PrepScholarReviews of prepscholar.com

Response from PrepScholarMar 17, 2026

Hi Brad, we’re sincerely sorry to hear about your experience. This is not the standard we aim to deliver. Regarding the practice test book, we ship the hard copy book containing the ACT practice tests after the 5-day trial period ends. The 5-day trial begins once the student submits their initial diagnostic test. This approach gives families a chance to evaluate the program before materials are sent. That said, we regret the inconvenience this has caused, and we’ve upgraded your order to faster shipping to minimize any delay. A tracking number has also been shared with you through your support ticket. In the meantime, your son can begin focused Reading practice right away through the Quiz Generator inside his program. He can select specific Reading skills and generate sets of 10 questions at a time, allowing him to target those areas even before the full-length test arrives. We also want to address the outreach issue. You should not have had to follow up multiple times without a timely response. We’re reviewing this internally, as we aim to provide replies within 2 hours on average, 24/7.

Response from PrepScholarOct 9, 2025

Hi Meg, we’re sorry to hear about your experience. We want to clarify a few things that may help both you and others reading this. PrepScholar is absolutely a customized program, but that customization is designed to optimally guide students to improve their score where it matters most and where it will make the biggest impact on their score. It begins with a detailed diagnostic test so your student starts at the right level in each of the 45 skills. From there, the program automatically adjusts difficulty based on performance. If your child was seeing easier questions, it’s because the system identified specific foundational skills that still needed practice before moving on to the harder material. This approach ensures that students truly master each concept instead of skipping over gaps that can cost points on test day. That said, students who want more control can use our Quiz Generator at any time to handpick skills and question counts. We also offer a risk-free 5-day trial, so families can explore everything — including diagnostic results and practice modules — before committing. If the program isn’t a fit, canceling within those first five days is quick and easy by emailing [email protected]. Finally, while tools like ChatGPT can be fun to explore, they’re not designed for accurate SAT practice (we’ve tested this ourselves!). Our questions, answers, and explanations are all written and reviewed by perfect scorers and expert instructors, ensuring content that’s reliable and true to the real exam. We’d be glad to review your student’s account and make sure everything is set up properly. Please feel free to reach out to us directly at [email protected]

Response from PrepScholarJul 17, 2025

Hi Jeff, thanks for your feedback, and we're genuinely sorry for the confusion and frustration you experienced. To clarify, your daughter wasn’t signed up for the wrong version—our SAT prep accounts include access to both the Digital and Paper SAT versions. Up until recently, some students still needed to retrieve information from their Paper SAT account, so we made both available under the same login. It looks like your daughter logged into the Paper SAT interface initially, and our support team quickly emailed to clarify and ensure she used the Digital SAT version instead. Unfortunately, it seems that email may have been missed, and shortly after, we received your request to cancel. Per our 5-day risk-free trial guarantee, we immediately canceled the trial and processed your refund in full. We understand the frustration of not having a phone support option. We’ve found that email allows us to offer 24/7 coverage and respond more efficiently to more families—our team replies within 1–2 hours on average, and always within 24 hours, including weekends and late nights. We appreciate you giving us a try and wish your daughter all the best on her SAT journey.

Response from PrepScholarJun 17, 2025

HI Harold, we’re sorry to hear your experience didn’t meet expectations. That’s never what we want for our students or families, and we appreciate you sharing your feedback. PrepScholar has helped thousands of high schoolers since 2013, with students seeing an average ACT score increase of 4–5 points over their prior official score. We couldn’t locate your account based on the name and details provided, so we can’t speak to the specific tutoring interaction you referenced. However, all of our tutors are trained to communicate their availability clearly—typically offering multiple days and times, with time zones stated upfront. If something fell short in that process, we’d like the chance to investigate and make things right. Please reach out to us at [email protected] so we can look into your case directly. As for our curriculum, many students and websites praise the quality and rigor of our materials for closely mirroring the ACT. You’re absolutely right that pacing is crucial for the test, which is why our lesson-based practice quizzes use a combined timer—helping students manage time across multiple questions just like on test day. The diagnostic test is structured differently: each question is individually timed so we can isolate specific skills and build a custom study plan. It’s not used to determine your score baseline for our point increase guarantee (that baseline is your previous official ACT score), nor does it influence package tier recommendations. Finally, we stand behind our 4+ Point Improvement Guarantee. If a student completes the program (i.e. reaching the last difficulty level in the online program) and doesn’t see that increase, we honor our terms with a refund for the online program and an equal number of free tutoring hours. We’d really like to make this right. Please reach out to us directly—we’re here to help. Warm regards, The PrepScholar Team

