Most of our students meet with their tutors roughly twice per week. Each meeting averages about 90 minutes. In the context of our Efficient Prep billing method, this means you should plan for ~2.5 hours per week. But we’re flexible! If you’re more self-sufficient or you’d like to save some money, you can plan for 3 meetings every 2 weeks. We’ve also seen students succeed on 1 and even <1 meeting per week.

Every student is different. Message us in the chat or schedule a free consultation, and we’ll help you figure out your optimum number of hours prior to purchasing.

Each meeting is tracked on a “billable minutes basis.” This means our students are only charged for efficient prep time — time spent on true MCAT tutoring. Nobody deserves to pay for small talk, scheduling, or breaks. Our promise: You’ll never be charged for more than 95% of a meeting with us.

Many tutoring companies depend on students purchasing too many hours. Afterall, what’s better than revenue without the associated expenses? At 1SM, that’s not how we roll. You have options if you’ve purchased too many hours:

1) Convert your tutoring hours to credits toward other 1SM services
Say you purchased a 40-hour plan for $5,100 and finished your test prep with 4.9 hours remaining. We would calculate your hourly rate by subtracting the cost of UWorld ($209) and then dividing the total by the 40 hours: $(5,100 – 209)/40 = $122.28/hr (we always round in the student’s favor). Then, we multiply that hourly rate by the remaining hours: $122.28/hr x 4.9hrs = $599.15. We add this amount to the $400 credit toward additional services included in the original plan. The net total of $999.15 is available to the student for admissions advising, medical student coaching, or Step 1/Step 2 prep later in their career.

2) Receive a 75% refund on unused time
Due to processing, administrative fees, and the hourly-rate discount for larger packages, we can’t offer a 100% refund on unused time. Nevertheless, you can always get 75% back, no strings attached.

If you purchase fewer hours than you need, you can add more time at the hourly rate of your updated cumulative hour total.

For example, if you purchase the 30-hour plan for $4,200 and later decide you want 10 more hours, we’ll bill you at the hourly rate of the 40-hour plan. Here’s how we’d calculate it: $5,100 (40-hr plan price)/40hrs = $127.5/hr x 10 hrs = $1,275. While your overall cost would have been lower if you’d purchased 40 hours up front, this is a better deal than if we were to pretend we’d never met (total savings = $525).

As far as we know, we’re the only company in our industry with this policy.

After you sign up, you’ll receive a message from your tutor within 24 hours with their email address and cell phone number. You can use either means to reach out to schedule meetings as frequently as you’d like, provided it works with your tutor’s schedule. Most students will have 2 standing meetings in the calendar each week; however, we know life happens and schedules change, and we’re happy to communicate with you on a weekly basis to modify meeting days and times as needed.

Life happens, and sometimes you have to reschedule. We get it. That’s why we offer as much flexibility as possible. Our rescheduling policy is as follows:

• Rescheduling >48 hrs in advance:
We’ll never penalize you for rescheduling more than 48 hours in advance. Period, end of story.

• Rescheduling <48 hrs in advance:
All students start with 1 free last-minute cancellation/reschedule per 10 hours purchased, and an additional last-minute cancellation credit if your tutor needs to cancel or reschedule at the last minute. After students have used all of these credits, they will be billed for 30 minutes of tutoring for meetings rescheduled 24-48 hours prior to the meeting start time, and 60 minutes of tutoring for meetings rescheduled <24 hours prior to the meeting start time. Note: We hate billing for things we didn’t actually do, but our tutors are busy people, too, and need compensation for time-wasted.