The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of high performing middle school
students in Korean, English, and Mathematics, from the perspective of the dependency of
private-tutoring. The variables are the time and cost of private tutoring, the personal background
variables(socio-economic status, parental support of education, perceived classroom activities,
perceived teachers\' knowledge and passion, teacher efficacy), and the individual student
variables(time to study, self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, cognitive strategies, and test stress).
For this purpose, cluster analysis, ANOVA, and Scheffé post-hoc analysis were conducted and
three to five clustered were developed. The results showed that the highest dependency on private
tutoring, that is the highest in time and cost of private tutoring, does not guarantee the highest
scores. Moreover, students’ self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, cognitive strategies, parental support
of education, perceived classroom activities, perceived teachers\' knowledge and passion are
important factors because students with high level of these variables showed high performance,
regardless of the dependency on private tutoring. The implications of the study and follow-up
studies were discussed.