Response from PrepScholarApr 16, 2025

Vijata, we’re truly sorry to hear that your experience with PrepScholar didn’t go as hoped. We know how high the stakes are in the college admissions process, and we genuinely empathize with the disappointment you and your son must have felt. After carefully reviewing your student’s case, we’d like to respectfully share some context. From the beginning, our admissions team raised concerns about the college list, which you chose to self-curate and which was heavily focused on Ivy League and Top 15 schools. These programs, especially in engineering, turn away thousands of applicants each year with perfect GPAs and test scores. While your student had many strengths, his SAT score, grades, and extracurricular activities did not reach the level that typically distinguishes successful applicants at these colleges. Our counselors advised multiple times to rebalance the list and suggested also applying to programs where he’d have a higher chance of admission. Despite these recommendations, over 80% of the final list remained focused on reach schools. For context, a strategic college list should include 25–30% reach schools, 40–50% targets, and 25–30% safeties. We also recommended holding off on some early applications to allow more time for essay development, but several essays were ultimately submitted under tight timeframes. In addition, most target and safety school applications were handled independently, outside our support. Chantine and Daniel put in genuine care and effort, and truly wanted the best for your student. We’re proud that over 4 out of 5 PrepScholar students are admitted to one of their top-choice schools—including Ivy League and Top 15 programs—but we know how painful it is when things don’t go as hoped.

Response from PrepScholarJul 22, 2024

Hi Sari, we are sorry to hear about your experience with our program. At PrepScholar, we aim to help students make comprehensive progress across multiple sections, rather than focusing solely on mastering one topic immediately. This holistic approach has been shown to lead to greater SAT score improvements and reduce frustration. We also offer the flexibility to revisit individual past lessons or sections whenever you need to review them. Our question bank is developed by perfect SAT scorers who meticulously replicate the College Board's question and answer format. Many of our students praise the difficulty and rigor of our practice questions, which align closely with the actual SAT, often more accurately than other prep providers. We understand that our strategy may differ from some students' learning styles, which is why we offer a risk-free trial period for your convenience. This allows you to explore our full program and determine if it's the right fit for you before making a commitment. We invite you to please email [email protected] (Subject line: Attn Product Manager) so we can escalate your case and facilitate a cancelation of your trial if you wish. Thank you for your feedback. We continuously strive to improve our program and appreciate your input.

Response from PrepScholarDec 5, 2023

Hello, thank you for taking the time to leave a review. We're truly sorry to hear about your experience. Your feedback is incredibly important to us, and we'd greatly appreciate the opportunity to understand more about what specifically didn't help. Your insights will be invaluable for us to improve and enhance our test prep. Please reach out to our customer support team directly at [email protected] (attn: Jessica N.) so we can better assist you and work towards the best possible resolution. Again, we regret to hear you didn't have a positive experience, and we thank you for sharing your concerns.

Response from PrepScholarSep 19, 2023

Hi Ken, we're sorry to hear about your daughter's experience. We understand that those were not the results that you both were expecting. To provide clarification, we recommend that students spend "+/-" 40 hours of studying before their test because since the program is customized to students' weaknesses and difficulty level, some students may need more or less time to achieve the program's goal of mastering the 49 SAT skills. Regarding the 160-point improvement guarantee, we transparently state the condition of finishing the course on the terms that accompany every mention of the guarantee on our website (https://www.prepscholar.com/terms-of-service/#160-guarantee). Our guarantee is tied to the completion of the program because once a student demonstrates their proficiency on the program's quizzes, we have no doubt that they should be able to improve +160 points on the real test, and thus we're able to offer a money-back guarantee.