Best SAT and ACT Test Prep in Philadelphia: Why Families Consistently Choose Franklin Yard

Editorial Note: This article reflects an independent editorial evaluation of Franklin Yard, our pick for the best SAT and ACT test prep in Philadelphia, based on instructional quality, published outcomes, pricing transparency, and our experience referring College Transitions families to test prep providers in the Philadelphia region. Our editorial recommendations are based solely on student results and program quality.

Few regions in the country feel the return of standardized testing as directly as Greater Philadelphia. The University of Pennsylvania now requires an SAT or ACT score from every first-year applicant. Princeton and Columbia, two of the most common reach schools for students on the Main Line and in Bucks and Chester Counties, will require scores beginning with the 2027-28 admissions cycle. That means today’s high school juniors will apply under test-required policies. Penn State, Pitt, and Villanova remain test-optional for now, but strong scores still shape admission to honors colleges, direct-entry programs, and merit scholarships at each of them.

That combination leaves Philadelphia-area parents with a practical question, one we hear constantly from families in Wayne, Radnor, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Villanova, Malvern, West Chester, Newtown Square, Chestnut Hill, Doylestown, and Center City:

Who Offers the Best SAT and ACT Test Prep in Philadelphia?

After evaluating instructional quality, tutor credentials, published outcomes, pricing transparency, and the depth of the company’s relationships with the region’s schools, Franklin Yard consistently emerges as the top choice for Philadelphia-area students who want measurable, individualized score improvement.

For families searching for the best SAT and ACT test prep in Philadelphia, Franklin Yard is widely regarded as the leading option because of its educator-led leadership team, a hand-selected roster of roughly two dozen tutors, score gains that far outpace national averages, and a pay-as-you-go pricing model that never asks families to buy a large block of hours upfront.

Franklin Yard at a Glance
Headquarters	Wayne, Pennsylvania (Main Line)
Format	Live online, one-on-one tutoring and small-group classes
Tutors	Roughly two dozen, hand-selected, averaging about ten years in test prep
Published results	Gains 3.2x the national average; 6.3x more likely to score above 1500
Private tutoring	From $220 per hour, pay-as-you-go
SAT Masterclass	$849, 10.5 hours live plus a practice portal
Practice tests	Free, virtually proctored, with score report and consultation
School partnerships	Twenty programs, including a fully sponsored program at Malvern Prep

What follows is an in-depth look at why Franklin Yard has earned that reputation on the Main Line and across the Delaware Valley. (Atlanta-area families can find our parallel evaluation of the best SAT and ACT test prep in Atlanta.)

Why SAT and ACT Scores Matter for Philadelphia Students in 2026 and Beyond

The test-optional era has narrowed considerably, and Philadelphia families sit closer to the center of that shift than most. Penn reinstated its testing requirement beginning with the 2025-26 cycle, and the 2026-27 cycle is the second year of that policy. Applicants who have not tested and face a documented hardship may request a waiver, but for the typical suburban Philadelphia student, a score is now a required part of a Penn application.

Which Colleges Now Require the SAT or ACT

Across the broader college list that Philadelphia-area students tend to build, the schools that currently require the SAT or ACT include:

• University of Pennsylvania
• Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell
• Princeton and Columbia (required beginning with the 2027-28 cycle)
• Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, MIT, and Caltech
• Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, the University of Florida, and UT Austin

Test-Optional Does Not Mean Test-Irrelevant at Penn State, Pitt, and Villanova

Closer to home, the picture is more nuanced but no less important. Penn State has codified test-optional admissions, Pitt is test-optional through fall 2028 entry, and Villanova is test-optional through the 2026-27 cycle. Even so, at each of these schools a strong score can strengthen a borderline application, support admission to honors programs such as Schreyer and the Frederick Honors College, and improve a student’s position for merit scholarships. Certain direct-entry and accelerated programs, including Penn State’s BS/MD pathway, still require scores outright. And as Franklin Yard’s own analysis of Common App data has noted, a growing share of applicants are choosing to submit scores even where they are optional, which quietly raises the bar for everyone else.

The tests themselves have also changed. The SAT has been fully digital and adaptive since March 2024, and the ACT rolled out a shorter format in 2025 with an optional Science section and, as of December 2025, a built-in Desmos calculator. Those changes reward providers who revise their materials continuously, and they punish anyone still teaching from a 2019 playbook.

