Sell my soul and be a PR/Kaplan Instructor?

Question

Now that I took the GMAT and have a little extra time on my hands, I'm thinking about working as a GMAT instructor. Anyone here worked as a Princeton Review/Kaplan instructor? How are the wages/working conditions? What are the going rates for private tutors?

kidderek · Answer

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.

sm332 · Answer

do u have to have a certain score? How does it work?

kidderek · Answer

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.

kidderek · Answer

Just my take:

If you need the extra money, by all means go for it. But these prep companies are a far cry from what they advertise. They really don't care about anything but the bottom line. They probably spend 99% of their revenue on real estate and marketing. The material, as many of you already know, is very light.

sm332 · Answer

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

bsd_lover · Answer

Heck, I'm currently unemployed...... I could prep while getting paid for it ....

Tarmac · Answer

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

kidderek · Answer

$18 . . . I'll put it this way: your salary for teaching the entire course (~10 sessions or so) is far less than what ONE student pays in tuition.

Tutoring is much better. You can tailor the curriculum to the tutee's (I didn't even know this word existed) needs. And I think you should charge a minimum of $30/hr for gmat. The hard part is finding the tutees.

marymayi · Answer

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!)

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!)

kidderek · Answer

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!

Tarmac · Answer

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.

swbluedevil · Answer

Thanks for the input guys. I'm actually leaning towards private tutoring. I got a 750 on my GMAT, so I think I can charge a pretty hefty hourly rate ($40-$50 an hour). I also live near Santa Barbara so finding tutees shouldn't be too hard (courtesy of UCSB). I did most of my gmat prep work on my own so I will have no problems creating study plans for my "tutees". Anyways, if the private tutoring thing doesn't work out, there's always PR.

me112233 · Answer

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.

TheNona · Answer

What about the situation now ... these reviews are 5 years old . Which of them is better now , regarding the environment and the payment ?

GMATNinja · Answer

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. :-D

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Sell my soul and be a PR/Kaplan Instructor?

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