How to raise your SAT score by 200 points.
A parent emailed me last week asking if my 200-point guarantee was real or just marketing. Here's the honest answer I sent her.
A parent emailed me last week. Her son scored an 1140 on the PSAT, and she wanted to know whether the 200-point guarantee was real or whether it was a marketing thing.
This is what I wrote back.
An 1140 is actually one of the best starting scores for this
Honest answer: an 1140 is actually one of the best starting scores if you want to raise your SAT score by 200 points.
The easiest gains I see happen in the 1050 to 1200 range, or a little higher — say, 1100 to 1300. At that level a student has the fundamentals. They can read the passages, they can handle the algebra. The work isn't about teaching them how to read or how to multiply; it's about teaching them how this specific test works. They have a good platform to build on. That's the launching-off point that makes 200 points realistic.
The high end is harder than people think, too. Going from a 1350 to a 1550 is a lot, lot, lot harder than going from an 1140 to a 1340. Above 1300 or so, the easy points are already gone — you're fighting for precision on questions designed to trick students who already know most of the content. For a student starting up there, one-on-one tutoring with me is usually the better fit than the cohort.
So the short answer to "is 200 points realistic for my 1140 kid?" is yes — more so than for almost any other starting score.
What twelve hours a week looks like
If your son's willing to put in about twelve hours a week, total, his score should go up 200 points in six to eight weeks.
What does twelve hours look like? Two classes a week, three hours each — that's six hours of live instruction with me. About two and a half hours taking a practice test on the student dashboard. And another three and a half hours reviewing the test he just took and doing the fresh practice problems the platform queues up. Twelve hours a week, for six weeks. About 72 hours total.
If a student actually does that, a 200-point increase is very realistic. That's what I've seen, cohort after cohort.
The great thing about Bullseye Prep is that we actually track every single component of that. If your son takes the course with us, you'll be able to see, from your parent dashboard:
- Whether he's present in class — attendance, in minutes, per session
- Whether he took each practice test, and whether he made an honest attempt or just clicked through it to make it look done
- Whether he did the practice problem homework
- Whether he reviewed his missed questions after each test
That last one is the most important thing a student has to do to bring up a score — actually review the test, not just take it. I haven't seen another prep program with a built-in platform that does this.
We also have three books — over 900 pages between them, covering Math, Reading, and Writing — with reading quizzes inside the platform that check whether your son understood what he read. A student starting at 1140 doesn't need to read every page of the math book. He just needs to read the chapters where his diagnostic showed the most points leaking.
What you're actually getting at Bullseye
The difference is me. I'll just be straight about it.
I've worked at a lot of those other big companies. I've worked in management at one of them. I have a ridiculous amount of experience. Seventeen years teaching the SAT now, around ten thousand hours teaching the test to many thousands of students. There is nothing that I haven't seen. To be honest, I can tutor a student really well with no materials at all, just from what's in my head. The books and the platform we have are just a way of giving the student more resources between sessions.
I do have a perfect score on the Digital SAT. But I'll tell you something most tutors won't admit: it took me a while to get there. I had to take the old paper SAT — not the digital one — several times before I finally got a perfect score on it. And in the meantime I was tutoring students who got perfect scores before I did. As good as I am at the SAT, I'm better at teaching it. That's the part that actually matters for your son.
That's why I built Bullseye the way I did.
Real students, real numbers
There's a girl who started one of my summer courses at 1260. She studied and she studied and she studied. Her score went up slowly, slowly, slowly. By the end of the course she had a 1460 — there's her 200 points right there. But she didn't stop. She kept on studying, and she got a perfect score. From a 1260 to a 1600.
That's the end of one story, and I have a lot of stories like it. They don't all end with a perfect score, but the pattern — student starts in the 1100s or 1200s, does the work, gains 200, then keeps gaining — that's just not uncommon at all.
Last summer I worked with a student who started at around 1100 and went up to 1450. Three hundred and fifty points. That kind of gain is what happens when a student takes the course and puts the time in. And to be honest, his gain happened before I had the student dashboard built. The platform is there now to give students access to my ideas and my curriculum even when I can't be as hands-on with them. The 350-point increase came from the curriculum, the class, and the student showing up.
If you're skeptical, that's fair. Verified before-and-after score reports from Bullseye students are on our reviews page, including score reports and student names. We'll continue adding new results as cohorts finish.
I'm very confident because of stories like this.
If you'd like me to look at your son's specific situation, book a free 20-minute consult on my calendar.
What the student dashboard actually does
I designed the student dashboard myself, with seventeen years of teaching in mind. One of the features I'm proudest of is called Hardest Problems.
When your son misses a problem he can't figure out, he flags it. The platform generates fresh versions of the same problem skeleton — different numbers, different wording — and he tries it again and again and again and again until he can do it.
Over a cohort, that's thirty or forty of the questions he's worst at, drilled until he can do them in his sleep.
When students get stuck, they don't have to wait until the next class. The AI can read their handwritten work and help them find the next step.
When Bullseye isn't the right fit
Not every student is right for this course. If your son won't show up to class or won't do the practice tests, Bullseye isn't going to move his score, and I'd rather tell you that on the consult than take your money. The course works when the student does the work. In fact, some parents are surprised when I tell them their child would be better served by one-on-one tutoring or by waiting until they're ready to commit to the work. If Bullseye isn't the right call for your son, I'll tell you what is.
How the guarantee actually works
Honestly, our guarantee works because our course works. None of our guarantee requirements are based on a student's scores during the course. Just on genuine effort and attendance.
In other words, there's no "gotcha" test sitting in there somewhere that would be just as hard as the guaranteed final score. That wouldn't be a guarantee — that would be a way to never pay out.
After seventeen years, ten thousand hours, thousands of students, I know this one works. Test prep actually works, or I wouldn't be doing it.
It is very rare that a student comes to all the classes, takes all the tests, does all the work in good faith, and doesn't go up 200 points. On the rare occasions when it does happen, what I usually see is the student still gains 150 or 180 points. The score moves. Just not 200.
If a parent sends me the official before-and-after score reports and the increase doesn't hit 200, I'll gladly refund the money. No fight, no fine print. I feel good for the student in those cases — they put a lot of work in, and they earned the honesty. Almost always they got some kind of score increase anyway. I'd rather process the refund and have that student go off with their 150 or 180 points and a parent who trusts what we do than try to argue them out of it.
What to do next
Here's what to do.
Go to my website and book a free consultation. You can talk with me personally — I'm the founder — and we'll spend about twenty minutes on a call. Just pick a time on my calendar. I'll fill you in on anything you need to know.
— Ben Smith
Bullseye Prep students have raised SAT scores by up to 490 points, verified. The 6-week SAT Course comes with a 200-point money-back guarantee.