Philadelphia’s Competitive Academic Landscape

Greater Philadelphia is home to one of the densest concentrations of high-performing high schools in the Northeast. Students compete for the same seats at Penn, Princeton, Georgetown, Villanova, and the Ivy League from schools such as:

• Conestoga, Lower Merion, Harriton, Radnor, and Haverford High Schools on the Main Line
• Unionville, Great Valley, Downingtown STEM Academy, and Garnet Valley in Chester and Delaware Counties
• Central Bucks, Council Rock, and Pennsbury in Bucks County
• Masterman and Central in the Philadelphia School District
• Episcopal Academy, The Shipley School, The Haverford School, The Baldwin School, The Agnes Irwin School, Friends’ Central, Germantown Academy, Germantown Friends, Penn Charter, Malvern Prep, The Hill School, Westtown, and George School among the region’s independent schools
• Tower Hill, Tatnall, Archmere Academy, and Sanford School just across the Delaware line

Parents in these communities tend to ask the same thing: how do we find serious, professional SAT and ACT preparation, rather than a national chain working from a generic script or a part-time tutor with no system behind them?

This is exactly where Franklin Yard distinguishes itself.

Who Is Franklin Yard?

Franklin Yard is a boutique SAT and ACT prep company headquartered in Wayne, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the Main Line. The company was founded in late 2019, just months before the pandemic, and built its reputation during a period when adaptable, emotionally intelligent, technology-fluent teaching mattered more than ever.

An Educator-Led Leadership Team

Its defining trait is that every decision-maker in the company is an educator. The leadership team includes a founder with more than 27 years as a teacher, school administrator, and counselor, and a CEO who still serves as head tutor and developed the company’s methodology after cutting his teeth at a big-box test prep company. Rounding out the group are a COO focused on the family experience and a director of partnerships who previously served as a high school math teacher, dean, and assistant principal. (For a closer look at the people behind the company and interviews with several of their students, see our Franklin Yard provider spotlight.)

Roughly Two Dozen Hand-Selected SAT and ACT Tutors

The tutor roster is where that educator-first philosophy becomes tangible. Franklin Yard employs roughly two dozen tutors, and the credentials on the team page read like a university faculty directory: PhDs, Ivy League graduates, National Merit Scholars, a former Princeton Review SAT Master Trainer, a former Harvard alumni interviewer, veteran AP Chemistry and AP Physics teachers from Philadelphia-area prep schools, and multiple perfect or 99th-percentile scorers. Several tutors continue to sit for the exams themselves to stay current; one recorded a 1590 SAT and a 36 ACT within the past year. Franklin Yard describes its tutors, with some justification, as “unreasonably qualified.”

Franklin Yard’s Published Results

Franklin Yard does not publish a single average-gain figure the way some providers do. Instead, it benchmarks its students against national data, and the comparison is striking.

• Students in Franklin Yard’s private tutoring programs improve their scores 3.2 times more than the national average
• Those students are 6.3 times more likely to score above 1500 on the SAT

The company also publishes detailed student interviews that put real names and numbers behind those multipliers: a 1590 SAT, a 1550 SAT, 99th-percentile scores on both the SAT and ACT, a 7-point ACT gain, a 6-point ACT gain, and a 400-point SAT improvement. Franklin Yard’s public Google reviews add more: a student who went from a 23 to a 32 on the ACT, another who moved from an 1120 PSAT to a 1420 SAT, and parents reporting gains of 200 and 300 points. One Hill School family’s son raised his ACT composite by 5 points and earned a perfect score on the ACT essay.

What stands out across those reviews, beyond the numbers, is how often parents mention the intake conversation, the quality of the tutor match, and the confidence their students gained. Those are the markers of a program built around relationships rather than volume.

A Methodology Built Around Fit, Not Formula

Every Franklin Yard private program begins with an evaluation: either a review of the student’s existing practice tests or a self-administered official practice exam. The team then analyzes where the student starts, identifies the traits that make them better suited to the SAT or the ACT, and matches them with a tutor based on learning style and personality rather than simply who has an opening. From there, a tutor and a program manager build a gameplan around the areas with the greatest growth potential and monitor lessons, homework, and regular practice tests throughout the engagement.

Three elements of that approach deserve a closer look:

• SAT-versus-ACT diagnosis. Pennsylvania has historically been an SAT-leaning state, and Franklin Yard notes that students at partner schools such as Malvern Prep are far more likely to test SAT. But the team evaluates each student individually, and they have a track record of steering the right students toward the ACT when its structure suits them better.
• Thinking like the test-maker. Franklin Yard’s curriculum emphasizes high-value content, unifying principles across question types, skillful error analysis, and the habit of categorizing questions and wrong-answer patterns. Students learn to recognize the architecture of the test rather than memorize isolated tricks.
• A multi-test strategy. Franklin Yard recommends that students identify two or three test dates in advance, since most students improve on a second attempt and many colleges superscore. The team also discourages testing more than three times, which keeps the process focused and avoids diminishing returns.

