Each case study is based on real students who studied with PrepScholar SAT Prep. Names have been changed to protect student privacy.

Neal Patel is a top student in his high school. He regularly scores A’s in his classes, takes AP courses, and is already getting a 1320 on his SAT. Neal is self-motivated and willing to put in time to study. However, he’s not sure about the best way to push his score past the 1400 mark.

Neal was considering studying by himself – after all, he’s good at it and self-motivated enough to put in the hours. His mother realized, however, that for the competitive colleges Neal wants to apply to, every last advantage matters. If Neal could even get 40 extra points due to a fantastic program, it would be worth it. 

For this reason, Neal and his mother together choose PrepScholar Complete plus Tutoring. They want the best of both worlds – a complete online prep program that gives him thousands of tough, realistic practice problems, as well as a top-scoring tutor who can give customized strategies based on his specific problems.

When Neal begins taking online lessons from the program, he’s surprised at how well it customizes to him. In the past, Neal was used to courses that taught to the lowest common denominator or to the average student, often boring him and wasting his time. PrepScholar diagnoses Neal immediately as high skill and gives him challenging lessons. He works only on practice questions that are hard and at his level so that he is pushed to get better. Neal is not only engaged, but also learning.

We Tailor Content to You

Nothing is more frustrating for high-performing students than wasting time studying things they already know. This doesn’t improve their score, so it’s simply time wasted. Few prep methods customize the course for students, but PrepScholar is different.

PrepScholar tests you at the start of the course with a diagnostic. Then, based on your performance, we assign you lessons appropriate for your current skill level – if you answer almost every question correctly, you’re going to get the most advanced lessons and practice questions. Beyond what competitors do, PrepScholar also continues to update your skills and lessons based on your progress over time.

More than just hard questions, Neal likes that the strategies assigned to him are geared towards top scorers like him. Neal has been frustrated by some other books and courses in the past that gave him basic strategies for students scoring at a 1000, like skipping difficult questions. Neal is scoring well enough that skipping of any sort is a mistake. What he needs to do is find out how to do the questions faster and with fewer careless mistakes. Neal receives custom strategies created by SAT full scorers, such as how to reduce careless mistakes and study vocab effectively to get the final remaining points.

Advanced Strategies

The bottom line is that jumping from 1300 to 1500 is hard. It’s a much different problem from jumping from 1000 to 1200. We give you the tools to make the jump you need. Advanced students get advanced strategies designed for top students. You’re learning from the best – after all, we scored 1600’s on our SATs. We’ve given you the best strategies that worked for ourselves and hundreds of other high-performing students.

When Neal starts the 1-on-1 tutoring, he finds it crucially helpful. PrepScholar tutors do more than just solve problems with the student; we detect patterns in student thinking and fix them. His tutor Laura finds that Neal understands the basic math concepts, but he’s having serious trouble with complicated mathematical questions that require a series of logical steps to get to the right answer. Laura gives Neal a cognitive framework to break down what the question is asking and use the question data to figure out each intermediate step. With practice, Neal is able to attack math problems like never before.

For part of his tutoring, Neal also works with Managing Tutor Fred Zhang on college application strategy. Fred graduated from Harvard, which is Neal’s target school. Neal is surprised to find out from Fred that Harvard looks especially positively on one particular part of his application, and Neal intends to work on that part even more in the future. Neal also receives critical advice on how to handle letters of recommendation, the personal statement, and activities to get the best possible chance of getting into Harvard.

High-Powered Tutoring

PrepScholar tutoring is not just normal tutoring. 1-on-1 tutoring with a 99th percentile scorer who has won teaching awards is only the start. We also make our time as efficient as possible. Because we provide tutoring in fixed hour packages, our tutors are not rewarded for billing more hours to you. Instead, they’re rewarded based on performance – your performance. As a result, our tutor doesn’t sit quietly and watch you do problems. Your tutor studies the progress you’ve made on the online prep program, prepares a comprehensive lesson plan, and gets you the most progress possible in every tutoring session.

Neal remarks:

“Of course I could have improved on my own or with another tutor. But how much PrepScholar is a good fit for high scorers is amazing. It’s clear they designed the course so that top scorers can close the gap to a perfect score.”

Result:

Neal practices over 40 hours with PrepScholar for the June 2017 SAT, and boosts his score a whole 180 points to 1500. Now Neal can apply to the best colleges in the nation, confident his SAT score won’t hold him back.