Review of Kaplan Advanced Class

I'm posting this so that others might not have the same experience I had.

This may be somewhat regional, neither the local nor the national office responded to me either the initial time I sent this or during the class review. However the good folks at the DC center were helpful, the place was clean and bright and the instructor was excellent.

Ended up taking Veritas, the instructor was ten times better and the materials were actually helpful in improving my score

Good morning,

I am very disappointed in the quality of the Kaplan GMAT advanced class and I do not believe I am “getting my monies worth.”

While I find the instructor to be a nice individual, I have invested too much to be satisfied with an instructor who seems unable or unwilling to answer questions and delve into a topic to better prepare the students. I found it unnerving and dissatisfying when the instructor was asked questions and seemed wholly unable to provide a satisfactory explanation to the students and in fact caused greater confusion among the entire class. Kaplan instructors are billed as top-notch instructors; I would expect such instructors to be more prepared and better than mediocre.

We are expected to review materials on the website and complete practice problems. If the class time is spent re-reading the same materials and no time is spent reviewing the problems where issues may arise, what’s the point of the class? I can do just as well taking quizzes independently.

As an advanced level class, I am not looking for high school level gimmicks like starting with the choice E. The materials provided focus more on silly tricks than actual information. In addition, we were provided with outdated copies of the GMAT review book. When the instructor was asked why we are using the 11th edition instead of the current 12th edition, no answer was provided and no remedy was offered. This class is too expensive to have outdated materials, or even the appearance of outdated materials.

I have been less than thrilled at the coordination of the Kaplan staff and website. I originally registered and paid for the advanced GMAT class listed on your website as twice weekly. Instead, I was sent materials for the regular class and not informed that in fact the advanced class meets only once weekly at a different time and had started the week prior.

This class was billed as an advanced level practice course. By rights, we are all reasonably skilled test-takers and familiar with the GMAT exam and question type. While I understand the need to provide a refresher, spending our precious class time reading basic level materials instead of focusing on the advanced topics, reviewing problems and answering questions would be more beneficial and is what I expected.

The experience I have had so far does not lead me to believe that Kaplan does take its commitment to success seriously.