Jefferson Prep Reviews
I worked with a Jefferson Prep teacher through their online portal and I was pleased. The price was very low. I am still paying back student loans so having an affordable GRE tutor was a critical and decisive factor for me.
The teacher was very experienced and checked in with on the day of my exam to see how it went. I thought that was very nice of her.
To make a long story shorter, I got the score I wanted and I will recommend Jefferson Prep to others.
Jorge
They fired me cause I'm black. Stay away from them. They are racist. I have reported them to bbb and us department of FBI for being racist
My score did not go up. My tutor was old and not friendly. I spent $1000 for what?? Not sure. Just so some fat cat VIP could drive a bentley probably.
STAY AWAY
Took my money, didn't reply to my emails ... a total scam!
Yes, I agree with you. They basically took my money/ services too. They hired me to teach an ESL class and I am still trying to get them to pay me. The class ended in November and I haven't heard back from them. Seems like they diappeared. When I was still teaching they are decent and timely with their emails back and forth. Now that the class is over and Omni Hotels paid them already...this middle man just pocketed the money and I guess ain't gonna pay me. I definitely will not be teaching for them again and will find legal help if I could afford it =(
I liked my teacher but I don't think it was the right price. I think they charge me too much.
Book Bind: Book Dealer Pleads Guilty to Second-Degree Theft
By Brendan SmithAll Articles
Legal TimesJanuary 29, 2007
Reza Bahar, an American law school alum who runs Tolstoybooks, was sentenced in D.C. Superior Court last week to one year of probation and 100 hours of community service after pleading guilty to second-degree theft.
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=900005472292
It has become very obvious to me that Reza, Richard, or whoever is behind this criminal operation is too afraid to challenge or provide his side of the story. Instead this so called "company" threatens law suits for defamation. I challenge Jefferson Prep to take me to court. Richard, Reza or whoever runs Jefferson Prep is a CRIMINAL!!!!!!!! I paid money and never received a refund or service, Jefferson Prep STEALS!!!! Plan and simple JEFFERSON PREP IS A SCAM! this company should not be trusted with your money, and if they cant be trusted with your money why would anyone be crazy enough to let them send a tutor to their home. If they are willing to STEAL then who knows what else this CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION is willing to do!
I hope they actually try and sue me, the truth is on my side.
I think this is too expensive a service for the value. I did not dislike my teacher but the price was too high and so I do not recommend.
If you want to pay $1000 for an overpriced tutor, go ahead.
I would save the money and go with another company or a private tutor.
Also they are really annoying about the locations. I wanted the session at my building but they said no like I'm suspicious or something. Whatever.
I'm not saying these guys aren't a scam, but in this day and age, it is reasonable that they won't send someone to your house.
I tutored a student for Persian language in Montreal, this summer. I held all the sessions which was 20 hours with the rate of $20 per hour. They only paid me for 6 hours and they refuse to pay me the rest, they don't even answer my emails. I call this fraud and scam. this is an abuse and disrespect to education. I am very upset and outraged.
The same thing happened to me. Though they only paid me for 3 hours. They still owe me many hours! It is a scam when you get hired and never get to see the person and the only way of communicating is emails. It's easy for them to ignore me asking for payment. Their excuse is PayPal won't let their payment go through because they don't have my correct email address!!! and this is what they emailed me =( what the heck right? SCAM It is. I don't recommend anyone working for Jefferson Prep unless they want to not get paid, have to pay for their own gas to commute around town...and just have JP pocket all the tuition that they charge the students/ companies. Horrible people! I am just as upset and outraged as you Mr. Persian tutor. How can someone rip off hard working teachers right? That is just wrong!
Haha this is too funny! Do you realize how offensive your post is? You are attacking the tutor's ethnicity! This is blatantly racist !!!
Jefferson Prep never paid me for my tutoring services. Richard Bahar the supposed owner/accountant seems to run a very sketchy company, hiring people off of Craig's list to tutor that he does not even know (no background checks, no resume etc.). After completing services for Jefferson Prep I still have yet to be paid. I would be careful using this company!
Be very careful they will switch many teachers/tutors on you because eventually the teachers leave when they don't get paid. I stuck it out till the end of the course because I really liked the students. The teacher before me quit and stories that were told about why the teacher left did not match up. I guess that's why I won't continue either.
I worked for them and had a good experience.
Definitely a great experience from beginning to end. The woman with whom I spoke during my initial conversation set the tone for a great experience all around. She was polite, patient with my questions, and NOT pushy - the latter was especially appreciated, as some other companies I called tried to make me register during my initial phone call. Come on! It's not like you're buying a bar of soap; this is important stuff.
So I was trying to decide between jefferson and kaplan, and she offered a free trial with one of their tutors. i would TOTALLY REcommend that you do this, as you can feel the fit with the tutor before handing over a chunk of money.
The trial session was great and it turned into a 30 hour LSAT Package. I just got my admissions results and I'm thrilled. Deciding between UT-Austin and NYU, both top 10 schools. Couldn't have done it without this great tutor.
I have recommended and will continue to recommend to my friends and anyone who asks!
