TestPrep-Online

TestPrep-Online sells online practice materials for standardized tests, mostly to parents preparing children for gifted program screenings, school assessments and private school entrance exams, and to adults preparing for nursing school and college admissions tests. Each product is a PrepPack built around one test and one grade or level, and families can bundle several of them under a Family Membership. Teachers and tutors buy the same packs on multi-license terms.

The About page traces the company to 1992, when founder and CEO David Meshulam, a psychologist with a master's in social psychology, started helping job candidates with psychometric evaluations. The business began as the Noam Institute and expanded in 2012 to students and their families. The site calls itself "one of the industry's longest-established companies" and its home page claims 1M+ candidates worldwide and 11,700+ reviews.

The test catalog

The range is wide, and it is organized by test and grade rather than by subject:

• Gifted and ability tests: CogAT (Kindergarten to 6th grade), OLSAT (Levels A to G), NNAT, SCAT (Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced), CCAT, the NYC Gifted and Talented test and Raven.
• School assessments: NWEA MAP (Kindergarten through 12th grade, plus MAP Science), Renaissance Star (including Star Early Literacy), i-Ready, ITBS and Iowa Assessments, STAAR, ERB CTP, Fastbridge and the New York State Math Test.
• School entrance exams: ISEE, SSAT, ISEB, CAT4 (Levels X to G) and CEM Select.
• College and nursing admissions: ATI TEAS, HESI A2, NLN PAX, the SAT, CLEP math tests, Wonderlic and PERT.

The home page describes the tests themselves in a line each: MAP as an adaptive NWEA assessment that measures growth through the school year, CAT4 as a GL Assessment test of reasoning rather than prior knowledge, and Star and i-Ready as adaptive assessments of academic skills. That helps a parent who has just received a school letter and needs to know what the test is before buying practice for it.

What a PrepPack contains

The Family Membership FAQ says each pack "may include multiple full-length practice tests, hundreds of sample questions, step-by-step answer explanations, parent and student study guides, videos, and interactive practice activities," and every pack comes with a personal learning dashboard and full access to test simulations. The exact contents vary by test, and the site points buyers to each product page for the breakdown.

A few packs are spelled out on the site. The 3rd grade Iowa Assessments (ITBS) pack carries over 800 questions and two full-length tests. The CogAT packs cover the Verbal, Quantitative and Nonverbal Batteries and are written to reflect CogAT Form 7, from Level 5/6 (Kindergarten) to Level 12 (Grade 6). The STAAR 3rd grade solutions pack includes a complete solution of a previous exam, one full-length practice math test, reading questions and study guides. The TEAS pack has two full tests in each of the four sections, with 216 reading, 195 English, 190 math and 132 science quiz questions.

Explanations are the selling point. The About page says each question comes with detailed explanations written so students understand "not just the right answer but the thinking behind it," and that the content is designed by educational psychologists and experienced classroom teachers. A step-by-step mode lets students view the answer explanations.

Free practice

Most tests have free sample questions, and the tutors page describes 10-question sample tests that show how the products work. The free TEAS practice test is a larger example: no sign-up is required, it covers Reading, Math, Science and English Language Usage with an explanation for every question, and it comes with free study guide PDFs and a customizable study plan for preparation periods of 3 to 6 months.

The Family Membership

The Family Membership is a one-time payment for 12 months that opens five PrepPacks of the family's choice in one account with one username and password. Packs can mix tests, grades and subjects, so one child can practice for a gifted screening while another prepares for a grade-level math test, and a parent can drop back a grade to reteach a skill or move up a grade for extension work. Families add packs when they need them, and the 12 months start on the day of purchase. A pack added by mistake can be swapped if practice has not started.

Inside the membership, every test and quiz can be retaken as often as needed, practice is broken into short sections, and scores and progress are tracked in each pack. Two children can share one pack, but their practice is then recorded together. The site says the membership saves money compared with buying packs separately, with the biggest difference for families preparing more than one child or one child for more than one test. Optional tutoring sessions are sold separately and are not part of any pack or membership.

The membership, teacher and overview pages publish no prices for PrepPacks or for the membership itself.

For teachers and tutors

Teachers can buy multiple licenses at discounted rates for students' individual use, since the packs are not built for shared access. The current teacher deal is a 10% discount for 1 to 4 packages, 15% for 5 to 50 and 20% for more than 50, with orders of five or more handled by email. A Teachers Membership gives a tutor up to six separate practice accounts, one per student, so each can practice independently. The tutors page pitches the packs as a way to map out a student's strengths and weaknesses and test them along the way. A testimonial from Prestige Preparatory Academy describes using the MAP packs in class for grades 2 to 5.

Support, guarantee and reviews

The site advertises 24/7 customer support and shows a money-back guarantee badge on its purchase pages, with a separate refund policy linked in the footer. Parent testimonials on the About page come from the US and the UK. One parent says the MAP Growth 8th grade questions "were realistic and matched the style of the actual MAP test," and another says the Renaissance Star pack was "simple, engaging, and not overwhelming" for a 1st grader. A TEAS reviewer credits the pack's shortcuts and strategies for reaching "the score I needed for nursing school."

Who it suits

TestPrep-Online fits a parent who knows exactly which test a child faces, wants realistic practice and clear explanations to work through at home, and is comfortable guiding the practice themselves. The Family Membership makes most sense for households with several children or several tests in a year. Teachers and tutors get discounted licenses and a six-account membership for small groups, and nursing applicants get a structured TEAS pack with free material to start.

It is a practice and explanation service rather than a course with a teacher, so a student who needs live instruction would add tutoring or look elsewhere. Families who want to compare costs up front have to work from each product page.