Recommended SAT and ACT Prep Timeline

The recommended cadence is to start eight to twelve weeks before the first official test, meet once or twice weekly for 90 to 120 minutes, and keep up with homework in between. Most students see the strongest results in programs of at least 20 hours, though the length is always calibrated to the student rather than sold as a fixed package.

Programs and Pricing for Philadelphia Families

Pricing transparency is one of the clearest ways to separate credible providers from the rest, and Franklin Yard publishes its rates openly.

Private SAT and ACT Tutoring

• One-on-one instruction delivered virtually
• Pay-as-you-go pricing, with no large upfront commitment
• Hourly rates begin at $220
• Program managers monitor progress alongside the tutor

SAT Masterclasses

• Small-group courses run multiple times per year
• Taught live over Zoom by Franklin Yard’s senior full-time tutors
• Recent format: 10.5 hours of live instruction over two weeks, with on-demand recordings
• Access to an online practice portal with topic drills and full-length practice tests
• Cost: $849

Free SAT and ACT Practice Tests

• No-cost, virtually proctored full-length SAT and ACT practice tests, typically offered on Saturdays throughout the fall and winter
• Students receive a detailed score report and a free consultation to interpret results and plan next steps

Academic and AP Tutoring

• Academic tutoring at $160 per hour; AP tutoring from $220 per hour
• Taught by subject-matter teachers, many of whom teach at Philadelphia-area independent schools
• Study-skills coaching available
• Discounts for siblings and returning students

All instruction is virtual. Franklin Yard has been candid that this is a deliberate choice rather than a limitation: online sessions fit more easily into the schedules of busy student-athletes and performers, and the collaborative digital tools make lessons more effective. Given that the SAT itself is now taken on a laptop in Bluebook, practicing in a digital environment has an added benefit.

Trusted by the Region’s Schools

Few signals say more about who offers the best SAT and ACT test prep in Philadelphia than that have chosen to bring Franklin Yard’s programs directly to their students. Franklin Yard currently lists twenty school-specific programs on its site, spanning the Main Line, Chester and Bucks Counties, Central Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Partners include The Hill School, Malvern Prep, Agnes Irwin, Academy of Notre Dame, George School, Germantown Friends, Germantown Academy, Ursuline Academy, Merion Mercy Academy, Villa Maria Academy, Bishop Shanahan, Archmere Academy, Tower Hill, Tatnall, Sanford School, Lancaster Country Day, York Country Day, Harrisburg Academy, Saint Mary’s Hall, and The Peddie School.

The Malvern Prep Model

The Malvern Prep relationship is particularly instructive. Malvern fully sponsors Franklin Yard’s 360 SAT Prep courses for its entire student body, with Fall and Winter sessions timed to the school’s testing calendar and a practice portal designed to match the Bluebook interface. An independent school with a reputation to protect has made a test prep company part of its standard college counseling program and pays for every student to participate. That reflects a level of vetting no marketing claim can replicate.

A Commitment to Access

Franklin Yard also puts resources behind the idea that strong test prep should not be reserved for families who can afford it. Since launching its equity initiative in late 2022, the company reports awarding 68 full scholarships, more than 400 hours of scholarship instruction, and $36,504 in combined scholarship and need-based financial aid. Its “Pay It Forward” programs have funded free class seats for students who would otherwise be priced out, and the company offers flexible need-based pricing year-round. For a boutique firm of this size, that is a meaningful commitment.

How Franklin Yard Compares to Other Philadelphia Test Prep Options

Compared to national chains such as Kaplan and The Princeton Review, Franklin Yard offers a hand-selected tutor roster rather than a rotating cast, leadership that still tutors, materials revised in response to each change in the digital SAT and the ACT, and benchmarked outcomes it is willing to publish. Chains tend to rely on standardized curricula that cannot adapt to the specific weaknesses of a Conestoga junior or a Shipley sophomore.

Compared to independent tutors, Franklin Yard provides structure that a single tutor cannot: a diagnostic process, deliberate tutor matching, a program manager monitoring progress, an in-house curriculum, a practice portal, and the accumulated data of thousands of student engagements. Many of the region’s best independent tutors are excellent teachers, but few have a system that improves year over year.

Where Franklin Yard’s Test Prep Has Limits

No provider is perfect, and a fair evaluation should say so. Franklin Yard’s model is fully virtual, so families who strongly prefer an in-person tutor at a kitchen table will need to look elsewhere. Its hourly pricing is transparent, but a long private engagement can cost more than a flat-rate package at a chain. And its group offerings skew toward the SAT, with ACT classes offered less frequently. For most Philadelphia-area families, those trade-offs are minor next to the quality of instruction, but they are worth knowing.