Congratulations! Happy to hear you got into UT-Austin!
Did you also do admissions consulting with them? I'm trying to decide if I should
sign up for this. I met with one of their admissions consultants and he seemed good.
Any thoughts?
Hi Alisson,
No I didn't use the admissions consulting service. And I wouldn't recommend it; usually these consultants charge ridiculously high fees for some basic grunt work like completing your application.
and PS, you can probably find a cheap admissions consultant at a local university. Call around and you can find someone who has interned at an admissions office and they can walk you through the process!
Good luck!
do you think i should sign up for admissions consulting in person or via video? big price difference. please let me know what you think!
I called asking for a free trial but they said they can't offer this during the summer because it's their peak season and they are busy. When did you get your free trial? Seems annoying I can't get one. Thanx.
david
Are you the owner or one of the people that run Jefferson Prep? I don't think it's awesome for the students or the teachers.
I think it was annoying they couldn't send to my house but oh well. I went to inlingua instead.
I made the mistake of signing up for private GRE prep with this outfit.
Big mistake.
First they wouldn't send their tutor to my house.
Second they send me some 40 year old Chinese lady with an accent to be my tutor.
Third my score went DOWN after the tutoring. Hear that?? It went DOWN.
This is America; why are they hiring foreign tutors who speak English with an accent?
What a scam.
Mr. Denton,
I was your tutor, and I am rather offended by this posting. I have a PhD from a top-ranked US university, and I have lived in the United States for over 25 years. My spoken English has a slight accent, but none of my students have ever made such a complaint.
I have contacted Jefferson Prep regarding your complaint and they will contact you as well to discuss.
Mr. Denton,
I spoke with Avni at Jefferson Prep and he said you can contact him to discuss this. He confirmed that no other previous student who I worked with ever complained about my accent.
As stated above, I have lived in the US for over 20 years and have taught hundreds of students.
hahahahahaha.. this is hilarious.
Pros:
Awesome tutor
Pretty convenient; the tutor Mr. Chen met me at a library in Brooklyn
Cons:
REALLY expensive. I paid $1500 for a 20 hour package
Weird schedule. Like he would be available some nights, but not others. We always had to schedule on a week by week basis; would have been ideal if I could have had a fixed schedule.
Overall I would recommend.
I agree that $1,500 is way too expensive. Especially when better companies like Princeton charge much less for more.
Hi y'all. Here's an update. I also checked our a company called Etutors and they're prices are really good. Much more affordable than this.
MTran Tutoring = better quality and price. The tutors also teach at the student's home or the office.
I was hired to be Arabic teacher for JeffersonPrep. I taught at they're New York office in Manhattan. They hired me to teach private and small group Arabic class. I teach beginner and intermediate Arabic - Levantine.
I taught for 1 year, but last week I was fired with only 2 weeks notice. This is because one of my students complained about me. But she was a liar.
She said that I was being rude when I invited her for coffee. But all i was doing was inviting all my students for coffee at the end of the course. She says I was doing something to make her "uncomfortable" - and Jefferson says I violated their rules about "misconduct."
I explained this to the manager in New York who is NOT a nice person. But they don't listen to me and do this very rude thing and fire me. I did nothing wrong.
I have a wife and a child and now I have to find a job in this terrible economy.
I do NOT like this company.
I don't find your review credible. I find your grammar to be terrible (I taught at they're New York office) + (But they don't listen to me), and asking a student out for coffee is unprofessional. "For any reason" Your implied comment that everyone else is wrong is just a cop out to you admitting your indiscretion. Admit your fault and learn how to be a professional and move on.
I was assigned to work with Mary there TOEFL tutor in New York. She was a very nice lady and she had many years experience working.
I was send to her because my friend who work at United Nations also used her with Jefferson Prep. She made me a lesson plan and it was ok. We work on my pronouncing English because my work is usualy meeting with English speaking colleagues.
But I was not happy at all with location.
I ask for Mary to come to my apartment for the sessions but she say that was not ok with their policy. So we had to meet at Jefferson Prep office
in upper east side.
But that was very far because I live in Brooklyn. I didn't want to travel all the way to upper east side for sessions.
So I don't like this part of the tutoring. I am very busy and I don't have time to take subway all over the city.
They should have send the teacher to my house.
I had registered for the MCAT tutor package for admission to medical program in American school. The Jefferson Prep customer service told me they can send me tutor in new york. We meet for the session at the library for 3 hour each time.
The package was very very expensive because I paid $999 for the 20 hours of MCAT. But I thought this was necesary for improve and gain admission.
But this price was extremely high. And my score did not get to 30 which
was my goal in MCAT. I was very upset.
I don't think they have nice customer services. I call them after my MCAT and say I should get refund. But they offer me 10 free hours of tutoring, not a refund.
Why would I want to continue with this tutor when my score not improve?
In conclusion I do not improve and so I do not recommend. And also very expensive.
Kim-Tae Hyun
Dude your english is terrible. Maybe that's why you didn't get into med school? just saying....
Funny how you complain against your tutor but don't even make an attempt to write in grammatical English. Now I know why I never became a teacher!
