Gold Seal Ground SchoolsReviews of groundschool.com

Great online ground school for instrument rating airplane! Scored 98% on my written!

TLDR: I was able to get through this GS in a few days, and passed my PPL written with an 83% my first try. Full review: I used gold seal to prep for my PPL written test. I compared several different options from all the names you’ve heard about by now, looked at their websites and social media, looked at reviews from students, the whole deal. I narrowed it down to just three- Pilot institute, Kings, and Gold Seal. I chose Gold Seal because I was able to try 20% of what they offered before making a financial commitment to it. From the 20% of the free material I was able to make a good conclusion on if their program was the teaching style that worked for me, and that 20% was logged as instruction so I didn’t need to do it twice. I don’t know if the other programs would have somehow been better (I doubt it) because I wasn’t able (or wasn’t aware that I was able) to try them out. I started Gold Seal with 0hrs of flight instruction in my log book, finished it before and passed my written by the time I had 2hrs logged. It’s kinda fun to surprise your CFI with how far ahead you are and it definitely accelerates your ability progress towards PPL when you have the base knowledge already. I know that not everyone learns the same, so I’ll try to explain what I liked about Gold Seal’s style- With these guys they don’t just instruct on rote memorization, they actually explain why things are the way they are. I think that is the best way to learn because if you don’t know why you need to know it the FAA will try to trip you up with the wording of their questions. Knowing the “why” or “how” something works the way it does gives you the tools to think critically when presented with the question on the written and it gives you the ability to respond to situations when you face them in the real world. Besides that, if you could just memorize the information, why would you throw down a few hundred bucks on a ground school when you could just as easily read the $20 book? And that leads to another reason this course is good: they don’t just teach the test. It wouldn’t be difficult for them to drill you on the test subjects until you get the right answers ingrained in your head, but that won’t help you when it really counts- in the air. And there’s a bit of material here that goes beyond the scope of the written test that is so critical to know I’m surprised that the FAA doesn’t test you on it. Now I know that some of these programs have reviews where people say “I got 95% on my written using whoever” and I discussed that with my CFI when I came back with an 83%. My CFI said that, in his experience, people that score super high on the test don’t necessarily have a functional grasp on the information. It’s the difference between book smart and street smart. You don’t want to be completely clueless by any means and getting a good score is a good thing, but scoring the questions you actually hold the knowledge to answer helps your CFI identify what you need to work on because you get a print out with the areas you answered incorrectly when you complete the exam. Not to say that reviews where people brag about their high score have no value, just maybe take those with a grain of salt. Also set good expectations- you might not learn all the answers and information from the video. Gold Seal does have resources to allow you to ask questions when you need more clarity, although I didn’t utilize them myself. I also did extra study on YouTube, listening to mock oral exams and explanations of the proper use of a whiz wheel. Overall, great program, would recommend.

I was very happy with Gold Seal! The 3D animations were very helpful, as were the practice quizzes and tests. There were a few subjects that seemed a tad minimal on explanation and a few quiz questions that weren't clear to me BUT the Gold Seal staff was quick to provide clarification as well as actually re-worded a couple questions in the course to make them more clear. This makes the student feel like part of the team, and they were so pleasant and helpful, as well as always available for chat or a phone call to help out! I scored a 93 and was happy with that!

There is no better online ground school. Hands Down. I aced my written exam after using their program. I plan to use them for every available course that I need to complete in the future. The lessons are intuitive, keep you involved, and you never get bored. Its the only ground school out there that feels modern and fresh, every other option is archaic compared to this. Absolutely loved it!

Not being English my first language gold seal made everything super easy, i got to practice a lot before presenting my written, gold seal also have a FB group where they are super active and helpful .

I was trying to save a little money early on but I was having trouble keeping pace between reading countless books and my flight time so I switched over to Gold Seal and very quickly caught up and scored a 98 on my first attempt on the FAA written for PPL. I cannot recommend Gold Seal enough, it's 100% worth it.

information was presented in a clear and concise way that was easy to understand and remember.

I have bought and used almost every ground school over the years. I use Gold Seal as the exclusive online ground school for our flight school, Fly River City in Jax FL. 100% of our students have definitively passed their written exams and check rides using Gold Seal in conjunction with our instructors. Russel is always a phone call away. Informative, interactive, intuitive! High quality all the way. No doubt Gold Seal is the Gold Standard.