Hey guys, recently I have been searching for a prep course online to help me out with the Sat and I found this prep course by Prepscholar. I wondering whether or not to actually take their course. I think it’s reassuring that they have a refund policy available but I want to know you guys’ opinions on this. Should I take this course and are they going to really give me a refund if I don’t get more than a 240 point increase?
I’m wondering about this too. I’m really interested in taking this course. I hope someone answers your question because I’ve been curious also.
Yea, I think that we should a careful look at this prep course. It’s just that so many posts here on cc talk about how prep courses from big companies like Kaplan are just simply not that good so I just want some opinions on it since it’s much smaller compared to Kaplan. Looking at their website, do you have any thoughts on it so far?
bump
You may want to skim through this thread:
Say, post #2394 and a few pages before and after.
Thanks for the link, but are the parents saying that Prepscholar is good for learning content only? I was only able to find bits of information about the course
I’m a co-founder of PrepScholar and I want to be transparent about our policies.
Disclaimer: I'm of course part of the company, but I hope to give some information that will help you make decisions that are right for you.
We do have a 240 point guarantee. This guarantee requires a few things:
-you start the program with an official test score (PSAT or SAT), and you take the SAT after finishing the program. We really care about real test to real test improvement, since that’s what actually matters. We don’t use internal diagnostics, since there are too many test prep companies who artificially boost your improvement by administering hard tests at the beginning and easy tests at the end. If you don’t have an official starting score, unfortunately you aren’t eligible (although you might gain a lot from the program anyway)
-you complete our program, which means passing our lessons, and taking practice tests when they’re assigned to you. Passing a lesson means passing the quiz (which typically requires 90%+). You’re able to retake lessons if you don’t pass. There aren’t any tricks here - a quiz is a quiz. We have this in place because we feel it’s only fair to ask that students devote enough time to have a chance of making big improvements.
-we only guarantee up to a 2300 (in our eyes, going past that requires a bit of luck and is hard for you or us to control). So for example if you start with a 2100 and improve up to a 2320, you wouldn’t be eligible for the refund guarantee.
That’s it.
We don’t try to dodge the refund guarantee. We’ve refunded students who improved by 200 or 220 points, from real test to real test. They were still happy with their improvement, but they satisfied the terms, so we refunded them.
We think this is a fair guarantee. We want to help you improve as much as possible and will provide you with a program to guide your work.
But we ask that you meet us halfway - you should put in the effort and concentration needed to have a good shot at making a big improvement. As most people on CC will tell you, this is true whether you study by yourself or use a program like ours. If you plan to study for only 5 hours, it’s unlikely you’ll improve by 240 points, no matter what you do.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have more questions.
@Az1234 @southernbelle16
Hey Allen, thank you for replying! Sorry for being a little mistrustful but I just want to make sure that I get the most out of a prep course. I still have some more questions if you don’t mind answering them. Mainly, does your prep course lean towards a more content-based style to improve scores or are there strategies and tactics included that are included to help as well. For me, I take more importance with learning about strategies and tactics because there are already alot of resources out there to learn content.
Just a suggestion- sometimes an outcome is more important than the methods. If you were guaranteed to raise your score at least 240 points if you study at least 40 hours (outcome), do the methods really matter? The opportunity cost for studying 40 hours has a definite value compared to alternates with an undefined value.
@Az1234
We combine both strategies and content in our program, although what different people mean by strategy and content differs.
(This is kind of a long response but hopefully helps even people who aren’t thinking about using PrepScholar).
There are lots of layers to doing well on the SAT. At the lowest level is the fundamental knowledge - how a grammar rule works, math formulas for solid geometry. Above that is the skill to apply this knowledge and recognizing when to use which concepts for which questions - we still call this content, others may call this strategy. Above this are broader strategies, such as solving questions by plugging in the answer choices, or how to deal with running out of time on reading passages. Finally there are highest level skills on what to study and when, how to motivate yourself to study, how to reduce anxiety, and how to plan your testing schedule strategically.
