Home › Tutoring – FAQ
Home › Tutoring – FAQ
SAT & ACT Tutoring –
Frequently Asked Questions
We’re so confident in our SAT Tutoring that we back it with a full money-back guarantee: if you complete the program and your official SAT score doesn’t improve by 160+ points, we’ll refund the cost of your Complete Online Prep program in full, and match your original tutoring hours with an equal number of free sessions, so you can keep working toward your target score.
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Starting score: |
Final Score: |
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Under 1370 on the SAT → |
A 160+ point increase on your official SAT |
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1370 or higher on the SAT → |
An official SAT score of at least 1530 |
To qualify, you’ll need to:
•Complete every assigned skill lesson — either by achieving mastery or repeating it until it’s no longer assigned (up to 10 paused skills allowed)
•Finish all assigned practice tests
•Attend all tutoring hours included in your package
•Have an official SAT or PSAT score from the 4 years before creating your account
•Take an official SAT within 60 days of finishing the course (or on the next available test date)
•Submit your refund request within 360 days of purchase
Don’t have a previous SAT score? No problem. If you haven’t taken the official SAT in the past 4 years, your most recent official PSAT score (out of 1520) can serve as your baseline — we simply add 80 points to convert it to the 1600 scale.
What gets refunded? The guarantee covers the cost of your Complete Online Prep program. Your tutoring hours are not refunded in cash — instead, you’ll receive the same number of hours you originally purchased, completely free, so you can continue preparing for your next test.
How to claim your refund: To protect the integrity of our guarantee, we require that your official score report be mailed directly to us by the College Board — not submitted digitally. Please contact the College Board to have your complete score history sent to:
Allen Cheng, PrepScholar Inc., 625 Massachusetts Ave, Floor 2, Cambridge, MA 02139
Once we receive your scores, also email us your account address and payee information. Refunds are issued within 60 days of receiving your request.
Note: The guarantee applies to one refund per household. Additional terms and conditions apply — see our full Terms of Service for details.
We’re so confident in our ACT Tutoring that we back it with a full money-back guarantee: if you complete the program and your official ACT score doesn’t improve by 4+ points, we’ll refund the cost of your Complete Online Prep program in full, and match your original tutoring hours with an equal number of free sessions, so you can keep working toward your target score.
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Starting score: |
Final Score: |
|---|---|
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Under 31 on the ACT → |
A 4+ point increase on your official ACT |
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30 or higher on the ACT → |
An official ACT score of at least 34 |
To qualify, you’ll need to:
•Complete every assigned skill lesson — either by achieving mastery or repeating it until it’s no longer assigned (up to 10 paused skills allowed)
•Finish all assigned practice tests
•Attend all tutoring hours included in your package
•Have an official ACT or PreACT score from the 4 years before creating your account
•Take an official ACT within 60 days of finishing the course (or on the next available test date)
•Submit your refund request within 360 days of purchase
A note on the ACT Science section: The ACT has introduced an updated format where Science is optional and reported separately from the composite score. To ensure a fair comparison, your Before-Score and After-Score will always be calculated using the same sections — so if you didn’t take the Science section after completing PrepScholar, we’ll compare only your English, Math, and Reading scores from both tests.
What gets refunded? The guarantee covers the cost of your Complete Online Prep program. Your tutoring hours are not refunded in cash — instead, you’ll receive the same number of hours you originally purchased, completely free, so you can continue preparing for your next test.
How to claim your refund: To protect the integrity of our guarantee, we require that your official score report be mailed directly to us by the ACT, Inc. — not submitted digitally. Please contact the ACT, Inc. to have your complete score history sent to:
Allen Cheng, PrepScholar Inc., 625 Massachusetts Ave, Floor 2, Cambridge, MA 02139
Once we receive your scores, also email us your account address and payee information. Refunds are issued within 60 days of receiving your request.
Note: The guarantee applies to one refund per household. Additional terms and conditions apply — see our full Terms of Service for details.
We’re confident you’ll love working with your PrepScholar tutor — but you don’t have to take our word for it. Try the first hour of tutoring within 60 days of purchase, and if you’re not completely satisfied, we’ll refund your entire tutoring package in full, including that first session. Just email [email protected] and let us know before your second tutoring session.
Tutoring packages also includes the Complete Online Prep program, which you can try for up to 10 hours as part of the risk-free trial.
Note: At most one refund will be provided per household. Additional terms and conditions apply — see our full Terms of Service for details.
