Megareview is a civil engineering review centre with branches in Manila, Cebu City and Baguio City, plus an online video course. It also runs a master plumber track. Its website publishes branch addresses, phone numbers and topnotcher claims, and publishes no fee, no schedule and no programme length at all. Budget a phone call before you can compare it against anything.
Megareview and Tutorial Center sits on C.M. Recto Avenue in Sampaloc, a few minutes' walk from the University Belt and from the PRC's Manila office. Our directory entry for Megareview and Tutorial Center covers the address, phone and rating. This post covers the part a listing cannot: what the centre actually publishes about how its review works, and the questions that gap leaves you holding.
Who this centre is for
Megareview is narrow on purpose. The services section of its own site lists exactly two programmes: Civil Engineering and Master Plumber, with a third slot marked as future services. Everything on the homepage is addressed to civil engineering candidates, down to the greeting.
That narrowness is worth something. A centre teaching one board exam across three cities is putting its faculty and its materials into a single syllabus, which is a different proposition from a general chain running fifteen programmes out of the same rooms. If you are sitting the civil engineering board exam, you are the intended reviewee. If you are sitting the master plumber exam, you are on a secondary track that the site mentions but never describes.
If you are reviewing for anything else, this is not your centre, and the other options in Manila will serve you better.
What Megareview publishes
Working from the centre's own website, here is the full set of concrete facts a prospective reviewee can obtain without contacting anyone.
| Item | What the site says |
|---|---|
| Programmes | Civil Engineering; Master Plumber |
| Branches | Manila, Cebu City, Baguio City |
| Manila address | 1955 C.M. Recto Avenue, Sampaloc (Room 206, JPD Building) |
| Cebu address | 4th Floor, Jose R. Martinez Building, Osmena Boulevard |
| Baguio address | UGF-09, Upper Ground Floor, Pilando Center, Magsaysay Avenue |
| Online option | Megareview Online, a video-lecture course accessed through a student login |
| Founder | Dr. Amelia T. Marquez |
| Fees | Not published |
| Programme length | Not published |
| Class schedule | Not published |
| Class size | Not published |
| Accreditation | Not stated |
The contact page gives each branch a Smart and a Globe number, which is more branch-level detail than most Philippine review centre sites bother with. Note that the numbers on the site differ from the single number carried on the centre's Google listing, so use the site's branch numbers if you want the branch itself rather than a general line.
What it withholds, and why that matters
No fee appears anywhere. Not a range, not a package table, not a deposit figure. The enrolment path runs through a login, so pricing sits behind an account you cannot open casually. This is common in the sector and it is still a real cost to you: you cannot line Megareview up against a competitor on a spreadsheet without two phone calls, and phone quotes are easier to revise than a published page.
When you call, get the total, not the headline. Ask specifically whether review books and handouts are included, whether mock exams cost extra, whether the final coaching phase before the board is a separate enrolment, and whether the online course is bundled with the face-to-face programme or sold on its own. Our guide to what review centres actually cost covers the line items that usually sit outside the advertised figure.
There is a second gap worth naming. The site's menu carries a Review Team page, and the page loads without any instructor names or credentials on it. For an engineering review centre, faculty is most of the product. A civil engineering reviewee choosing between two centres is really choosing between two sets of lecturers, and Megareview does not currently let you see who they are before you enrol. Ask for names, and ask which of them teaches at the branch you would attend rather than at the flagship.
The master plumber track, and what it is not told about
Megareview lists Master Plumber as a distinct service alongside civil engineering. That is worth flagging because the master plumber exam is served by far fewer centres than the engineering boards, and a candidate in Manila does not have a long list of alternatives.
The problem is that the listing is all there is. The site gives the master plumber track a heading and no description: no syllabus coverage, no length, no schedule, no indication whether it shares lecturers with the civil engineering programme or runs on its own faculty. For a candidate deciding between reviewing here and reviewing alone, that is the whole decision, and none of it is answerable from the page.
Three things to ask if this is your exam. Does a master plumber batch actually run, and when did the last one run? Who teaches it, and are they registered master plumbers or civil engineers covering the material? Is the fee the same as the civil engineering programme or lower, given the shorter syllabus? A track that appears on a website but has not run a batch in two years is a listing, not a programme.
Signals about how current the site is
A few details tell you how actively the site is maintained, which matters when you are relying on it for addresses and offers.
