New low price of $99 for both courses helps students be more competitive for admissions and merit-based aid


New York, NY – January 2, 2018 – Effective immediately, The Princeton Review, an industry leader in test prep products, is offering its proven SAT and ACT Self-Paced prep courses together at a new price of $99.00, allowing greater access to these programs by more students than ever before.

As the college admissions landscape continues to evolve, students have more choices than ever in how they prep for–submit scores from–standardized exams. Some of the recent changes and trends include: the redesigned SAT, more school-day testing, and a move away from in-person prep classes in favor of online courses-—just to name a few.

“At The Princeton Review, our job is to stay on top of these trends so that our products and services best prepare students to be successful in this increasingly complex and competitive environment,” said Amy Calhoun, Chief Marketing Officer at The Princeton Review. “We know that no one wants to take more tests, but in order for students to increase their opportunities for both college admissions and merit-based financial aid, it is our recommendation that most students take both the SAT and ACT exams,” she continued. “To make this achievable for as many students as possible, we have significantly reduced the price of our SAT and ACT Self-Paced courses and are now offering them together for only $99.”

Colleges do not require scores from both tests, but at many schools a lot of applicants submit both, thereby putting pressure on other students to do the same. For example, in 2016, 26% of students applying to MIT, 27% of students applying to the University of Virginia, 31% applying to both UC Berkeley and Stanford, and 49% of applicants to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill submitted both.*

Students who perform well on both the SAT and ACT are submitting both scores to give themselves an edge. Princeton University’s Dean of Admissions is on record saying, “[F]or us, more information is always better. If students choose one or the other, that’s fine, because both tests have value. But if they submit both, that generally gives us a little more information.”**

Taking both the SAT and ACT may also unlock merit-based financial aid opportunities that a student might miss by taking only one of the tests. Many schools offer merit scholarships based on test scores. Students who miss the cut score for one exam might be eligible for aid based on their score on the other exam. Some schools offer an edge to SAT takers (Texas A&M, University of Colorado, and Ohio State University, for example) while others favor ACT takers (University of Vermont, University of Missouri, and University of Georgia, to name a few). 

Good news: Taking both exams is not as difficult as it sounds. The changes made to the SAT by the College Board in 2016 made the exam more similar to the ACT, so by having access to The Princeton Review’s SAT and ACT Self-Paced courses together, students can prep for both exams more efficiently than ever before.

“We encourage students to take advantage of free test prep resources, including the many free tools available at PrincetonReview.com. However, free resources generally focus on only one of the two exams, and provide less content, instruction, and personalization than our SAT and ACT Self-Paced program,” explained Calhoun.

SAT and ACT Self-Paced Program Features

The Princeton Review’s SAT and ACT Self-Paced program combines both courses to offer a truly comprehensive and personalized self-paced prep experience. For only $99, students get access to unparalleled content including hundreds of drills, thousands of practice questions, interactive score reports, and The Princeton Review’s exclusive Recommendation Engine which continually analyzes a student’s performance in order to provide a personalized and efficient prep plan, thereby enabling the student to focus on areas that will maximize score improvement. The program is available at https://www.princetonreview.com.

“At The Princeton Review, we’re obsessed with student success. Our mission is to help as many students as we can achieve their academic dreams. So, we are excited to increase access to our popular SAT and ACT Self-Paced courses which offer students our world-class prep tools, in a flexible and convenient format that meets their needs and positions them to be successful in the increasingly competitive college admissions landscape,” said Calhoun.

References:

*Dual submission percentages are drawn from the Common Data Set 2017 release, which reports data from thousands of colleges and universities. **The New York Times, August 2, 2013

About The Princeton Review

The Princeton Review is a leading test prep, tutoring, and college admission services company. Every year, it helps millions of college- and graduate school-bound students achieve their education and career goals through online and in-person courses delivered by a network of more than 4,000 teachers and tutors, online resources, and its more than 150 print and digital books published by Penguin Random House. The Princeton Review is headquartered in New York, NY. The company is not affiliated with Princeton University. For more information, visit https://www.PrincetonReview.com. Follow the company on Twitter @ThePrincetonRev.

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Press Contact: Amy Briskin, Publicist,  amybriskin@gmail.com