Mike, you are rude! How on earth do you know whether or not Kim-Tae Hyun made "an attempt to write in grammatical English"? It is not easy to write perfectly in your first language, much less in a second language. Are you really so perfect?
And your thinly-disguised racism is quite distressing, I might add.
I don't think a tutor or a teacher can guarantee a score specifically. You just have to practice more. Take the free hours if they give it to you. I haven't heard of them doing that before. Hmmm...racism? How?
I had private LSAT tutoring with one of their tutors name Tom, who was a nice enough guy.
But during the first session, I had to wait for 5 minutes while he tried to find our location. Hello? I'm paying $1000 for private tutoring, so why should I have to wait? Shouldn't the tutor be waiting for me?
Anyways I let it go. Tom had a good lesson plan and we used the LSAC materials. He also looked at two of my past diagnostics (scores of 161 and 159 for Feb and Dec, respectively). He was able to adjust what he taught to my weaknesses. So we skipped logic games because I scored near perfect on that section.
During our 3rd session, again he was late by 5 minutes. What nonsense.
I called Jefferson Prep and told them I should get a credit or something. They gave me 2 free hours because the tutor was late on 2 occasions. I thought this was lame but whatever.
If you sign up for private GMAT tutoring, ask for them to prepare a good lesson plan for you. In my experience this is the most important thing.
I wasn't too unhappy with my tutor (guy named Dr. Bonca) because he was prepared and had good experience. But I often had to remind him of what we had last covered. I signed up for tutoring because I was afraid that I wouldn't be disciplined enough to complete the online course.
Actually, most of my friends w/ mba's told me I would probably be successful studying on my own. However, I insisted on getting a tutor because it had been almost a decade since my last math class.
Stay away from Jefferson Prep otherwise you will regret as I do. I found them on craigslist. When I called, Richard Bahar sounded extremely nice. He said a lot of promising things to convince me to sign up. But shortly after I paid, he sent me a tutor he just grabbed from craigslist. This tutor doesn't have any teaching experience nor does he know much about the subject with which I needed help. I also found out that Richard Bahar had been lying to me all along! So I requested a cancellation but he refused to give me a full refund.
Look at the postings here, I think it is obvious to me that the real purpose of Mr. Bahar's business is not about tutoring, it is all about making money by cheating people!
Here is his money making model:
-- Convince customers to pay for the tutoring or other services in full price.
-- Grab and send tutors in any quality (or provide only initial service for non-tutoring services).
[ inexperienced tutors or interruption of non-tutoring services make customers unhappy; customers request for cancellation]
-- Provide minimum or no refunds to dissatisfied customers.
-- Pay no money or as little as possible to the tutors.
He makes decent money by doing this!
Thanks! Yes, I don't think the guy cares for education and the goal is just to make money and as a result students and tutors suffer
Crazy forum of comments! Hilarious in a way!
Richard Bahar formerly Reza Bahar is a con artist. He was charged with stealing books from American University's Law School. The charge in which he pleaded guilty said he stole an sold the books online. Makes me wonder why he changed his name to Richard...
That's why he changed his name to Richard.
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=900005472292&slreturn=1
How is this related to Jefferson Prep?
He is the owner of Jefferson Prep! Search the business entity detail for Jefferson Prep on the Virginia SCC website and you can see he owns Jefferson Prep.
Richard Bahar owns and runs Jefferson Prep
The company is currently owned by Advantage Test Prep
Holy cow! I think Richard Bahar (Reza Bahar) is watching this review site very closely. I checked the SCC website after seeing Lisa's post and I saw Richard Bahar was indeed the registered agent. This morning when I looked again it has been changed to DAN EARL. Poor guy... Oh wait! Is this possibly a fake name?
Hey James, how do you know it is currently owned by ATP?
Oh, he changed it on 4/26/2012 to:
DAN EARL
1400 KING STRET
ALEXANDRIA VA 22314
ALEXANDRIA CITY 200
Status: Active
Effective Date: 4/26/2012
Dan is one of the former tutors for Bahar. Folks, watch out! This guy can steal your identity.
What?
Did some tutoring jobs for Jefferson Prep and they never paid me for my services. Additionally, they hired me without a background check or any type of interview. Very disorganized.
I know private tutoring is supposed to be expensive, but $50 per hour charged by jeff prep is STEALING, plain and simple.
Look in an economy like this where people are suffering and capitalist fat cats on wall street are getting 1 billion dollar bonuses, you need a company that responds to the times.
But these sorry dudes charged me 50 bucks for some GRE math tutoring.
I should have listenened to friends and just bought a 20 dollar GRE book from the bookstore and taught myself GRE and algebra again.
All this tutor did was to teach me concepts I could have learned by myself.
And then they take their money and probably give it away in crazy expensive bonuses.
What a ripoff.
Save yourself the money and find a nice affordable tutor or just buy a book and teach / review for yourself.
Just curious, you thought $50/hr was too expensive, yet you agreed to pay that amount? And now you want to say it was their fault? Another liberal who can't take responsibility for himself.
