TL;DR: Three review centres in our Davao City records run LET programmes: CBRC on Vinzon Street in Barangay Obrero, Merge Review Center at the Davao Masonic Center Social Hall on V. Mapa Street, and St. Louis Review Center at 17-A General Luna Street. All three are in Poblacion District. None publishes a tuition figure for its Davao LET programme. Merge is the only one that publishes an actual class schedule, live online weekends via Zoom, 9am to 4pm Saturdays and Sundays, with a roughly 10-day final coaching intensive before the exam. SLRC has the deepest local review history at 3.9 from 22 Google reviews; Merge Davao has none on file.
The three, side by side
| CBRC Davao | Merge Review Center Davao | SLRC Davao | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Address | EFEMELA Bldg., Vinzon St. cor. Guzman St., Bo. Obrero | Davao Masonic Center Social Hall, V. Mapa St., Poblacion District | 17-A General Luna St., Poblacion District |
| Phone | 0917 326 1199 | 0998 866 3717 | (082) 222 8762 |
| Exams beyond LET | Criminology | Nursing, pharmacy, criminology | NLE |
| Face-to-face | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live online | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Hybrid | Yes | Yes | No |
| Published schedule | No | Yes | No |
| Published fee | No | No | No |
| Google rating | 3.3 (3 reviews) | None on file | 3.9 (22 reviews) |
Everything in that table comes from our own directory records and from each chain's published material. The full Davao list across all exams is on the Davao City review centres page, and our broader city roundup covering CPA, nursing and criminology is here.
They are all downtown, which is genuinely convenient
This is unusual and worth naming. All three sit in Poblacion District, Davao's downtown core. CBRC is in Barangay Obrero near the university cluster, Merge is on V. Mapa, and SLRC is on General Luna. You can visit all three in an afternoon on foot and jeepney, which is exactly what we would suggest doing before you pay anyone.
For a reviewee coming in from Panabo, Digos or Tagum, downtown is also where the provincial buses terminate, so a daily commute is at least theoretically workable in a way it would not be if these were spread across Buhangin, Matina and Toril.
The practical implication: location is not a differentiator here. Choose on programme, not on address.
What actually separates them
CBRC Davao: the national chain play
CBRC is the largest review chain in the country by its own count, 181 Philippine branches plus six international, and LET is its flagship programme. The Davao branch covers LET and criminology, with face-to-face, live online and hybrid delivery all on file.
What that buys you is optionality. If you move mid-review, there is probably a CBRC branch where you land. If your work schedule breaks, there is an online mode. If you switch from teaching to criminology, the same centre covers you. CBRC also runs free LET review material on its national site and advertises free books or scholarships to some reviewees, which is worth asking about by name.
What it does not buy you is a published price, a published Davao schedule, or a branch-level track record. Its three Google reviews averaging 3.3 tell you nothing reliable. Our CBRC guide covers the network in detail.
Merge Davao: the one that publishes a schedule
Merge is the smallest network of the three, established 2003 with branches it names as Angeles City, Makati and Davao. It is primarily a nursing and pharmacy review centre; LET sits alongside those rather than being the core business.
But Merge is the only one of the three that tells you, before you call, when classes actually happen:
- Live online weekend classes, Saturdays and Sundays, 9:00am to 4:00pm via Zoom
- Hybrid setup mixing online and face-to-face
- Simulated preboard examination with full rationale
- An intensive 10-day final coaching run before the exam date
- Formal batches that have historically opened in early January
That last point deserves a caveat: Merge's website was still displaying 2025 batch pages when we checked in September 2026, so the calendar shown may be stale. Treat the format as accurate and the dates as needing confirmation.
Merge also advertises a seasonal discount, 4,000 pesos off before a January cut-off. A discount without a published base rate is not price information. Ask what the number is before the discount.
SLRC Davao: the deepest local footprint
St. Louis Review Center is the most reviewed of the three locally, 3.9 from 22 Google reviews, and it runs from the KIDAR Building on General Luna. It covers LET and NLE.
SLRC also publishes more about its LET programme than the others do. Its national site lists general and professional education, major subjects coverage, mock exams and drills, intensive final coaching and access to online resources. It runs three formats nationally: face-to-face, live online with real-time instructors, and self-paced video review. And it publishes a genuinely free online reviewer covering LET, NLE, criminology and civil service, open without enrolment.
SLRC is also the only one of the three that publishes a price for anything: its NLE self-review pack at 990 pesos. That is a nursing product, not a LET one, so it does not help a teaching graduate directly. It does tell you the chain is willing to put numbers in public, which is more than the other two do. Our SLRC guide covers the network.
Nobody publishes LET tuition
Say it plainly: none of these three publishes what its Davao LET programme costs. Not on their websites, not on our records.
That is normal in this market and it is also the single most frustrating thing about it. What you can do is force comparability yourself. Call all three, and ask each the identical set of questions:
- What is the total for the LET programme, in writing?
- Are books and handouts included, or bought separately?
- Is final coaching inside that number or billed on top?
- Is majorship review for my specific major included, and who teaches it?
- How many full-length mock exams, and do I get item-level rationales?
- What is the class size?
- If I do not pass, what are the sit-in or discount terms next cycle?
Answers to questions 3, 4 and 5 will separate these centres far more than the headline tuition does. Our review centre cost guide explains why the market-wide range is so wide.
Majorship is the thing to interrogate
The LET has two levels, and for secondary the majorship component is where most candidates lose or gain their margin. General education and professional education are broadly standardised; majorship is not, and a review centre's ability to teach your particular major well varies enormously.
A centre offering "majorship review" may mean a full lecture series in Filipino, Math, English, Science, Social Studies and TLE, or it may mean handouts and a self-study pack for anything outside the big three. That difference will not show up in a price list. It shows up when you ask who teaches your major and how many hours it gets.
If your major is one of the smaller ones, ask specifically whether a batch will run for it or whether you will be pointed at self-study. Our LET guide covers the exam structure and the general average you need, and how to pass the LET first try covers what to do with the months between enrolling and sitting.
No centre here has a verifiable pass rate
All three chains market topnotchers and passers. SLRC's national site references producing hundreds of board topnotchers; CBRC says it consistently produces topnotchers and passers; both figures are undated and network-wide.
None of it is checkable, and this is not a knock on these three specifically. PRC publishes lists of passers by name. It does not release results by review centre. So no review centre anywhere in the Philippines can hand you an audited pass rate, and any that claims to is quoting itself. We set out what the official data actually supports in board exam passing rates by course.
Judge these three on what you can verify: format, schedule, majorship coverage, class size, and how straightforwardly they answer a direct question about money.
Our read
If you want the widest safety net, CBRC. If you want a published schedule and a defined final coaching block, Merge, with the dates confirmed by phone. If you want the one with the most local reviewee history and the most published detail about its LET programme, SLRC.
If you are choosing between board exams rather than between centres, note that Merge Davao covers four of them and CBRC covers two, which matters if you might switch tracks. The national field, for comparison, is in best LET review centres.
Sources
- SchoolFinderPH directory records for CBRC Davao Branch, Merge Review Center Davao City and St. Louis Review Center Davao City
- mergereview.com, for its published class format, weekend online schedule, final coaching block and seasonal discount line
- slrcreview.com, for its LET programme description, three review formats, free online reviewer and published NLE self-review price
- drcarlbalitareviewcenter.com, for the network's branch count, programme range and free-materials offers
