“I felt like I was actually learning something”

Samantha, a rising senior from Texas, is interested in medicine, volunteers at a veterans clinic, and makes art, from ceramics to digital work. Her mom encouraged her to try Aristotle, and Samantha quickly gave it the most useful job in SAT prep: dealing with the questions she missed.

"I was finding the questions that I missed on all the practices, and I was giving them to Aristotle," she said.

Algebra from the attic

SAT math wasn’t always new concepts for Samantha. Sometimes it was older math wearing a disguise.

"It's simple math," she said, "but it's all these things that I learned a few years ago that I kind of need to brush up on."

Across 10 sessions and over 5 hours of tutoring, Aristotle helped her slow those questions down. She would ask it to "walk me through them, understand the whole thought process, and fix my thinking."

"Aristotle explains everything very in depth and it's very step by step," Samantha said.

Paying off on test day

The real win showed up when old mistakes started becoming usable memory on test day.

"There were like a few questions \[where\] it was like, oh yeah, I remember this question that I missed that Aristotle explained to me," Samantha said. "I remember the process there, and I can apply that here."

That’s different from grinding practice tests and hoping repetition magically turns into confidence. Samantha found a way to review the reasoning, not just the answer.

A buddy for the hard parts

Without Aristotle, Samantha said she mostly would’ve kept practicing on her own.

"I didn't really have a good way to practice otherwise," she said. "This was kind of like a good additional thing to add on because I felt like I was actually learning something that way."

She described Aristotle as interactive, like studying with someone beside her: "You have a buddy to help you out."

Next, Samantha expects to use Aristotle for AP Biology, especially the long processes that need more than just memorization. AP Bio, you’ve been warned.