All of our tutors excel at connecting with their students, and we’ll do our best to match you with the perfect tutor when you sign up. If you have specific preferences for the type of tutor you’d like to work with, we strongly encourage you to share them with one of our Academic Advisors by calling (866) 811 5546 or emailing [email protected].
However, we understand that sometimes a tutor and student may not “click,” which can affect motivation and progress. We’re committed to ensuring you love your tutoring experience. If you feel your tutor isn’t the right fit, simply email us, and we’ll pair you with a new tutor based on your feedback to ensure a better match.
Additionally, we offer a 1-hour guarantee—if you decide after your first hour that PrepScholar or tutoring isn’t right for you, we’ll provide a full refund for your tutoring package.
You’re welcome to request a specific tutor by emailing us or sharing your preference with your Academic Advisor when enrolling. Just email [email protected] or call (866) 811 5546.
While some tutors may have full schedules, we’ll make every effort to match you with your preferred tutor or another top tutor who aligns with your goals, interests, and learning style.
Absolutely. In fact, we have tutors available to meet almost any time of the day or night. If you have a tight schedule, just email us at [email protected] when you sign up, and let us know; we’ll connect you with a tutor whose availability matches yours.
When you sign up for PrepScholar tutoring, you’ll immediately get full access to our Complete Online Prep program. We ask you to do a little work in our prep program right away so that we can learn more about you to pair you with the perfect tutor. After logging in to your new account, you’ll complete a short survey and a 60-minute diagnostic so we can pinpoint your strengths and areas for improvement. From there, you can dive into your practice and learning right away or wait—your tutor will contact you within 7 days to start your tutoring journey.
Fast-track: If you’d like to get started sooner, just call us at (866) 811 5546 or email [email protected]. One of our Academic Advisors will take your tutor-matching preferences and connect you with the perfect tutor within 1-2 business days.
You’ll schedule sessions directly with your tutor, via email and during your tutoring sessions. If you ever need to reschedule, just email your tutor to set up a new time.
Because we work with a lot of students, we do ask that you email your tutor at least 24 hours ahead of time if you need to reschedule or cancel. You can still cancel or reschedule under 24 hours before a session, but we will have to charge you for the time reserved.
We currently only offer a payment plan for the 32-hour package. The 32-hour payment plan breaks up the package into three monthly payments of $1598, so that you can still sign up for 32 hours of tutoring, without having to pay all at once.
If you’re interested in setting up a payment plan, please contact [email protected] or call us at 1-866-811-5546.
Yes! We make sure all of our tutors can teach all parts of the test: Reading, Writing/English, Math, the Essay, and ACT Science. We also make sure each of our tutors knows key strategies and is fully trained in both tests, including the latest changes.
That way, you don’t have to switch between tutors to learn everything you need on the test: your tutor will be able to teach you everything from parallel structure to quadratic equations, and will know the best strategies for all the challenges of test day.
Everything you need for your prep is included when you sign up for tutoring. You’ll have access to PrepScholar’s automated Complete Online Prep program, including thousands of practice questions and multiple practice tests. The program will adapt to you as you learn, so you’ll keep getting new challenges and lessons even outside of your meetings with your tutor.
If you’re an ACT student, we’ll also ship you a copy of ACT’s official test book with real practice tests, completely free. For Digital SAT students, all practice tests and lessons are completed online.
Of course. If you don’t end up using all of your tutoring hours, we can refund some of the remaining purchase. Just email [email protected] to let us know you’d like to refund the rest of your hours: we’ll count up the tutoring hours you’ve used at a rate of $199 per hour, and refund the remainder of your purchase. (Read more in our terms.)
If you’re not sure you’ll use all your hours, though, we recommend starting with a 4-hour package — at $149 per hour of tutoring, it’s a big discount on that $199/hour refund rate.
The majority of your tutoring time will be focused on test prep, but you do have the option of spending up to 1 hour from your initial tutoring package working with your tutor on college applications. That could include figuring out what schools to apply to, working on your application essay, building your activities resume, or anything else you’d like help with. Since our tutors all went to top schools, they have an insider perspective on what actually works when it comes to applying to a school and getting in.
If you’re interested in more in-depth admissions counseling, check out PrepScholar’s Admissions Consulting. As a PrepScholar student, you’ll enjoy special pricing, so don’t hesitate to give us a call at (866) 811 5546
We strongly recommend prepping for just one test at a time. While there are a lot of basic skills that appear on both tests, they have different formats, strategies, and question types. Learning to ace the test means getting to know it inside and out, and it’s hard to do that for both tests at once.
