marymayi wrote:
I would agree that PR is better than Kaplan, esp b/c the screening process is slightly more rigorous than Kaplan's. But don't be fooled. Nearly no one "fails" the audition. There's a high turnover rate so they pretty much accept anyone who has the score and can explain the concepts.
The training is hardly rigorous. They give you their manual and tell you to start teaching in front of their trainer. After your impromptu session, he picks apart your presentation. You learn from your mistakes, and repeat this process a couple of times. Now you're ready for big time teaching!
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.