What an expensive and frustrating experience!!
At our schools suggestion, we signed up for the 14 lesson package for the ACT. My daughter wanted to raise her overall score by 5 or 6 points, not an outstanding or unreasonable hope we were told by Michael. Unfortunately her math tutor took an unreasonably long time going over basic math concepts and never mentioned or suggested using a graphing calculator. Eventually we switched math tutors due to a schedule conflict and although the next one seemed better and taught my daughter how to use the calculator for the specific math problems, she continued scheduling tutor sessions after the 14 lessons were up without informing us of the $200 hit each lesson! (There were so many lessons rescheduled on their end that I lost track of the 14 days.)
Additionally, the English tutor was frequently late, at the wrong location and mis-scheduled my daughter's practice test (wrong time, wrong location).
My daughter did all the homework diligently and has a GPA over 4.2 but still, even with 17 outrageously expensive lessons, missed her mark by 3 points and only raised it by a few points! She felt the first two tutors did not tailor the lessons to her specific abilities/needs but were just going through rote tutoring for which we could have paid much less.
The overall experience was very frustrating given the bill (over $3000!) and the net result did not meet what Michael had agreed was a very reasonable goal. When given the opportunity to make things right, we were told that they would reduce the cost of our extra lessons by half but felt the other complaints were invalid.
Personally I strongly recommend NOT paying the high price for AR Academics, the tutors are not worth the cost and the company simply does not fulfill what it promises ... Oh and two of her friends had very similar experiences so we are sadly not alone in this frustration. read more