Doing really well on the SAT requires mastery of each level above. In other words, your score is only as high as your weakest link.
Our program tries to address all of this. Most of your time is spent on learning content and skills - the first two levels above. We give you focused practice on individual concepts so that you learn the patterns behind test questions. For example, the SAT has typical tricks for disguising subject/verb agreement questions. Special to our program is our customization engine that diagnoses your strengths and weaknesses and creates a custom study plan.
To tackle the higher level layers, we also integrate the blue book practice tests into our program, and we also include strategy lessons that go over higher-level concepts. Our program also builds in features like progress reports and study reminders to help motivate students who need a little push.
It’s certainly possible to do really effective prep without a program, as many CC members have done. Typically this requires a great deal of self-insight and motivation to do well. We’ve created a full-service program that handles all of the levels above, so that students can focus on learning and spend less time worrying about what they should be working on and when.
We emphasize content because strategies can only take you so far - getting accustomed to the test and knowing a few tricks like plugging in the answers might increase your score by 50-100 points. This is why many students hit a ceiling after trying to study without thinking hard about where their weaknesses are. After this, in my experience with thousands of students, you nearly always need to build up your fundamental skills to start getting more answers right.
Hope this helps clarify some things - any other questions?
Thanks for replying again Allen! It’s good to hear that you guys researched so much about how to help students do well 
. Recently, I took my first SAT ever and I think that I did average on it. The thing is that I’m leaning more towards taking the ACT now after taking a look at how the questions look like on the official practice tests and seeing that you guys also have a prep course for the ACT. The way I put it, ACT questions are more like 2+2=4 while the questions on the SAT look more like 2x+5=4. You still get the same answers but the questions are more logic based on the SAT compared to the more knowledge based ones on the ACT. Just by looking at the questions alone, I have a funny feeling that I can actually do quite a bit better on the ACT instead. What are your opinions on this? Have you encountered any students that did better on more knowledge based questions? I also have some hesitations about the science section but I hope that with practice, the questions won’t be as daunting.
@Az1234
Whether to take the SAT or ACT is a good question and one a lot of students struggle with! We recently wrote a detailed guide to figuring this out here: http://blog.prepscholar.com/is-the-act-easier-than-the-sat
Here are the main points:
Pros for the ACT being ‘easier’:
-the ACT is more straightforward in how it asks questions
-ACT science is more about reasoning than hardcore science
-ACT doesn’t test difficult vocabulary like the SAT does
-ACT reading questions often feature ‘find the fact’ questions that are pretty straightforward
-colleges generally care about your ACT composite score, so you can ‘hide’ weaker sections in a composite score. There are limits to this.
Cons for the ACT:
-ACT math has more skills tested (trig, conic sections)
-ACT tends to have more time pressure - this was true of my personal experience when I took both tests recently
-ACT still has tricky bait wrong answer choices, just like the SAT
My suggestion to you is to take a full-length practice test for the ACT and compare your score to the SAT. The best way to compare them is to look at the schools you want to apply to. For example, your SAT score might be average for your target schools, but your ACT score might be above average. This post is already getting long so here’s a link on how to do this here: http://blog.prepscholar.com/what-is-a-good-act-score-a-bad-act-score-an-excellent-act-score
Most students tend to have comparable SAT and ACT scores, but you might be able to perform far better on one or the other. The only way to tell is to try taking a test!
@chengallen
Kindly explain What do you mean when you say 5 hours or 40 hours? Does this means that 5 hours of study per day or week? Similarly 40 hours of study per month or what?
I’m thinking about enrolling in prepscholar myself. I think the number of hours depends on you. For example, I’m planning to do an hour of prep each day throughout the summer which will add up to 40+ hours. Hopefully, this should help me increase my score more than a 100 points if I put in that much work. However, if someone only does 5 hours of work in total, it probably wont help them as much. It all depends on the person. If your committed, anything is possible.