<p>I recently went to an SAT Test Prep Company in the Houston/Sugar Land area which I won't name. It was fairly good, though I always felt like they seriously rigged their three diagnostic tests. These three tests were taking before, in the middle, and at the end of the course, and I steadily improved with each one. It was a 6-week course.</p>
<p>The thing is, I barely listened in any of the classes. I also never did required homework, which was 30 minutes a day with one section of one test from the Blue Book (I barely touched it and the company's prep book). Do companies rig diagnostic tests? These were all actual SATs they said and seemed like it.</p>
<p>Every practice test not released by CollegeBoard is rigged…</p>
<p>Diagnostic tests are usually rigged because they want to make it look like you improved by the end of the program, or make you feel like you need prep.</p>
<p>Hey, is this the guy who wrote the advice for all the WHAP prep books on Amazon? I basically based my WHAP purchases last year on those reviews! I still got all three and what you said was totally true.</p>
<p>Prep companies will never be able to please everyone. Fwiw, the opinions about the performance of Mr. Israni are usually pretty positive. </p>
<p>The method of using an internally-developed test that tends to be harder is pretty much standard among all test companies. However, the bigger question should be about the following:</p>
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<p>What was your reason for not listening to the class or ignoring the homework requirements? Just curious. :)</p>
<p>Mom made me take the course during my freshman summer year. I didn’t understand how important this test would be, but it was mostly because I was lazy. They also gave us a vocab list which now I look at it, is pretty helpful, but I didn’t touch it either back then.</p>
<p>However, Testmasters’ writing section was AMAZING and I loved how they provided BB solutions in their prep book. If I were to recommend Testmasters, it would be mostly for the prep book’s answers and guide to writing the essay. I didn’t really find their other strategies too revolutionary or make me go “Wow!”</p>
<p>Although my PSAT score was within the range of my last diagnostic test (203 vs 2080), I still am very surprised that I, along with everyone else, had steady improvement from the 1st (1610), to the 2nd(1920), to the 3rd(2080) test, and I know that there were other people who shared the same homework habits as I did. My friend did the homework and scored a 2110 on 3rd test I think.</p>
<p>i scored a 235 on my PSAT as a sophomore and a 227 as a junior.</p>
<p>on my first diagnostic i scored a 2000. I checked my answers and found that at least 5 answers which I had correct according to the answer key were marked wrong. in reality my score should’ve been 2100+, which probably would have been too high for them to fulfill my guaranteed score increase of 300.</p>
<p>my second diagnostic test i got something like a 2190, i then stopped going to testmasters because i had to go to a camp for the rest of summer. never again did i do any sat prep except for some practice tests and the night before the sat read the top 100 sat vocab words, and i scored a 2350. i’m pretty sure the 4 or 5 courses i actually went to did not cumulatively increase my score by 350 points… lol</p>
<p>The way Testmasters reports the score is how it is skewed. The collegeboard SAT blue book gives you a range of scores, say 650-750 for a particular raw score and Testmasters reports the worst possible score at the diagnostic test. Later they report the best possible score. Your score can magically improve with no change at all in your actual ‘raw’ answers.</p>