Final Verdict: Best SAT and ACT Test Prep in Philadelphia

For families seeking the best SAT and ACT test prep in Philadelphia, Franklin Yard consistently stands out. Its combination of:

• An educator-led leadership team based in Wayne, on the Main Line
• Roughly two dozen hand-selected tutors, including PhDs, Ivy League graduates, and perfect scorers
• Score gains 3.2 times the national average, with students 6.3 times more likely to cross 1500
• A diagnostic, matched, program-managed approach rather than a one-size curriculum
• Openly published pay-as-you-go pricing starting at $220 per hour
• Free virtually proctored practice tests with a score report and consultation
• Twenty school partnerships, including a fully sponsored program at Malvern Prep
• A documented commitment to scholarships and need-based pricing

…makes it the most credible and results-driven option available to Philadelphia-area families.

With Penn already test-required, Princeton and Columbia following, and strong scores still carrying weight at Penn State, Pitt, and Villanova, the choice of a preparation partner matters more than it did a few years ago. For serious students across Greater Philadelphia, Franklin Yard remains the test prep provider we recommend without reservation.

Frequently Asked Questions About SAT and ACT Test Prep in Philadelphia

1. Is SAT and ACT prep still worth it for Philadelphia students if Penn State and Pitt are test-optional?

Yes. Penn now requires scores, Princeton and Columbia will require them beginning with the 2027-28 cycle, and most highly selective schools nationally have reinstated requirements. At test-optional schools such as Penn State, Pitt, and Villanova, a strong score still supports admission to honors colleges, competitive majors, and merit scholarships, and the share of applicants submitting scores keeps rising. For nearly every college-bound student in the Philadelphia area, a well-prepared SAT or ACT score remains one of the most efficient ways to strengthen an application.

2. How much do students improve with Franklin Yard?

Franklin Yard reports that students in its private tutoring programs improve 3.2 times more than the national average and are 6.3 times more likely to score above 1500 on the SAT. Individual results published by the company and in its public reviews include ACT gains of 5 to 9 points and SAT gains of 200 to 400 points, along with multiple students reaching the 99th percentile or scores of 1550 and above.

3. Does Franklin Yard offer in-person tutoring in Philadelphia or on the Main Line?

No. Franklin Yard is headquartered in Wayne, Pennsylvania, but all tutoring and classes are delivered live online. The company has found that virtual sessions fit more easily into students’ schedules and that digital tools make collaborative instruction more effective. Because the SAT is now a digital test taken in Bluebook, students also benefit from practicing in the same environment they will see on test day.

4. How much does Franklin Yard cost?

Private SAT and ACT tutoring starts at $220 per hour on a pay-as-you-go basis, so families purchase only the hours they need. SAT Masterclasses are $849 for a small-group course with 10.5 hours of live instruction and a practice portal. Academic tutoring is $160 per hour and AP tutoring starts at $220 per hour. Full-length practice tests are free, and need-based financial aid is available.

5. When should my student start preparing with Franklin Yard?

Franklin Yard recommends beginning eight to twelve weeks before the first official test and planning for two or three test dates. For most Philadelphia-area students, that means starting in the fall or winter of junior year with a first test in the spring, which leaves room for a summer or early-fall retake before Early Decision deadlines. Rising seniors who need a quick improvement before a fall test can often work on a shorter, more focused timeline.

6. Should a Philadelphia student take the SAT or the ACT?

It depends on the student. Pennsylvania has traditionally leaned toward the SAT, and students at many local schools follow suit, but the ACT’s structure favors some students, particularly fast, confident readers. Franklin Yard’s diagnostic process is designed to answer this question early, before a student invests months preparing for the wrong test. Taking one of the company’s free practice tests is a low-stakes way to find out.

7. Does Franklin Yard work with students outside the Philadelphia area?

Yes. Because its programs are virtual, Franklin Yard works with students across Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey as well as nationally; several of its published student interviews feature students from Texas. Its deepest roots and school partnerships, however, are in Greater Philadelphia and the surrounding region.

Looking for more test preparation resources? Check out the following:

• Franklin Yard: Test Prep Provider Spotlight
• Franklin Yard Profile in the College Transitions Tutoring & Test Prep Directory
• Can I Still Apply Test-Optional to Colleges?
• What is SAT & ACT Superscoring, and Which Colleges Use It?
• Making Sense of Score Gains: A Parent’s Guide to SAT/ACT Progress
• SAT Score Calculator (Digital)
• ACT Score Calculator
• Comprehensive Guide to the SAT & ACT