Live Online SAT from the US: September 2026 Snapshot, 10 of 63 Academies Disclose Online, 5 of 60 Management Cells Confirmed, 0 Time Zone Mentions

This is the September 2026 English edition of Hagwon Scale's US live series, restating the month's Korean-language data reports for Korean families in the United States who are weighing a live (real-time) SAT class run from Korea on US time zones, taken without returning to Korea. Three reports are consolidated here: the time zone guide of September 3, the management system recount of September 10, and the review recollection of September 17. Academy data is the August 31, 2026 refresh, Google review figures are the September 7 and September 17 collections, and the test calendar is the College Board 2026-27 international calendar as confirmed on September 3, 2026. Every figure below carries its collection date. Hagwon Scale is a neutral comparison portal that grades how far information can be verified, not teaching quality.

Three fall test dates remain and the November 1 time change moves two of them

The College Board international calendar lists five fall 2026 SAT weekend dates: August 22, September 12, October 3, November 7 and December 5. As of September 24, 2026, three remain and all three fall on a Saturday. Registration deadlines are October 23 (late registration October 27) for the November 7 date and November 20 (late November 24) for the December 5 date; the October 3 deadlines of September 18 and September 22 have passed. Korea does not observe daylight saving time and stays at UTC+9 year round, while the US mainland ends daylight saving time at 2 a.m. local on Sunday, November 1, 2026, which is 38 days after this report. Until then Korea runs 13 hours ahead of Eastern (EDT), 14 ahead of Central (CDT) and 16 ahead of Pacific (PDT); from November 1 the gaps widen by one hour each to 14, 15 and 17. A class fixed at 10 a.m. Sunday Korea time falls on Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central and 6 p.m. Pacific before the change, and 8 p.m., 7 p.m. and 5 p.m. after it. The last class under the pre change conversion is the Sunday, November 1 class in Korea time, and the post change conversion applies from the Sunday, November 8 class. Arizona is the exception, holding a fixed 16 hour gap year round; Hawaii stays at 19 hours and most of Alaska moves from 17 to 18. Because the November 7 test date falls six days after the change, that is the one remaining date where the local clock time of a Korea-fixed class shifts in the week before the test. On weekday slots the arithmetic does not change: working back from a local 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. window, Eastern students are available 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Korea time the next day, Central 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. and Pacific 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., so the only point where all three overlap is 10 a.m. Korea time.

Who discloses an online track: 10 of 63, with US time zones stated by 1

On the August 31, 2026 refresh, 10 of the 63 SAT and IB academies Hagwon Scale tracks include online in their operating format or location notation, down from 11 on the August 10 refresh. The decrease is a notation correction rather than a closure or a discontinued program: StarPrep Gangnam moved from an offline and online (US time zones) notation to offline only, and as a result the count of academies stating US time zones in their operating format fell from 2 to 1. The time zone guides of August 3 and September 3 recorded 2 on the data available at the time, and the count is 1 from the September 10 report onward. The 10 split evenly by track, with 5 SAT (Veterans Edu, Hackers SAT, Master Prep, PrestigeOn Tutoring, Shine Prep) and 5 IB (Royal Ivy, IB Master, EduSphere, Pinnacle Education, IB The Top). By format there are 5 running offline and online in parallel, 3 one-to-one online matching, 1 small group online and 1 recorded video course; a recorded course is not a live class, so a time-difference schedule does not apply to it at all. Verification grades across the 10 are V1 cross-verified 1, V2 multi-verified 1, V3 platform-verified 1 and V4 self-reported 7. Public Google reviews are confirmed for 4 of them: Veterans Edu 313 reviews at 4.9, Royal Ivy 48 at 4.9 and Hackers SAT 43 at 4.0 on the September 7 recollection, and IB The Top 2 at 5.0 on the July 16 collection; the remaining 6 have no confirmed public review listing. Across all 63 academies, the distribution as of September 14 is V1 1, V2 1, V3 7, V4 42 and V5 12, with 9 academies (14.3%) carrying third-party confirmation beyond self-disclosure and 650 stored reviews in total. The single academy whose US time zone live scheduling is confirmed by press reporting is Veterans Edu: Asia Economy reported on August 1, 2026 that its fall regular course for US-based students is scheduled on Sunday mornings Korea time, divided into sections by target score band, with separate English-only and Korean-English mixed sections. Hagwon Scale reads these items not as a ranking between academies but against three verification criteria: whether published results are self-reported or third-party confirmed, whether the Google review sample is large enough for a comparison to hold, and whether the time-difference schedule and the management system can be confirmed in writing. A verification grade indicates how far information can be checked, not the quality of instruction.

