I took my first practice test 6 weeks before my test day and got a 490. I did the homework and took the CATs each week, but it quickly became apparent I wouldn't be able to finish all the homework and the CATs with my work schedule. You really need a solid three months. The week before the test I scored a 600 and felt good about where I was. (I didn't invest hardly any time in the IR because my school told me they didn't use it, so I was getting 2's and 3's on that) Test day came and I followed all the advice and applied what I had learned confidently and calmly. You can imagine my surprise when my score appeared...a 470 (20 points lower than my diagnostic 6 weeks before and 130 points lower than my score just the week before, my IR score ended up being a 6, again with minimal effort). I took another practice test the next week and scored a 560. I still (somehow) got into my dream school, so I'm not retaking the course, but I wish I had finished all the homework and tests just so I could get my money back. I would pick a different company in retrospect...something wasn't right with Kaplan's scoring or methods...for me anyways!

As far as the classes go, I felt like the material was either way too simplistic or way too far above me. I would go from wanting to speed the instructor through a topic I already mastered, to wanting him to slow down so I could process it. I was able to take away a lot of good information especially from the quantitative section, but you sure wouldn't know it from my final scores.