One of the great things about test preparation for exams like the SAT and ACT is that there is an objective third party measuring stick. A student has one score before the program and another score after the program. Given this, it should raise flags if a company can't or won't state their average score improvement data or tries to claim things like, "We only work with high scoring students so it's not a fair comparison." We're proud of our results, and believe that being transparent is the right way to do business.

If you buy an iPhone and it doesn't work properly, you take it back to the store and they make it right. That's what ethical companies do, and in our industry that means standing behind promises of score improvement with a guarantee. In our case, if your child completes our Standard 30-hour SAT or ACT program and doesn't achieve the target score improvement, we will provide you with 18 hours of additional one-on-one tutoring for a subsequent exam for free. We know that despite everyone's best efforts, things don't always go perfectly on test day. But we also believe that if a company is willing to take your investment, they should also be willing to stand behind their products and their results.

It takes a great curriculum to get great results, but building a great curriculum and the associated technologies takes a lot of investment. Through the years we've put more than $1 million into our programs - an amount that many companies are either unwilling or unable to invest. Some use over the counter materials from the local bookstore, while others use workbooks that are intended for small group or classroom instruction. Make sure that the company you choose has its own materials, and that those materials are designed for one-on-one tutoring.

This may sound like a technical or obscure question, but it's critically important. By law, a company that uses independent contractors cannot provide their tutors with training, ongoing supervision or coaching, or any form of required curriculum or programming. In recent years, a number of companies have tried to cut costs by using contractors while trying to make it sound like their tutors are carefully screened and trained. Asking this question will ensure you know who is who.

Organizations can only be good at so many things, and too often we see companies that claim to be the best at everything. Since our inception we've focused exclusively on one-to-one, private tutoring and as a result, our entire operation is built around delivering strong tutoring programs. We have dashboards that enable our Program Directors to monitor each student's progress, curricula and learning technologies that have been custom designed for one-to-one tutoring, and recruiting processes focused on finding and training great tutors. We might not be very good at classroom-style test preparation programs, but we are experts at delivering high-quality private tutoring - and our results prove it.