Prep Expert Review

Prep Expert was founded in 2016 by Dr. Shaan Patel after he appeared on the entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank. While the company primarily focuses on SAT and ACT preparation, it also offers tutoring and some admissions consulting services. This review will focus on the undergraduate admissions consulting service. In this comprehensive Prep Expert review, we’ll score them along five key metrics so that you have a full picture of whether Prep Expert is a good fit for you.

The founder, Dr. Shaan Patel, attended the University of Southern California and Yale University. He is not featured as a part of the admissions consulting team.

The admissions consulting branch of the company is headed by Akbar Rahel, who attended Georgetown University and the University of California, Berkeley. He and an unnamed partner appear to handle all consulting according to their website.

For their college admissions arm, Prep Expert offers a range of traditional services, like planning (including extracurricular recommendations), school selection advising, application strategies (assisting students with identifying what will make them stand out), essay reviews with feedback, interview preparation, and guidance on how to secure quality letters of recommendation. 

To engage with them, families have to first fill out a contact form. From there, Akbar Rahel will reach out for a free consultation.

Prep Expert’s Admissions Consulting Services 

Flagship Package – $6,999

• 25 hours of one-on-one consulting
• Recommended for Juniors & Seniors

Gold Package – $9,999

• 40 hours of one-on-one consulting
• Recommended for Juniors & Seniors

Platinum Package – $13,999

• 60 hours of one-on-one consulting
• Recommended for 8th graders and Freshmen. 

Customized packages are also available. Additional hours for all packages may be purchased at a rate of $300 per hour.

Finding a truly qualified consultant is half the battle. Some consultants have not gone to top-tier schools themselves, and repeat advice they hear from others. Also, some firms have a qualified “face” of the company, but then bait and switch you with a less experienced consultant after you’ve paid. That’s why we always start each review by doing full due diligence on the company’s consultants.

Prep Expert’s admissions consulting program is directed by Akbar Rahel. While Rahel holds degrees from Georgetown and the University of California, Berkeley, and has years of college admissions consulting experiences, the broad range of his professional experience and obligations are concerning. 

For example, he says he is currently teaching at the university level, tutoring students, and practicing as an attorney. On his Linkedin, he is not just an admissions consultant for Prep Expert, but also an active attorney at a law firm and founder of a different business.

The breadth of his professional commitments could mean that he has too much on his plate to manage the day-to-day details of Prep Expert’s admission consulting, which could indicate that there is not much oversight or consistency in the quality of their consulting. We are also concerned that there is little information provided regarding the staff that assists Akbar, with no mention of their credentials or experience.

The biggest risk when applying to college is following bad advice. You only have one shot, so you need to make it count, and choosing the right admissions service can make a big difference. We use a 50-point evaluation system to determine the likelihood a service will help a student get into their desired college.

As previously mentioned, we are concerned that Akbar Rahel is the only admissions consultant listed. While he may receive assistance from other staff, we have no way of knowing the quality of service or level of experience these behind-the-scenes individuals bring to the table. What’s more, if Rahel is the only consultant, then there is no recourse for families if he proves to be a poor fit for a student’s needs. 

We also have concerns about the vague language used in their admission consulting. Each package includes a predetermined number of counseling hours that are spent on “meetings, phone calls, edits, research for colleges and programs, and other components of the college application process.” As no limits are placed on how long these tasks might take, or if there is variance in how long it takes different consultants to tackle these tasks, it may be hard to predict how far a student will be able to stretch the provided hours given these limitations. 

It is also worth noting that Prep Expert does not offer any refunds for unused hours.

College is already expensive. College consultants shouldn’t be more expensive than they need to be. We want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth, and that your investment is translating into real improvements in your outcomes.

College admissions consulting prices and offerings vary. For this Prep Expert review we’ll consider their pricing for the most common needs:

• 12th graders who need help with essays and non-12 graders who want advice on the college admissions process: $279 per hour (minimum purchase of 25 hours at $6,999). *Note: This number is calculated by dividing the minimum financial commitment for 12th graders by the expected number of hours of one-on-one consulting.

This price is slightly below industry average. But given our concerns above, we are not sure that this is a clear winner.

College applications are already stressful enough. So any admissions service should be thoughtfully designed and easy to use. We consider factors such as customer support responsiveness, accountability, time commitment, and scheduling constraints.

We called Prep Expert’s number and found they quickly picked up during the work week, but we could not directly reach the admission consultant department since it seems to be solely Akbar Rahel. 

We filled out a contact form online and waited for Rahel to reach out over email, finding the response time to be between 24 and 48 hours. Overall, Prep Expert’s responsiveness seems standard, although it is obvious the test prep side of their business is much more developed than their college admissions consulting.

College admissions is a complex process, with many moving parts. And with the stakes so high, mediocre consultants simply won’t cut it. You really want to find the “best,” but it can be hard to differentiate one firm from another. In this section, we take a look at what makes this service stand out, for better or worse.

Prep Expert is much more heavily focused on test preparation rather than college admission consulting. Compared to other admissions prep companies, there is little that distinguishes Prep Expert from the competition. As far as we can tell, their admissions prep feels like a one man show which raises concerns about the consistency and availability of the service.