<p>The</a> Associated Press: SAT prep company stops claiming 255-point boost </p>
<p>"The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which examines accuracy in advertising, announced May 12 that The Princeton Review would 'voluntarily discontinue certain advertising claims, following a challenge by Kaplan, Inc., a competing test-preparation service.'"</p>
<p>Right after I get my non-returnable copy of PR’s Cracking the SAT…</p>
<p>Silly PR. Gave them 400 bucks, and all they did was point out the obvious and give me the easiest diagnostic SAT they had to make me feel better about myself.</p>
<p>Insulting my intelligence…</p>
<p>
*I definitely agree. I self-studied using only my HSchool library’s resources and saw an increase of more than 250 points of improvement by simply studying with these books. With guidance from a professional, it’s possible I could have improved even better.</p>
<p>Wow, Whartonite101, advertise much?</p>
<p>^ It’s also nice to know that the things taught in an SAT prep class can be learned for less than $21 from the College Board Blue Book.</p>
<p>^ Or for free (online).</p>
<p>oh,no and i just signed up for the course…
oh well.</p>
<p>Hey, 2400er here. I took a Princeton Review course and I actually found it somewhat helpful at organizing everything on the test and learning the system of the SAT (You may say the SAT is worthless as an evaluation method or a tool of learning, but it can certainly help teach someone how to understand a system, formulate a strategy of attack, and defeat it. I also find the verbal section quite instructive for quickly grasping the tone and ideas of a text now that I am in college, although it was on a somewhat basic level. The biggest thing I learned was to empathize with - to almost become - the author. Doing that allowed me to approach the passages much more efficiently.)</p>
<p>Although I was consistently scoring higher on my PR practice tests than my instructor’s purported scores (he was very liberal sharing information with us), I found it rather instructive correcting his mistakes, which were many during his lectures on the math section. He was inefficient at solving problems and sometimes had to pause to get his bearings. It was somewhat ironic having to explain things to the class (about 4 other kids), but hey - once you teach something, it doesn’t leave you easily.</p>
<p>I had a PR tutor, and my score on practice tests published by CB went from a 1850 to 2210, a 360 point increase. Though maybe the course is different…</p>
<p>just do practice tests and learn stuff on your own! and spam this forum with questions so that nice people may help you learn :)</p>
<p>I have had an overall score increase of about 620 points. I used one of these services and had a private tutor which set my family back about $50/ hr(the final bill was astronomical, i have taken college courses over the summer and spent less!) I don’t exactly think that paying outrageous fees is neccisary however. I feel that a tutor can only do so much and that beyond that one must coach themself. I would only attribute about 250 points to my tutor and the rest to the hard work and determination which I posses.</p>
<p>^ can’t even spell necessary close to correctly</p>
<p>
I’m usually the last to call someone out on spelling errors, but you actually raise a very, very interesting point.</p>
<p>I took a course with a private tutor for 40 hrs. My score improved a bit, but I still had to put in a looot of hours on my own. I probably would have had the same score increase had I spent those 40 hours studying on my own… and saved over 1000 dollars.
What it did give me, however, is some peace of mind because I had a knowledgeable person telling me about the test.</p>
<p>Bottom line, if you are extremely insecure or lazy, then take a course. Do remember that even this on its own is not enough to get a substantial score increase.</p>