NEW TAMPA, Fla. — For many students, SAT prep comes with a hefty price tag, but one Tampa Bay area teenager is leveling the playing field with a free app to help anyone succeed.
At just 16 years old, a Patel High School student is taking on one of the biggest stressors for teens by building an artificial intelligence-powered tutor.
WATCH: Tampa 16-year-old creates AI-powered SAT prep app to help students save thousands on tutoring
Eric MacDonald is the creator of AceIt, an AI-powered SAT prep app designed to help students study smarter.
"It uses like high quality algorithms and a little bit of AI to provide students the resources they need to kind of excel in their SAT prep," Eric MacDonald said.
Eric MacDonald said the idea came after seeing just how expensive traditional SAT tutoring can be.
"I saw the SAT was a very lucrative market and SAT tutors are charging like thousands and thousands just for pretty mediocre results," Eric MacDonald said.
He created a more accessible option that works like a tutor right on a smartphone.
"So that it's easily accessible and it's pretty cheap," Eric MacDonald said.
But the app did not happen overnight. Eric MacDonald has been coding since age nine, starting with games like Roblox and slowly moving on to more complex apps, including AI image generators, before eventually creating AceIt.
Launched in November 2025, the app already has more than 10,000 users. And he said he's done most of the work himself.
"I’m pretty much everything behind it —software, marketing, design…it’s pretty much been me the whole way," Eric MacDonald said.
For students like Matthew Gibbons, a sophomore at Patel High School, AceIt is helping build confidence and improve scores.
"I think it's definitely helping greatly because I can see how to improve my score with the questions I get wrong, and it pushes those questions more, so I can like hone in on what I'm not as good at, and get better at those sectors of the SAT," Gibbons said.
"Since I started using it, it really feels like I have more of a grasp on the type of questions they ask," Gibbons said.
Paul MacDonald, Eric's father, said he is not surprised by his son's success.
"He's a pretty smart and clever young man…he's done a lot of pretty remarkable things," Paul MacDonald said. "Definitely a proud daddy."
Eric MacDonald already has more than 100 five-star reviews —and he’s aiming for 200 as he works toward a fellowship to help expand his business.
"I hope to venture more into business and building a company…to make something that's truly great and seen by millions upon millions of people," Eric MacDonald said.
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