Top Hat vs WesternU Orientation
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Top Hat
Enhance your learning experience with interactive resources, in-class participation tools, and dynamic digital textbooks. Engage with professors and peers, and test your knowledge with quizzes and polls to improve comprehension and retention.
- Follow lecture slides on your device
- In-class response system
- In-app discussions with peers and professors
- Dynamic, interactive digital textbooks
- Take polls and quizzes
- Access graded and non-graded homework
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Top Hat is the perfect companion app to our comprehensive assessment platform that helps you learn better before, during and after class. Top Hat makes learning fun and engaging (seriously!) and sets you up for success, helping you connect with your professors, your peers and the content you’re learning in and out of the classroom. Here’s what Top Hat offers you: Compelling resources, delivered on your smartphone or laptop: • Follow your prof’s lecture slides on your own device • Contribute in class with an easy-to-use response system that’s always with you • Participate with your profs and peers using in-app discussions Content tailored to your course: • Experience dynamic, interactive textbooks loaded up with images, videos, audio clips and more • Read your digital materials from anywhere and keep them forever Quizzes, tests and polls that improve learning comprehension: • Challenge yourself by taking polls and quizzes on your own devices • Improve your knowledge retention with interactive assessment elements • Check for gaps in your understanding with graded and non-graded homework and short quizzes Thanks for using Top Hat. As you experience the app, we’d love to get your feedback: support@tophat.com or follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook @TopHat
WesternU Orientation
Navigate your transition into a new university with essential information and interactive activities. Access schedules, checklists, and important links to ensure a smooth start. Participate in engaging scavenger hunts for a chance to win prizes by recalling key details.
- Welcome Week Schedule
- Comprehensive To Do List
- Equipment List
- Ceremony Details
- Academic Resources
- Scavenger Hunts with Prizes
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Your upperclassmen helped us prepare this excellent resource to help you transition successfully into the WesternU family! The app includes the Welcome Week Schedule, a comprehensive To Do List and Equipment List, details about Convocation and White Coat Ceremonies, What to Wear, Links to Bookmark, Recommended Academic Resources, and much more. You’ll take part in two scavenger hunts with over $1000 in raffle prizes at stake, and the key to winning is being able to recall facts from this app, so we recommend reviewing the contents in detail.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: WesternU Orientation at 5.0 against Top Hat's 4.6. WesternU Orientation also leads on update cadence (weekly vs every 2 weeks) and iOS requirement (11.0 vs 17.0). Top Hat's advantage is ratings volume (23K vs 2) and review sentiment (15% vs 0%). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
WesternU Orientation holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Top Hat has 23K ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 15% of Top Hat's written reviews are positive against 0% of WesternU Orientation's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Top Hat ships an update every 2 weeks, WesternU Orientation weekly. Both last shipped on October 24, 2026.
| Parameter | Top Hat | WesternU Orientation |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (23K ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 14.6% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 23K — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 152 MB | 51 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Top Hat Monocle | Western University of Health Sciences |
Customer experience
Top Hat
WesternU Orientation
Bugs and requests
Top Hat
Reported bugs
3 issues- Answers not registering correctly
- Slides not loading properly on mobile devices
- Inconsistent performance across platforms
Requested features
3 requests- Add page numbers and search functionality to ebooks
- Improve syncing between mobile and web versions
- Allow more flexible location settings for attendance
WesternU Orientation
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Top Hat
No in-app purchases
WesternU Orientation
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Top Hat free?
Is WesternU Orientation free?
Which has better reviews, Top Hat or WesternU Orientation?
Do Top Hat or WesternU Orientation have ads?
Which is updated more often, Top Hat or WesternU Orientation?
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