keywords tutoring, tutors, math tutoring, sat prep, etc. all seem to be in the 2-3 range for spots 3-4 is this normal?
Not a market I've advertised in, but it doesn't sound unreasonable. What sort of profit would you make from somebody who signed up? Their lifetime value, plus the potential new business from word-of-mouth would make a conversion quite valuable, I'd guess. Multiply that by your conversion rate, and you get the value of a click. It's not that surprising that people will be willing to pay that sort of price. THAT SAID... What's your minimum bid? This may give you some small insight into your ranking quality score - the more relevant Google thinks that your site/advert is, the less you have to pay to appear in 3rd position.
Yes, certain keywords are like that - especially when there's a lot of money in SAT Prep courses for the companies advertising ($500-$2k price points for some of those companies).
one other thing to consider is location. if you offer tutoring only in philadelphia then you might want to focus on local search PPC not adwords in general