The free tier
This site, the Chicago Public Library system, Khan Academy, and a small set of free PDFs from CPS are all available at zero cost. A motivated student with a parent who can sit down for an hour twice a week can prepare adequately for the HSAT using only free resources. This is the path most CPS-admitted students actually use — there is no statistical evidence that paid prep predicts admission once family income and 7th-grade grades are controlled for.
What free prep gives you: full-length computer-based mocks, vocabulary practice, math problem banks, strategy guides, scoring projections, and the ability to start whenever you want. What it does not give you: an external schedule, a teacher to ask questions of, or the implicit social pressure of 'we paid $1000 for this so we are using it.'
If your child is self-motivated and you can supervise the prep yourself, the free tier is genuinely sufficient.
The $545 tier: CPS in-school courses
Many CPS middle schools offer an after-school HSAT prep course for around $545 (the price reported across r/chicago and confirmed by school newsletters in 2024-2025). The course typically runs 8-12 weeks, meets twice a week for 90 minutes, and is taught by a CPS teacher who has either taught the test prep multiple times or has been trained on the curriculum.
What you get: schedule discipline, peer accountability, in-person teacher feedback, and a structured 7-12 week curriculum. The instruction quality varies by teacher and by school — a strong teacher in this format can be excellent value; a weak one is just an organized study hall.
Who this works for: students who need external structure, families with two working parents who cannot supervise a 12-week home prep schedule, and students who learn well in groups. If your child is the kind who 'studies' alone but actually scrolls TikTok, the $545 buys real accountability.
The $1,500-3,000 tier: private group classes
Test Prep Chicago, Bloom & Wonder, and similar Chicago-area providers offer group classes specifically for the CPS HSAT, typically priced from $1,200 (small group, 6-8 weeks) up to $3,000 (premium class with extra mocks, score guarantees, or one-on-one review). The instructors are generally specialists and the materials are typically more polished than the school-based courses.
What you get: smaller class sizes (often 6-12 students), instructors who teach HSAT prep full-time, more practice mocks, and detailed score reporting. Many provide on-demand video review of mistakes and offer makeup sessions for missed classes.
Who this works for: students aiming for the most competitive SEHS programs (Walter Payton, Northside, Whitney Young) where the difference between 91st and 96th percentile matters, and families who value a polished product. Diminishing returns kick in here — the marginal score gain over the $545 tier is real but typically 10-30 points on the 900-point composite, not 50-100.
The $3,000+ tier: 1-on-1 tutoring and AI simulators
Private tutoring runs $80-150 per hour in Chicago. A typical 12-week prep with a private tutor (one hour per week) lands at $1,000-1,800; intensive tutoring (two hours per week) is $2,000-3,500. Add a paid simulator subscription (around $99-199 for a season) and the all-in cost can reach $4,000+.
What you get: fully customized instruction, real-time feedback on the exact problems your child is missing, and elite-level pacing and strategy work. A good tutor can correct deep-seated misconceptions that a group class would never catch.
Who this works for: students with specific learning differences, students whose 7th-grade grades are below the cutoff and need to overperform on the HSAT to compensate, or families for whom the cost is a comfortable allocation. For an academically average kid in a Tier 1 or Tier 2 area, the marginal score gain over a $545 course is typically 5-15 points on a 900-point composite — a real improvement, but well within the year-to-year variability of cutoffs.
Diminishing returns: where the money stops mattering
Every dollar spent on prep moves the score, but the curve flattens. The first $0 to $200 of prep effort (free site + a workbook + a parent who reviews mistakes) typically captures 70-80 percent of the achievable improvement for a given student. The next $500-1,000 of group class instruction adds another 10-15 percent. Private tutoring on top of that adds another 5-10 percent.
The implication: if your kid is a self-starter from a stable household, free prep is genuinely close to optimal. If your kid needs structure but learns reasonably well in groups, the $545 in-school course is excellent value. Above that, you are paying for marginal points and often for parent peace of mind more than for actual score gains.
What this site costs
Free. Always. No login required, no credit card, no upsells. The mock simulator, the strategy guides, the vocabulary practice, and the score projections are all free for any Chicago family. The site exists because the gap between the wealthy CPS families paying $3,000 and the working families with no budget is an admissions outcome we wanted to narrow.
If the free tier is not working for your family — your kid is not self-motivated, your schedule does not allow supervision, you want a teacher to ask questions of — the $545 in-school course is almost always the next-best option, well before any private course.
Bottom line
Free prep gets you most of the way. Paid prep is mostly buying schedule discipline and peer accountability, not actual score gains. The $545 CPS in-school option is genuinely good value for families who need structure. Private classes and tutoring make sense at the margin for students competing for the most selective programs, but the score-per-dollar curve flattens quickly.
Whatever you spend, the most important variables are 7th-grade grades (locked before HSAT prep starts) and the consistency of practice in the 8-12 weeks before the test. A kid using only this site, doing two practice mocks a week and reviewing their mistakes, will outperform a kid in an expensive class who shows up but never reviews wrong answers.