Has anybody used the online tutor service “Prep Scholar” and had any success with it (did your score improve a lot)?
I’ve recently purchased it like 3 weeks ago. I’ve never taken the SAT (I have taken the PSAT, though), and haven’t taken many practice tests so I was not really familiar with the layout of the test. So, that meant that I was not familiar with how questions would look like (especially for CR) so it made certain lessons almost obsolete. For example, one lesson would talk about how to tackle “function” questions on CR, but I had no idea what that was so I was not able to benefit from the lesson as much I could have.
After every lesson, you take a quiz. If you don’t do so well on the quiz, you’ll do the lesson pertaining to the quiz at a later date. However, they most of the time don’t really change questions so you end up doing the same questions. They do advise you redo the questions as if you never saw them, but that is extremely hard. This aspect was not very helpful for me, especially for CR. It was, though, for M and W.
For math, I did find their lessons helpful in solving certain math problems. Repetition definitely helped when doing the more complex problems. I just wish they had more problems to do. Theres a simple fix for this by just buying a math prep book.
For writing, I found this both not helpful and not helpful. I found it not helpful because they don’t directly tell you the grammar concepts that you need to know. Because of this, you may miss some concepts. I think this may be because of how I scored on the diagnostics test, though. Like, I didn’t receive any lessons on redundancy or superlatives and comparatives. I think it would be better to learn these grammar rules from the grammar workbook by Erica Meltzer, which I used. The good part about this is that I was able to apply what I learned from Meltzer into the lessons rather easily so the lessons were easier and I felt like I truly was learning something
I probably would have gotten more out of it if I didn’t cram all the lessons and achieve mastery in 3 weeks.
Note: I typed this on the fly so if there is confusion somewhere, feel free to ask
@OptimisticLad Thanks for your input! Anybody else have any personal stories?
I have been using PrepScholar. It’s good for diagnosing your strengths and weaknesses, as well as the essay scoring you receive from experts. The math questions did challenge me, and I was able to learn some strategies from them. However, the lack of new questions on quizzes is a problem. But like OptimisticLad said, you can get prep books to apply those concepts. I did see a lot of score improvement, but that’s probably because I didn’t use just PrepScholar. I also used Shaan Patel’s 2400 in 7 Steps Book, which was helpful in that it gave me a schedule to follow, and his vocab collection is very good as well. Although PrepScholar has it’s own course and Shaan Patel’s book has it’s own course, I have been working hard in following both SAT prep schedules, and I must say it has paid off. My score is now in the upper 2200s and lower 2300s range, and I think I can improve a little more.
I do reccomend PrepScholar, but keep in mind that just PrepScholar most likely won’t be enough (although it does depend on the person). What Optimistic Lad said is true that their lessons won’t be as thoroguh- meaning they’ll present some general instruction, and then you take the quiz. For me, that’s fine, though since I can think things through on my own that way. Plus, when they repeat a lesson, I do take notes on the problems I missed, but by the time the new lesson comes up in the schedule, I usually forget the answer, so I inevitably rework the problem. The most helpful thing with PrepScholar for me has been essay feedback and math problems, as well as several writing strategies. The Critical reading section itself has been hard for me to improve no matter what prep course I use, so I won’t speak for that.
Another issue is that I had already purchased CollegeBoard’s Blue Book when I started PrepScholar, so when they assigned me the first 3 practice tests in the Blue Book, I think I got slightly higher scores because I had already seen those tests a while back. I started working backwards in the BlueBook because I needed the practice tests for Shaan Patel’s course, and left the beginning tests for PrepScholar. It’s good that the company uses official tests, though. (If you don’t already have it, PrepScholar gives you the Blue Book for free)
You can always do their 1 week free trial. I don’t think you should go for the tutoring package though if you decide to do PrepScholar, because in my opinion the 8 hours of tutoring isn’t quite worth the money, plus their explanations to quiz problems are excellent.
All in all, supplement PrepScholar with other stuff like Shaan Patel’s 2400 book. I have taken about 14 practice tests so far, and have seen great improvement. I attribute most of my improvement to PrepScholar + Shaan Patel’s 2400 book + Dr. John Chung’s SAT math book.
Sorry for the super long response 