Last I checked for Kaplan, it was $18, but I'm sure that you get a quick bump to the low $20s after training. I think tutoring would be closer to $30/hr. imho, it's not worth the extra hours of work.

I believe you need a score in the 90th percentile. Kaplan is straight forward, you apply online, audition in person and prove your score. I believe PR forces you to take a "mini" test and also provide your official score.

I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure PR pays in the same range as Kaplan.

thanks for the info ... I barely meet the criteria but perhaps this could be a useful cash infusion into my meagre salary


_________________

INSEAD Sept 2010 Interview Invite Nov 5, 2009 Admit & Matriculating
Wharton Sept 2010 Interview Invite Oct 30, 2009 Waitlisted & Ding
Harvard Sept 2010 Ding without Interview
Ivey May 2010 Interview Invite Nov 23, 2009 Admit + $$

$18?? I would rather look for private tutees who would pay $20-25. Much less hassle.

A friend of mine used to teach for PR...she had to audition, teaching anything that was of interest to her, in a 5-minute lesson. They review you on personality, ability to demonstrate knowledge and enthusiasm for your topic, and ability to clearly explain it. After she passed the audition, she had to do fairly intense training, and then pass another audition (teaching a GMAT lesson) to get the job. She loved teaching for them, and she spent a lot of extra time outside of class helping her students, so it definitely isn't a "grab their money and run" approach. From what I have heard about the two companies, PR seems to care more about the students, whereas Kaplan spends a fortune blanketing college campuses with flyers for their courses. I live near UVa and once had to post some flyers of my own, and I swear, there was a Kaplan flyer on every single bulletin board I found.

So I would vote for PR if you want to teach for one of them!

Oh, and Kidderek...the PR class comes with a ton of materials, including the OG. I have seen their course materials...they are not the same ones you can get on Amazon. They go a lot more in-depth. Kaplan apparently uses the same books in the course that you can buy anywhere, but they did at least recently include the OG for homework assignments. (They didn't previously tell students it even existed, so I guess that's a step in the right direction!)

I think the higher your score is, the exponentially easier it is to find tutees. I have had people wanting to buy my OG book with scribbled notes for $100, some moron offered me 10k to take his test for him. I think at least a few people would pay $30 per hour per week just to have you as a "study buddy". Maybe I will put this to the test and report back.

I did great on my GMAT by literally taking it cold, no prep whatsoever --720 on paper (1996) and 700 on computer (2005, paper score was "too old" for PhD applications). However, my LSAT experience wasn't so hot; so I signed up for a Kaplan review -- a total joke. My key problem was speed on the verbal passages, and the instructor was trying to teach people HOW to solve logic problems. I've long had a "learning disability" that is solely tied to reading speed, rather than comprehension, but anyway . . . . The instructor for the Kaplan Class said he got a 170 on the LSAT (very good score) and had graduated from Vanderbilt (very good? school), and then he also told us that he failed the bar on his first try (and thus was teaching for Kaplan waiting for the next bar exam). Clearly, Kaplan missed a huge red flag there -- if you can't pass the bar, you aren't "top" material; and even more clearly, Kaplan didn't care enough to screen out such a person. The guy simply had a lucky day when he took the LSAT.

From my evaluation, the prep courses are only helpful to those people who have low-to-moderate scores (30-50th percentile) to maybe improve their score by 10 percentiles or so. I've never seen a prep course that was designed (successfully so) to take someone who was already at the 70th percentile w/o formal training (like my LSAT score) and move that person up to the 90th percentile. (The stats that some prep courses use comparing 1st attempt to 2nd attempt after taking their course are somewhat invalid, as the mere experience of the first test helps with the second try.)What these prep programs fail to tell you is that those instructors with the super high scores are, in some cases, just plain lucky or, in most cases, naturally gifted when it comes to taking the test at hand. In all, the test prep programs are not really of material benefit to the students; rather, they are simply a money-making enterprise that sort of targets the ignorant and/or gullible among us.

I'm not sure that anybody who currently works for any of the major GMAT companies would say anything about this on a forum, but for whatever it's worth, I'm fairly certain that Manhattan and Veritas pay substantially more than Kaplan at this point. I'm not sure about Princeton Review--they've changed their fee structure over the past few years, so it's possible that they've changed their payment structure as well. You'd probably have to bribe a current employee to get the real dirt on the working environment, though.
_________________

Helping students kick the GMAT in the nuts since 2002... www.gmatninja.com.