Management system: 5 of 60 cells confirmed by reporting, 0 cells for makeup classes

The September 10 recount widened the checklist from the 4 items used in August to 6: homework checks, error log management, makeup classes, parent reports, placement and promotion criteria, and curriculum parity with in-person classes. Six items across 10 academies gives 60 cells. Press reporting confirms the content of 5 cells, or 8.3% of the total, and all 5 come from one academy. Homework checks appear in Asia Economy (August 1), Hanskyung (August 6), Segye Ilbo and Hanskyung (August 11) and Dailian (September 1). Error log management appears in Electronic Times (July 30) on per-type and per-difficulty accuracy reporting from practice tests, and in Hanskyung (August 6) and Dailian (September 1) on the error review cycle. Parent reports appear in Asia Economy (August 1), Segye Ilbo and Hanskyung (August 11) and Dailian (September 1). Placement and promotion criteria rest on a single report, Dailian (September 1), stating that online students are placed by a level test before classes begin and moved up when their level rises. Curriculum parity rests on a single report, Asia Economy (August 1), stating that the instructors, materials and practice test schedule of the US-only sections match the domestic regular course. The same Dailian report carries the caveat that identical procedures still produce different outcomes depending on study volume and participation, so a confirmed cell means the procedure is on the public record, not that a result is guaranteed. The remaining 55 cells were not confirmed within the public sources collected, which is not a finding of weak management: only 1 of the 63 academies has any confirmed press record at all. Recounted on the August 4-item basis, this month's data gives 3 of 40 cells, or 7.5%. The one item at 0 cells across all 10 academies, unchanged from August, is makeup classes, with no description of how an absence is made up found in either third-party or self-published material. That gap matters most in this format because absences here come from scheduling arithmetic rather than from the student: a single weekday slot cannot hold Eastern and Pacific students without putting one side at a local hour late at night or before dawn, and after November 1 the local time of a Korea-fixed class moves an hour earlier in the week before the November 7 test date. Hagwon Scale published 12 written-confirmation questions, two per item, covering the homework check cycle and what follows a missed submission, the format of the error log and how repeat error types are handled in the next class, whether a makeup is a recording or a separate live session and whether limits or extra fees apply, the parent report cycle and whether it includes homework completion rates and error types beyond scores, whether the placement test time is adjusted to US time zones and what indicator drives promotion, and whether online students follow the same curriculum, materials, practice test schedule and instructors as in-person classes.

Review data: 312 reviews, no new review for 64 days, 0 time zone mentions in three collections

Hagwon Scale recollected the Google Maps reviews of Veterans Edu Apgujeong, the listing with the largest sample among academies disclosing US time zone live classes, on September 17, 2026. The listing holds 312 reviews at a 4.9 rating, down from 314 on August 7 and 313 on September 7, a net loss of 2 over 41 days. The star distribution is 296 five-star, 11 four-star, 3 three-star, 1 two-star and 1 one-star, so both lost reviews were five-star and the four lower bands are unchanged. The 4.9 rating has held across five collections since July 18. The latest 40 reviews are identical to the August 7 set in both star and posting date composition, with 39 posted July 8 and 1 posted July 15, meaning no new review has been confirmed in the 64 days since July 15; a review count can fall through author deletion or platform policy, so neither the decline nor the gap supports a reading about operations. Among those 40, reviews mentioning online, US, overseas or time difference fell from 3 to 2. One is from a student who took TOEFL and SAT online from overseas, who wrote that they had expected management to be loose in an online format but found teachers proactive and homework checked closely, and who noted starting late, in 11th grade. The other is a one-line review saying both online and in-person classes were taught well and that one-to-one consultation improved their results. Reviews directly mentioning US time zones, Eastern, Central or Pacific, or a time-difference schedule number 0, for the third consecutive body collection after July 18 and August 7. Counting word occurrences across the 40 bodies gives management 6, time 5, homework 3 and error 2, with parent report, makeup class and returning to Korea each at 0. The listing's registered business hours are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, with Sunday closed, which does not correspond to the Sunday morning Korea time scheduling of the US-only live course confirmed in the August 1 Asia Economy report; business hours describe the offline campus, not the online schedule. For US-based families the practical reading is narrow. Treat reviews as reference material only, since five collections have produced no review that describes the time zone structure, and get the operating structure on paper before paying: the time-difference schedule for Eastern, Central and Pacific, how the November 1 change and test week scheduling are handled, the homework check and error log cycles, the parent report cycle, and whether online students follow the same curriculum. Asking for a consultation answer to be summarized back by email leaves a reference point when the schedule is adjusted between terms. Question templates for US time zone live classes are compiled in the US live section of the Q&A page at /qna, with evidence-graded English answers at /qna-en, and format-level data on the academies disclosing online tracks can be compared on the /region/online page.