Anybody else find KAPLAN SAT prep course useless?

[JimMIA]

I'm so glad that you got your money back.

Honestly, I look at that as a temporary situation. We were never seeking, nor do I think we deserve -- nor do we expect --a FULL refund as the final outcome. But what we would like is for them to give us some sort of expanded access, or a partial refund.

We'll see what they do, but the family who used Kaplan for their oldest son and recommended them to us is now NOT using them for their daughter who is one of DD's best friends.

We have a great tutor and he is back from Europe and will start helping on Monday.

 

[JimMIA]

There wasn’t time in classes to get more in depth with certain topics.

That was my primary impression of the 1/2 of the class that DD attended. It was WAY too compressed.

What might have been a great course over 4 weeks became a joke in 8 classes. You can't teach 6 classes (2 days devoted entirely to practice tests) and pile on the homework to make up for the limited class time.

That said, no teacher should be shortening classes or cancelling them.

He canceled the class because he had a "meeting."

Really? And your "meeting" is more important that the class you are being paid to teach? Or my DD and the other 20 kids in the class? Are you serious?

David is obviously a young man with not enough life experience to realize that HE is not the only thing on the planet that matters.

 

[clori]

Our high school offers a course that is either free or under $100 that meets Tues/Thursday nights. Due to dd's schedule it wasn't the best. Instead I paid $120 for dd to take an SAT prep class at MIT on Sunday afternoons. Each day had 3 parts - depending on scores from a practice test you could be placed into a different level for each sub category - math, reading, and writing. My daughter went willingly and her SAT score improved 150 points from her PSAT. What I didn't understand is the last week was a final test I guess to compare pretest to posttest However it was the day after the SAT test dd took so she didn't go to the posttest. While I honestly don't know if it helped or not at very least it kept her focused and she willingly did some assigned practice each week without any prompting from me.

If anyone is interested here is some info on the upcoming session. It does look like the price has gone up to $160. http://ati.mit.edu/sat1

 

[nephthys43]

I've taught SAT prep classes (not for Kaplan). Honestly, kids get out of it what they put into it; at least in my class. I am definitely not saying this is what your daughter did, but I've had students sit and whisper to friends, play on their phone, flat out ignore me and basically drift off into space. A lot of them don't care. And I can't make them. They're only there because their parents are forcing them. The ones that care, greatly improve their scores. If you want, I have some SAT grammar notes you can give your daughter. Maybe some reading stuff, too.

 

[JimMIA]

FINAL UPDATE:

Well, as I knew Citicorp had no authority to arbitrarily effect any resolution of our dispute.

Kaplan refused to offer any kind of resolution, falsely claiming we received what we paid for. I'm sure that's why their "customer service" personnel repeatedly stalled our inquiries until the course had finished. So we got cheated out of $674 by Kaplan Testing.

I would strongly urge any parent NOT to pay to send your child to any Kaplan course. There are numerous FREE options out there, and these people are sleazy.

 

[_19disnA]

Personally, I think all of those paid prep courses are a waste of time/money.

ACT/SAT type tests mostly measure general math/english knowledge you learn all through high school. If your son/daughter is only an average student during high school, there is no amount of tips/tricks/study guides/tutoring that will suddenly enable them to get amazing ACT/SAT scores, it just doesn't work that way. While it is good to be familiar with the test format and type of questions asked, I think you will probably do just as well to find a few of the free resources available online and go from there.

I do laugh at those who say should take the ACT/SAT tests MANY times in order to get better scores, but seems to me you are just as likely to have your scores go down as up since you are not taking the same test each time.

 

[mjkacmom]

Personally, I think all of those paid prep courses are a waste of time/money.

ACT/SAT type tests mostly measure general math/english knowledge you learn all through high school. If your son/daughter is only an average student during high school, there is no amount of tips/tricks/study guides/tutoring that will suddenly enable them to get amazing ACT/SAT scores, it just doesn't work that way. While it is good to be familiar with the test format and type of questions asked, I think you will probably do just as well to find a few of the free resources available online and go from there.

I do laugh at those who say should take the ACT/SAT tests MANY times in order to get better scores, but seems to me you are just as likely to have your scores go down as up since you are not taking the same test each time.

Tutors do help, it’s not just materials, but strategy. All of my kids’ scores improved significantly after being tutored. Taking the tests multiple times is helpful with issues such as timing. The first time my kids tested, that was the hardest part the first time.

 

[Poohforyou]

Personally, I think all of those paid prep courses are a waste of time/money.

ACT/SAT type tests mostly measure general math/english knowledge you learn all through high school. If your son/daughter is only an average student during high school, there is no amount of tips/tricks/study guides/tutoring that will suddenly enable them to get amazing ACT/SAT scores, it just doesn't work that way. While it is good to be familiar with the test format and type of questions asked, I think you will probably do just as well to find a few of the free resources available online and go from there.

I do laugh at those who say should take the ACT/SAT tests MANY times in order to get better scores, but seems to me you are just as likely to have your scores go down as up since you are not taking the same test each time.

Sorry, I don't agree with this. My daughter had a tutor for the SAT. The tutor did pre-testing and based on that my daughter did improve her scores measurably. She also improved her PSAT score between sophomore year and junior year enough to be name a National Merit Scholar.

She's a very good student but her SAT and PSAT scores really helped set her apart.

It was well worth the money given the merit scholarship she earned.

 

[JimMIA]

Tutors do help, it’s not just materials, but strategy. All of my kids’ scores improved significantly after being tutored. Taking the tests multiple times is helpful with issues such as timing. The first time my kids tested, that was the hardest part the first time.

I agree with this, and what someone said earlier -- that the courses just don't go into enough depth. We have a great tutor, and he's doubling up to have one regular math/science session and one SAT/ACT session a week. He tutors three other friends and he's going to administer a practice SAT to all of them together and then use the results of that to tailor their individual tutoring. DD's a very smart girl, with great grades in a very demanding biomedical research magnet program; she'll be fine.

I'm really disappointed with Kaplan test prep though. I thought they were more reputable than that. They actually lied to Citibank.