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Petersons.com is the website for Peterson’s LLC, an American company founded in 1966 to offer educational services to students. Peterson’s was privately held until The Thompson Corporation purchased it and became part of Thompson Learning and in 2007, Cengage Learning. On July 2006, Peterson’s was acquired by Nelnet; it remained part of the Nelnet family of companies until 2017. On December 31, 2017, Peterson’s was acquired by Triangle Digital Ventures, though it still lists Peterson's LLC as its owner at the bottom of its site.

Throughout the years, Peterson’s has acquired several companies specializing in education. In 2015, Peterson’s acquired Dean Vaughn Total Retention System. In 2016, it acquired Mind Streams which became Peterson’s Velocity.

The Peterson’s team is headquartered in Highlands Ranch, Colorado with over 50 full-time editors, educators, developers, data scientists, and instructional designers across the globe.

Customers and services

Peterson’s helps students discover, prepare for, and fund their education. Students and their parents visit Petersons.com to prepare for standardized tests and licensure exams like the ACT, SAT, GRE, or NCLEX. 

Peterson’s provides curated information, instruction, and introductions for educators and administrators such as high school teachers, guidance counselors, and college admissions counselors. 

Peterson’s provides service members from all branches of the military test preparation in print and online, information, and basic skills courses. Peterson’s is partners with DANTES and AFLIS to help service members achieve higher scores on college placement exams, military exams, and credit-by-exam tests.

Services and features

Petersons.com provides college search tools, scholarship search tools, test prep, editing services, marketing services, research, publishing, data licensing, and a memory retention system through Dean Vaughn.

Petersons.com provides a free college search tool helps students colleges, graduate schools, and online schools.

The free scholarship search tool; the scholarship search tool helps students find scholarships, grants, and awards.

Test prep on Petersons.com includes college tests like the ACT and SAT, grad school tests like MCAT and GMAT, career prep for military, firefighting, and EMT, and high school entrance exams like the TACHS and SSAT. Please note, each category has many more tests. Test prep guides and courses vary in price.

Petersons.com provides free information and guides for international students, including tips on visas, fees, interviews, and college admissions.

Peterson’s provides academic, graduate, and medical editing services in various subjects through EssayEdge.

Peterson’s also provides the Dean Vaughn Total Retention System, a learning software designed to help students and professionals maximize their memory.