The guarantee, written down in one place.

Here is the offer in one sentence: every Pro and Ultra plan now carries the same written guarantee, in one document, at /guarantee. Pro tiers carry a diagnostic-banded Improvement Guarantee. Ultra carries the same Improvement Guarantee plus an absolute 715+ floor — for every Ultra customer, regardless of diagnostic. The remedy on either track is the same: if the candidate completes the program and the score does not arrive, the next six months are free.

We get asked, regularly, how we arrived at those specific numbers. The honest answer is that the math is not exotic — it’s a careful read of how standardized-test score variance behaves across the score range, combined with a policy choice about where we’re willing to put our own money. This post walks through both halves.

The bands

Pro tiers (1-month, 4-month, 6-month) and Ultra all carry the following diagnostic-banded lifts. Ultra adds an absolute 715+ floor on top.

On Ultra, both columns apply. Whichever bar is harder for the candidate’s situation is the one Brightroom is on the line for. A candidate starting in the 565–605 band reads the Improvement Guarantee as +60 (exit at 665) and the Ultra Floor as 715+. The harder bar there is the Floor. A candidate starting at 715+ already reads the Floor as met on day one; the Improvement Guarantee at +20 is the one that decides the contract.

Why the lift shrinks as the diagnostic rises

The first question candidates ask is why a 420 candidate is promised +110 and a 720 candidate is promised +20. It looks, at first glance, like we’re less confident in our product at the top end.

It’s the opposite. The lift shrinks because the variance in score gain shrinks. Expected variance in score outcomes is empirically lower as test-takers approach the upper band — this is consistent with published research on standardized-test score variance, and it’s visible in any honest analysis of GMAT score-improvement data. A candidate at 420 has more raw point-room above them and the marginal item they get right is worth more in the scoring curve. A candidate at 720 has less room and a steeper marginal cost per point.

Promising +110 from 720 would be either dishonest or a coin flip. Promising +20 is something we can stand behind and write into a contract.

Why no diagnostic threshold on the Ultra Floor

The Ultra 715+ Floor applies to every Ultra customer. We do not gate it behind a starting-band threshold. That is a deliberate policy choice, and it is the thing that distinguishes Ultra structurally from the Pro tiers.

A candidate signing up to Ultra is paying for the per-candidate work the tier carries — the 24/7 expert chat, the personalised weekly review, the priority access to new surfaces, the team time spent on the trajectory. The price of Ultra is what funds that work, and the work is what we are accountable for. A candidate who completes the program and does not hit the floor is a candidate the work did not reach. The contract should treat that case the same regardless of where they started.

Eligibility, in full

The guarantee is real, which means it has terms. The terms are the same ones we’d ask of any candidate we were genuinely trying to coach to their score:

• Baseline submission. Forward your most recent official GMAT Focus score report — taken before you enrolled — to hello@bright-room.com within thirty days of your plan starting.
• Full Library completion. Every topic marked complete on the dashboard. The Library is the teaching surface; eligibility means the candidate actually used it.
• Three full-length Mock Exams completed inside the access window, distributed — not stacked in the final week. On Ultra, the minimum spacing is six weeks between consecutive Mocks.
• Six hundred or more practice questions across the window, in any combination of topics. The engine logs hours and item counts; the candidate does not self-report.
• Honest pacing. Mocks sat with the timer running, not as take-home exercises. This is the part we cannot enforce in code; we ask the candidate to honour it.

Candidates who hit all of these and miss their banded lift (Pro or Ultra) — or, for Ultra, miss the 715+ Floor — trigger the remedy. Candidates who do not hit eligibility do not.

The remedy

One mechanism. The plan renews for another six months at no charge. The engine keeps running, the candidate keeps practicing, the next mock sits, the next live test gets prepared for. There is no second invoice and no clawback of access. The renewal is automatic against the candidate’s account once the official live-test score is recorded.

Same remedy on Pro as on Ultra. Same remedy for the Improvement Guarantee as for the Ultra 715+ Floor. The candidate who triggered the guarantee gets six months of continued work on the engine that was coaching them; the company keeps building, and stays on the hook for the outcome.

Why renewal, not refund

Two reasons we wrote the remedy as renewal rather than money back.

First, incentive alignment. A refund pays the candidate out but leaves the score where it is — which is rarely what the candidate actually wants. A candidate who completed the program and missed the floor is, in our internal data, a candidate the engine can identify a closable gap for in the next window. Continued access is the path that materially closes that gap. A refund is the path that lets us off the hook.

Second, the renewal mechanic keeps the company on the hook for delivering the score next window, not just for refunding the last one. Every time the team debates a feature, the question “does this actually move the candidate toward their banded endpoint” has a price tag attached — the renewals we’ll be running if the answer is no. That clarifies the meeting.

Eligibility window

This consolidated contract applies to plans purchased and started on or after May 1, 2026. Candidates on earlier plans operated under the November 2024 Pro contract and the May 2025 Ultra addendum; both honoured the same renewal remedy against the bands that applied at the time. The contract on this page is what every plan started from May 1 onward operates under.

Closing

If you take one thing from this post, take this: every number above is something we’re willing to write into a contract and pay out on. The bands aren’t marketing. The 715+ floor isn’t marketing. The renewal remedy isn’t marketing. They’re the terms.

We’ll publish another note like this one whenever the terms change. They don’t change often, and they don’t change quietly.

— Nicola & Joel