The two branch address blocks are not identical. The homepage footer gives the Manila office as Room 206 of the JPD Building at 1955 C.M. Recto Avenue, and the Cebu office as the 4th floor of the Jose R. Martinez Building on Jones Avenue at Osmena Boulevard. The contact page gives the same street addresses without the room and floor detail for Manila, and a slightly different rendering for Cebu. They are consistent enough to be the same places, but the discrepancy is a reminder to confirm the room number before you turn up.
The terms of service page carries a last-updated date of May 2020 and refers throughout to a different domain from the one the site now runs on. That is boilerplate rather than a programme detail, but it does suggest the legal pages have not been revisited since the site was rebuilt. Do not assume the enrolment terms you would be agreeing to are the ones described there. Ask for the current enrolment terms in writing.
Reading the topnotcher claims
Megareview's homepage and about page both lead with performance. The specific claims are that the centre produced nine civil engineering topnotchers in April 2024, and that since the current Board of Examiners in Civil Engineering took office in May 2015, it has consistently held the highest number of topnotchers and produced the most Top 1 candidates.
Treat these as what they are: the centre's statements about itself. There is no independent register to check them against. PRC publishes examination results by examinee and separately recognises top-performing schools, but it does not publish a performance breakdown by review centre. That is true of every review centre in the country, not a knock against this one, and it is why claims like "highest passing percentage" are unauditable no matter who makes them.
A topnotcher count is also a weak proxy for what you want to know. Topnotchers are, by definition, the strongest handful of candidates in the country, and strong candidates enrol where other strong candidates enrol. The number that would actually help you is the share of that centre's own enrollees who passed, and no centre publishes it. Our post on how to read review centre track records goes through the questions that get closer to the truth.
Face-to-face, online, or both
Megareview runs both formats. Megareview Online is described as a complete video-lecture course covering board topics from foundational principles through harder problem sets, delivered through a student account. The face-to-face option runs at any of the three branches.
The site does not say whether the two are priced separately, whether online reviewees get access to live sessions, or how long online access runs. Those are the three questions that decide whether an online enrolment is a bargain or a trap, because a video library with no deadline and no cohort is a very different product from a scheduled class. If you are weighing the two, our comparison of online and classroom review sets out where each one tends to fail.
One detail from the centre's blog is worth chasing: it has advertised a one-week free fundamentals course. A free week is the cheapest possible way to sample a centre's teaching before committing, and it is worth asking whether that offer still runs.
Choosing between the three branches
A three-city footprint is unusual for a single-exam centre, and it creates a real choice for anyone who is mobile. Manila is the headquarters and carries the founder and the longest history. Cebu and Baguio are the satellites.
The question that decides it is not which city is nicest to review in. It is whether the teaching is the same in all three. In practice, satellite branches of small specialist centres are usually staffed differently from the flagship, and sometimes the flagship lecturers rotate in for the coaching phase only. Ask the branch you are considering whether its lecturers are locally based, whether any sessions are delivered by video from Manila, and whether the final coaching phase happens in your city or requires travel.
Baguio is the interesting case here. It has a small engineering review market compared with Manila or Cebu, so a Baguio-based candidate weighing Megareview against relocating for review is comparing a local option against several months of accommodation costs. That calculation usually favours staying put unless the local branch is visibly thinner. Ask for the current Baguio batch size before deciding.
What to ask before you pay
Take this list to the branch call.
- What is the total programme fee, and what is excluded from it?
- How many weeks does the review run, on what days, and how many hours per day?
- How many reviewees are in a class at the branch I would attend?
- Who are the lecturers for the subjects I am weakest in?
- Is the final coaching phase included, and when does it run relative to the board date?
- Does the online course carry a fixed access period, and does it include live sessions?
- What happens if I fail? Is there a repeat policy, and does it cost anything?
- Is a deposit refundable, and until when?
Write the answers down with the date you got them. Verbal quotes from a branch drift, and the person who quoted you may not be the person you deal with in September.
Sources
- Megareview and Tutorial Center, homepage and services listing — https://megareviewcenter.com/
- Megareview and Tutorial Center, About Us — https://megareviewcenter.com/about
- Megareview and Tutorial Center, Vision and Mission — https://megareviewcenter.com/vision
- Megareview and Tutorial Center, Review Team — https://megareviewcenter.com/review_team
- Megareview and Tutorial Center, Contact Us (branch addresses and numbers) — https://megareviewcenter.com/contact
- Megareview and Tutorial Center, Terms of Service (last-updated date) — https://megareviewcenter.com/terms