Can Free Admissions Test Help You Score?

Number2.com offers free online admissions test preparation help for students preparing to take the SAT, ACT and GRE. The service includes test prep materials, practice tests and questions, test-taking tips, a personalized test prep plan based on your needs, progress reports, vocabulary builder, a personal homepage (where you'll find all of your test prep info) and individual coaching.

Besides its attractive price tag (FREE), Number2.com offers a few other novel features. The most interesting is the personalized prep plan. Instead of using a diagnostic test to determine where you need to start and what you need to work on, Number2.com bases your plan on how you answer the practice questions and exercises on the site. If you easily knock out the first few questions, the site will then give you harder questions until you start to routinely knock those out. It's kind of like a low-end CAT (computer adaptive tests) like the kind higher-end counterparts Princeton Review and Kaplan use and those used by the test developers.

The other interesting feature is the SAT and ACT companion guides, a free tutorial guide that helps you maneuver through the question types and content. The guide contains questions created or contracted by Number2.com. The practice questions are not real SAT or ACT questions; they are based on the types you will find on the real tests. The rest of the materials for Number2.com's test prep programs are created by the test creators. Number2.com recommends that you purchase test guides from The College Board (SAT), ACT and Educational Testing Service (ETS). The recommended books contain real tests from prior testing periods.

Finally, Number2.com's most interesting feature is the personal coach. The personal coach is not actually provided by Number2.com. You have to provide the name of a coach that you would like to work with. Here's how it works: You sign up and name a coach. You ask your coach to sign up. The coach can access you test prep homepage and monitor you progress on your plan. The coach uses this access to help cheer you on and provide you with any additional help you might need. Number2.com recommends that you select a teacher, a community leader or other adult volunteer as your coach.

So, is Number2.com's free service as good as the expensive ones? It depends. If you are disciplined enough to manage your own test prep without the structure of haviing set class days and times and a teacher, then this option may work for you. It is certainly as good as using self-help guides to prepare. And, it may be better than going it completely alone.

I'm not sure that completely answers the question, but it's the best I can do given that Number2.com doesn't have a long enough track record or enough independent reviews to truly tell the tale of how it compares to the expensive test prep courses. For my part, I tried the service and found it better than no prep at all, a great value for the price (FREE) and helpful overall. I studied for the SAT on my own and got into top-tier schools. I am currently studying for the GRE using self-help guides. I will try the GRE guide and let you know how I score.