Should I Hire an MCAT^® Tutor?

The big companies post their prices, and they're steep. The Princeton Review lists the most detail, with an hourly rate that drops as the package grows. Here's what each package comes to in total.

The hourly rate goes down from $329 to $183, but the bill still more than triples, from $3,290 to $10,980. Other companies price tutoring as part of a bundle:

Kaplan's comparison page gives "starting at" prices only and doesn't say which hour count each price buys. Blueprint's 24-hour package is listed at $6,839, marked down from $7,599, and includes 15 full-length practice exams. MedSchoolCoach doesn't post prices at all on its tutoring page; you book a consultation to get a quote.

For comparison, the AAMC Store lists Practice Exam 1 and the Unscored Sample Test as free, and Practice Exams 2 through 6 at $35 each. All five paid exams come to $175. That's less than the price of one hour in the smallest Princeton Review package, which works out to $329.

Independent research on one-on-one MCAT^® tutoring is hard to find. The score figures you'll see mostly come from the companies selling it, and they're hard to check.

MedSchoolCoach says its students raise their MCAT^® scores by 12 points on average, and its stats section limits that figure to students with 25 or more tutoring hours. The page doesn't say how many students the average covers, whether it uses official scores or practice scores, or what baseline it starts from. A student who goes from a cold diagnostic to a real test after 3 months of study would gain points with or without a tutor, so an average gain alone can't tell you what the tutor added.

The guarantees tell you more, because they show what each company is willing to promise in writing:

• The Princeton Review: a refund "if you don't score higher," but only on the 60-hour Comprehensive package. The 10- to 50-hour packages carry no money-back guarantee, according to its tutoring page.
• Kaplan Premium: a 515 or higher if your baseline is 500 or above, or a 15-point gain if it's below 500. You have to complete at least 10 tutoring hours and 8 full-length exams, attend every scheduled live session, and test within 60 days of your last session.
• MedSchoolCoach: 10 more hours of tutoring if your official score doesn't improve on an earlier official score or your AAMC diagnostic, after you've used all your hours, per its guarantee terms.
• Blueprint: a free re-match if you don't like your tutor. The 24-hour package page offers no score guarantee.

Most of these promise a refund or more hours for any improvement at all, which is a low bar after months of study. Kaplan's Premium guarantee is the only one tied to a specific score, and it comes with conditions you'd need to track carefully.

A tutor is most useful when your problem is diagnosis. You can get every MCAT^® fact from a book. What a good tutor adds is someone watching how you reason through a question and telling you where it goes wrong.

That points to a few situations where paying makes sense:

• Your full-length scores have stalled. If three or four AAMC practice exams in a row come back within a point or two of each other, and your error log doesn't show a pattern you can fix, a second set of eyes can find one.
• CARS won't move. CARS has no content to review, so books and flashcards don't help much. A tutor who goes through your answer choices with you can show you where your reading drifts from the author's argument. The CARS plateau breakdown covers what to try first.
• You're retaking with a deadline. If your first score is below what your school list needs and your application cycle is close, a tutor can help you skip the trial and error. The retake guide helps you decide whether a retake is the right move at all.
• You won't study without a schedule someone else holds you to. That's a fair reason, but it's also the most expensive way to buy accountability. A study group or a structured course costs less.

Some situations call for something cheaper first:

• You haven't taken a full-length yet. A tutor can't target your weak spots until a practice test has shown what they are. Start with the free practice tests.
• Your problem is hours. If you're studying 8 hours a week and need 20, no tutor fixes that.
• Your misses are content gaps. Missing amino acid structures or forgetting kinematics equations is a flashcard and question bank problem. A tutor at $200 an hour is an expensive way to drill facts.
• The cost would mean cutting back on applications. Every primary and secondary application costs money too. Spending $8,000 on prep and then applying to fewer schools can work against you.

Judge tutoring the way you'd judge any prep: by the trend in your AAMC practice scores, and by the middle of that trend.

A 2020 study in the Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development tracked 19 students in one premedical program who took between 1 and 11 full-length practice exams each. Their median practice score strongly predicted their real MCAT^® score, with a standardized coefficient of 0.74. Their highest practice score didn't predict it at all, with a coefficient of negative 0.04, and their real scores came in lower on average than their best practice scores. It's a small sample from one program, so treat it as a guide. But the lesson matches what most test takers see: one great full-length isn't a new baseline.

So before you start, write down your median score from your last 2 or 3 AAMC exams. Check it again after 10 hours of tutoring. If the median hasn't moved, talk with your tutor about what to change, or stop before you buy the next block of hours. Use the same AAMC exams for the before and after, because third-party scores run on their own scales and won't give you a fair comparison.

If you decide to hire one, a few questions sort good tutors from expensive ones:

1. What did you score, and how long have you tutored? A high score is necessary but not enough. Ask how many students they've worked with who started near your score.
2. What will the first session cover? A good answer involves your practice test results, not a generic content review.
3. Can I buy a small block first? The Princeton Review's 10-hour package costs more per hour, but $3,290 is a smaller bet than $10,980. Its tutor-satisfaction guarantee also gives you a new match and a free session if the first session doesn't work.
4. What exactly does the guarantee require? Get the hours, the practice tests, the testing window and the score report deadline in writing.
5. Are AAMC materials included? Blueprint's package comes with 15 of its own full-lengths, for example. You'll still want the AAMC exams, since they're the only ones on the real scale.

Most people don't need a tutor. If you've taken several AAMC full-lengths, reviewed each one carefully with a method like this full-length review process, and your score still won't move, a small block of tutoring can be a reasonable bet. Measure it by your median AAMC score after 10 hours, and keep going only if that number moves.

Once your next practice score comes back, look up what it means for your total and each section in the PurpleCAT MCAT score guide.

Last verified November 3, 2026, against each company's tutoring page and the AAMC Store. Tutoring prices and guarantee terms change often, so confirm them with the company before you buy.