming to have been assigned the wrong class. This is a big deal because if you refuse to teach a class, you’ll be penalized until you get removed from the program.

You can get in touch with support to rectify this mistake, or take the risk and teach the class yourself. This would lead us to complaint #1, which would be Brainfuse arbitrarily removing you just because. 

#3 More Work Doesn't Mean More Money

On the account of earning $10 to $13 per session, that’s not entirely based on students. Rather, it’s for all the students book for that day. So if you think that you’re earning $50 per hour because of tutoring 5 students in one session, you thought wrong.

Brainfuse is a legitimate online tutoring platform with a decent income opportunity. People are free to try it if they want to make a few bucks online. 

However, we do want to address these concerns: 

1. We have a feeling that Brainfuse favors students’ side more in a dispute than tutors, so in case you get a complaint from your students, there’s a chance you’ll be removed from the program. 

2. There’s also a system-wide glitch where it may assign you to the wrong class. If you refuse to teach that class, you will be penalized. And we know how Brainfuse’s platform is when it comes to handling tutor errors. 

We would like to call on those who have experience working with Brainfuse to verify these errors (whether or not they actually happen) and leave a comment on this article.