The Princeton Review Teacher Interview Questions
& Process

Got wind of this gig from a buddy (score for her, she snagged a referral bonus!). They kicked things off with a quick chat, but the main event was demonstrating something – anything, really – to the other candidates and the hiring folks. I went with showing them how to fold an origami figure; others did stuff like simple cooking steps or the right way to swing a tennis racket. After that, we had a brief quiz (10 questions max) on the subject we just taught. Mine was ACT-style questions.

First, you'll give a non-academic teaching presentation to other interviewees. Pick a unique topic (like slime, playing catch phrase, making banana bread, or how to make people like you) and teach for 5-10 minutes. They're checking your teaching style and personality, looking for someone exciting and competent. If they like that, you'll attend a weekend-long intensive class where they'll teach you the subject you'll instruct. This is also part of the interview, and they might decide not to hire you. You'll teach about 5 lessons, learn the material, and need to be super charismatic and energetic with high school kids learning test-taking skills for hours, using the board to illustrate your points.

The recruiter started with some small talk and then asked me two questions. After that, they quickly went over the job details and how things work. I was pretty surprised by how fast they spoke, especially since they said they had teaching experience. You'd think someone with teaching experience would know that talking too fast makes it hard to understand. It felt like the recruiter had already made up their mind about not moving my application forward after those first two questions. They just seemed to want to get it over with, which is why they were rushing. I thought it was unprofessional and disrespectful, and honestly, it felt like a reflection of how The Princeton Review operates. It seems like they don't really see instructors as people deserving of respect, but more like tools they can just use and discard. You can see this in some of their practices, which feel a bit sneaky and exploitative. For instance, the job description doesn't mention that instructors get paid a lower hourly rate during training than what's advertised. They only drop that detail during the interview, after you've already put in a lot of time studying for the exam and preparing for the call. Plus, they have this whole bidding system where instructors have to put in a bid for the schedule and then just hope they get picked. It's like a setup that forces people to compete against each other for limited opportunities. This whole setup shows that The Princeton Review isn't focused on giving instructors any kind of stability or security. They're all about getting the most they can out of instructors without giving back much in return.