I’ve been looking for a SAT prep program for my retake, and was very intrigued by Prepscholar’s 160-point improvement guarantee (1300-1460? Yes, please!). But I was wondering–what have other’s experiences been like? Specifically, if you got less than a 160-point improvement, were you actually able to get a refund?
Thanks!
In theory, you should be able to get a refund if you satisfy all of the requirements they list out. However, there has been a fair amount of controversy surrounding the company from them charging different prices based on your IP address (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1902498-was-all-set-to-get-prepscholar-and-price-changed-p3.html) to requiring official score reports from College Board despite no option to send them (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1827495-prepscholar-is-a-scam.html). Apparently their customer service is quite terrible and some people have reported being able to get refunds but many have not (even after giving them everything they request - PrepScholar just stops responding).
IMO, these guarantees are very difficult to get. You will have to meet all kinds of conditions and they will certainly not make it easy for you. Why would they? They lose money. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Read the fine print.
Check earlier threads here. They require an official score report, and College Board only sends those to colleges. There was a post from someone who somehow got the official report, went through all sorts of other hoops, and only got paid after posting here calling them frauds. So it is definitely not legitimate. Most people don’t improve that much and they make it almost impossible to get your money back.
Stay away at all costs. Tip from me to you.
Guaranteeing a score is very wrong in my opinion but I guess a marketing tool that companies use. I used to tutor a student in calculus and made sure I covered every single concept, trick etc. Sometimes I would even guess correctly what question would be on the test. Logically there would be NO way that the student could make a mistake only to come back with a lesser score because of something completely out of my control (a careless mistake, misread a number etc etc). I can not imagine guaranteeing a score for SAT.
If I thought the prep scholar material and practice would be good for me I might still consider them but I would not base my opinion on the guarantee.