But if you have test dates coming up, and you really need help on both tests at the same time, we can help set that up. In fact, since all of our tutors get trained in both tests, we can set up a program with one tutor to guide you through both the SAT and the ACT. Just email [email protected] or call us at 1-866-811-5546 to ask about working on both tests.
Part of what makes our tutoring so effective is that our tutors can see your progress as you work on your Complete Prep program, and they plan each lesson around the work you’ve done since the last time you met. That means you and your tutor can hone directly in on the specific points where you can learn the most, and your tutoring sessions will always be focused and productive.
Because of this, we do ask that all of our students use PrepScholar’s Complete Prep program as part of their tutoring. All by itself, our Complete Prep is an incredibly effective way to learn the test, and our tutors use it to really individualize and boost your prep.
PrepScholar’s Complete Prep is all about individualization and motivation. As you work on it, it adapts to your progress and gives you new lessons and practice specifically targeted to your skill level across every facet of the test. That way, you learn all the fundamentals you need, but you also keep building up your high-level skills until you can take on the hardest questions in every part of the test.
When you first get started, you’ll fill out a survey to let us know where you are in your prep and what you want to work on, then you’ll complete a diagnostic that tests every single skill that appears on the SAT or ACT (whichever test you’re taking). That diagnostic will tell us where you’re starting from in your knowledge and strategy across all 45 SAT skills and 54 ACT skills in the PrepScholar program.
From there, you’ll start working on lesson and practice sets selected to meet your current levels of mastery and keep challenging you to score higher on the test. You’ll access your lessons through a dashboard that will adapt and reset each week to help you keep improving. Periodically, you’ll also complete full-length, official practice tests to see how your prep is impacting your real score and where you can continue to learn more.
As you work through the program, we’ll ask you to set goals, plan your prep, and reflect on your progress. We’ll send you reminders and progress emails to help you stay on track and motivated.
Read more about our Complete Prep here.
Absolutely! Just head over here to set up a Complete Prep account. You can upgrade to tutoring any time by emailing [email protected] or calling us at 1 (866) 811-5546.
Out of respect for our tutors’ time, we do ask that you sign up before talking with your tutor. We’re happy to tell you more about your tutor’s background, though, to help in your decision making. And we always have our 1-hour guarantee: if you’re not satisfied after your first hour of tutoring, we’ll completely refund your entire tutoring purchase, including that hour!
If you have questions or concerns about your tutor, we always encourage you to email us at [email protected].
We’ve built our tutoring program so that it feels just like meeting with a tutor in person, but without any of the hassle, expense, and uncertainty of having to find and connect with a local tutor. Your tutor will meet with you via Zoom or Google Meet, so that you can each see each other, talk, and share information live.
Your tutor will also use an overhead camera, screenshare, and whiteboard technology to draw diagrams, show examples, and work out problems with you visually. All of our tutors are specially trained to make sure their teaching is effective online. In fact, our students often tell us they tend to forget that they’re meeting their tutors online — it feels so natural that it’s like being in the same room.
Try to set up each session at least 24 hours in advance so that your tutor has time to prepare a great lesson for you. Some of our tutors also have schedules that fill up very quickly, so we recommend letting them know as soon as possible when you’d like to meet.
Your tutor will also check in at the end of each of your sessions to confirm the next time you’re meeting.
If you’re just starting tutoring with us, you’ll start with one of our 4 packages: 4 hours, 10 hours, 18 hours, or 32 hours. Having at least 4 hours to start is important, since your tutor will build and change your learning plan based on how many hours you have to work together.
After your initial package, though, you can choose to renew with any of those 4 packages, or you can switch to pay-as-you-go tutoring for $199 per hour.
Certainly! It’s often beneficial to continue with your tutoring so that you have time to really dig into the toughest parts of the test. We offer four options for adding continuing hours:
• Pay-as-you-go, hourly for $199/hour
• 4 hours at a time for $596
• 10 hours at a time for $1596
• 18 hours at a time for $2596
• 32 hours at a time for $4398
The Pay-as-you-go and 4-hour options are best for flexibility, if you’re not sure how much more tutoring you’ll want or if you have just a few last topics to wrap up with your tutor. The 10-hour option gives you a lower hourly rate without having to commit to too many hours: it’s best if you have 1-2 months left before your test and want to ensure you continue to have tutoring up to your test day. And the 18-hour or 32-hour option are great choices if you still have several months left and want to give yourself the best shot at a top score.
$995+
1-on-1 Tutoring + Complete Online Prep
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