So there are a lot of SAT and ACT test prep companies out there. They all claim to be THE BEST, have THE BEST guarantees, instructors, results, etc, etc. But what’s a high school student to do? Spend lots of monies on prep packages? Go it alone with a review book and a dim fluorescent light, holed up in the library stacks? I figured it would be helpful to compare the various services based on cost, results, user-friendliness, effectiveness, etc.
These are some that I’ve already heard about:
PrepScholar
Prep Expert
Kaplan
Princeton Review
College Vine
Do you know of any other companies? What is your ranking/opinion of those listed above?
Disclaimer: I have no personal experiences with these companies or the tests themselves…so I’m not the person to ask. Also, the purpose of this thread is to help future test-takers decide what is best for them in terms of preparation.
UWorld has an SAT prep. I haven’t used all of those other test preps. I personally really like it. They have very comprehensive explanations for every question. They offer free 30 day access, and every other option for longer access is less than $100. So I would say it’s a very reasonable price for what they offer. There isn’t a person that you connect with, so you have to be self-motivated. However, it is my favorite test prep out of the ones I’ve used.
I have about 60 hours of SAT practice using prepscholar. From what I see, the number one complaint is bad customer service. I’ve only had to contact them on two occasions. In one instance, they got back to me promptly. The second time I contacted they did not respond. I’ve also heard that people have trouble getting their money back for their free trial and their 160 point improvement guarantee. However, neither of those issues are the main problems that I have with the program. My problem is that parts of the program feel rushed. There are plenty of typos through out the lessons and the practice questions that follow. While explanations to practice questions are usually thorough, some times (often enough that it becomes annoying) you will only get about three sentences explaining why a right answer is right and why a wrong answer is wrong. The lesson also do not always prepare you enough for the quizzes, meaning that you have to learn from the answer explanations if you don’t know something. This may not seem like a big deal, but to get the 160 point guarantee, you have to complete every lesson and get a certain score on each quiz. It makes it difficult to score well on the quizzes of you do not know how to do some of the problems.
The software is also very buggy. My hours did not log every so often, so sometimes I had trouble keeping track of how long I studied. Sometimes images did not load. But the worst thing about the software was that it sometimes did not register my answers on the practice quizzes. What would happen is I would choose an answer option, click “submit answer,” and even if I was right, my answer was not counted.
Over all I would give the program a 5/10. I feel like I should be getting more for my money (esspecially since you can only use the program for 1 year), but it gave good information, strategies, and made studying convenient.
I took an SAT class for my past SAT and using UWorld so far for my next one has already cleared up some subjects for me that I didn’t understand in the past. I just like working at my own rate and the explanation button lets me break things down if I need to.