Princeton Review

If I could give them no stars that would be a perfect score. Extremely unprofessional. The teacher didn’t show up for a SAT practice exam. No refunds even when it is their lack of service. Their solution is that I give my child the test at home even when I have already paid for them to give the test. They don’t return emails or phone calls. EXTREMELY UNPROFESSIONAL!!! I will make sure our high school never hires them again to work on school grounds.

This review is not for MCAT exam prep location of SF, but for the general online access you continue to pay for (MCAT exams, etc) long after your in-​person course is over. I highly recommend going with whatever other test prep options you have. PR has the absolute WORST customer service. As evidenced below-​other reviews– when calling customer service to check on lack of access to materials on the website (having been recently (Aug, 2011) revamped/​ruined/​introduced with every glitch you can think of, including permanent loss of ALL prep material prior to this month w/​no offer of compensation) everyone passes the buck, and addressing the student directly and honestly is avoided at all costs. No accountability. Hold time for tech support yesterday? 36 minutes. No emails answered. All calls answered by an actual person? Forwarded to an outdated holiday voicemail about the 4^th of July weekend– maddening. Get it together PR! Save yourself the money, heartache, time, and energy of dealing with these unprofessional weasels who have no problem collecting $ to extend your online access, and are incapable of taking their jobs or your exam seriously. I do regret not having gone the KAPLAN route, as I heard it contains less unnecessarily detailed coursework and are more to-​the-​point with topics of interest. Good luck.

I signed up to take a GRE class with PR in February. Dealing with the company soon became on of the most frustrating, time-​consuming and miserable endeavors. I found the Princeton Review to be the mostly poorly organized, unprofessional company I have ever interacted with, with appalling customer service. In short, the class I signed up for was cancelled and I was not notified until the week before. When I called to figure out what I was supposed to do, I was was put on hold for almost a half an hour before being transferred to someone else who could help me, and then I was put on hold again for another 15 minutes. I was placed into another class, and then that class was also cancelled. This time they told me it was being cancelled less than a week before it was supposed to start. I was told by a woman that I would be able to get extra sessions of tutoring for the inconvenience, and so when I called her back to schedule those sessions she told me she had no recollection of ever saying that and the tutoring sessions would not be possible. In addition, the company had an incorrect address for me on file. I had to call THREE times to finally get the address updated correctly because each time they failed to actually change it in their computer. Each attempt to change my address entailed a minimum of a 20 to 30 minute phone call because I would be put on hold, transferred, and then put on hold again.
Although the class was decent, and it ultimately helped my score, dealing with such a poorly-​run company required so much time and energy that I would NEVER suggest using Princeton Review. I would jump at the opportunity to go with Kaplan or another prep course.

i took a 7-​week GMAT prep course from princeton review in san francisco, once a week in the evening for 3 hours. they offered courses of varying lengths, but given that i was under potential time constraints for applications, this was the one i chose — i signed up with the intent to take the GMAT the weekend immediately following my last class.
my instructor was katie montgomery for the first 5 classes, and then dan bierman for the last 2 (katie had a family emergency she had to attend to). when i called the berkeley office to find out who the instructor was prior to the class, however, they gave me a different name altogether.
when you sign up for this class, you get the following:
— GMAC official guide book with plenty of practice questions
— princeton review syllabus with weekly homework assignments
— princeton review book with assignments, practice questions and in-​class lessons
— 5 online tests you can take multiple times as well as online practice questions and drills
PROS
— small class size: there were only 6 people total in my class and not everyone showed up every time; however, the quality of your overall class is somewhat determined by who else is in it — keep this in mind
— extensive online practice resources
— instructor availability outside of class, office hours, etc.
— capability of instructors overall was pretty good; when you have a question, they can show you the trick on how to solve it
— i thought the way the syllabus was well constructed in terms of what you’re learning week by week
CONS
— dan wasn’t especially receptive to what the class wanted to do; for example, at the last class everyone pretty much vocalized that they wanted to focus more on quant than verbal, but he still essentially insisted we spend time covering it. katie would also sometimes not stop for an adequate amount of time after teaching something to check for true comprehension by the class, in an effort to make sure we got through everything
— dan had a tendency to inject his version of political /​esoteric humor or soliloquies that usually not only fell flat, but also wasted minutes of the class’s time
— after practice test 3, tests 4 and 5 began repeating the exact same verbal questions from earlier tests
— the princeton book half the class got was an earlier edition from what the instructor had; however, they never fixed this by giving us the right books, so sometimes the questions we were covering in class were ones different from what was in my book
— no formal feedback mechanism, either from the instructors or princeton; i don’t think these guys are concerned with continuous improvement of their course
BOTTOM LINE
i improved my score from a 630 to 700, so at the end of the day i achieved my goal. if i were to do it all over again though, i still would have taken a class, but probably would have checked out manhattan or veritas first.

Gordy at the Berkeley office is awesome. I took a GMAT review course with him and he was VERY patient. He worked through all of my questions and went out of his way to tailor feedback to my experience when we met to review my progress. The last time I took a standardized test was 1997, with a pencil. He walked me through everything and the PR online tools are good. Worth driving across the bridge for if you’re in SF!

Please note that this review is for the online edition, which costs $ 500. It f***ing BLOWS! Pardon the crass language, but I just took the GRE after using the online program for the last month — and SCORED LOWER THAN WHEN I FIRST TOOK THE PRACTICE TEST! The biggest flaw with the online program, which looked good at first, is that it prepares you for an imaginary test that exists in unicorn land. In other words, it prepares you for a test that is far easier than the GRE in reality. The practice questions are much easier than the questions on the real test.
One other gripe I have is that for an entire day (I think it was two Sundays ago), the website went down. Meaning an extremely important day of studying went to waste (complete waste of $ 500) because Princeton Review has a ghetto website that apparently crashes on occasion. Considering the lesson plans are ONLINE, this is pretty relevant.
I’m very disappointed in the Princeton Review. I just got a terrible score on the GRE, thanks in large part to a terrible online prep program that has very little, if any, effectiveness in improving your GRE score.

Took a GRE prep class with PR. The class prepared me in ways I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. The teacher was experienced and very familiar with the GRE. The only negative for me was that the office itself seemed to be disorganized in terms of communication between staff people but since this didn’t have an affect on my test preparation– I don’t really care!

awful.
am going to have to sign up for kaplan now, should have shelled out the extra $ 300 to begin with.

I’m currently taking a GMAT test prep course at the San Francisco office and am thoroughly impressed with the Princeton Review. Its been a while since I’ve done any algebra or geometry, written any essays, or corrected grammar and sentence structure. So, taking the GMAT seemed pretty scary to me before I got started on this course. I’m a couple of weeks into the course and the instructor Kevin has been very helpful and informative and answers any and all questions that I have so that I fully understand a concept. My only gripe is that the class has been going about half an hour late, and at that point, my brain is fried. But, I would have to say it’s really great that Kevin wants to cover the material so thoroughly and give you the tips and techniques that will help you get a great test score. The Princeton Review also has a lot of great resources on their website for researching schools, taking tests online, and studying extra material online. I highly recommend this course for anyone who is preparing for a major standardized test.