For pre-medicine students preparing for the Medical College Admissions Exam (MCAT), there exists a wide range of study materials from many different companies, including ExamKrackers, The Princeton Review, and so on. However, Kaplan is one of the most popular and most well-recognized names in the land of test prep, and this holds for the MCAT as well. Many pre-med students will purchase Kaplan’s study materials, enroll in their classroom experience, or take the online course for MCAT preparation. I recently completed the Kaplan classroom course, and had mixed feelings about it. It’s very expensive, so I hope this review will help other pre-med students decide about spending close to $2000 on Kaplan.
Kaplan’s classroom experience has one going to a classroom one day a week, for 3 hours. There is also an online portion, of which certain material is required to be read, or quizzes/tests taken online. Finally, there is a large “pre-test” that students take when they start the course, in addition to the usual classroom lecture. All of the above must be completed in order for Kaplan’s “Higher Score Guarantee” to be in effect.
The “Higher Score Guarantee” basically states that you are guaranteed to get a score higher than your score on their practice MCAT when you take the real thing-if you complete all the required course work, and attend every class. Bear in mind that this isn’t as great as it sounds. The practice/diagnostic MCAT they give you at the beginning of the course is considered by some to be much harder than the real MCAT, thus ensuring that you will get a lower score, making a higher score on the real MCAT more probably. Also, you are only allowed to miss, at most, two lectures. These must be made up, within the time of the course, for the “Higher Score” to be in effect.
Most of my friends scored pretty low on the diagnostic, so they weren’t too concerned with fulfilling all of the course requirements (they expected to get a higher score anyway on the real MCAT). I, and my friends, took the course during the school year, while we were taking undergraduate classes. This made it much more difficult to keep up with the required Kaplan course work, especially when we hit the practice exams. Also, it made it harder to not miss any classes, especially when the MCAT courses were near final’s week.
Perhaps the greatest weakness of the classroom setting is exactly that-it’s a classroom. There are students from all walks of life preparing for the MCAT, some with a lot of knowledge, some with very, very little. While I and my fellow college students were familiar with most of the material, some of the concepts really shook up the others who had been out of school for a while. This sometimes required large blocks of time for the instructor to teach those people about sometimes basic concepts, leaving the rest of us wishing to be somewhere else. This was possibly the most frustrating part of the whole course, but it is probably unavoidable, as any classroom lecture will have differing levels of students.
Attendance seemed to be a real issue, and it works in Kaplan’s favor. I don’t think anyone had perfect attendance by the time the course was over. At the beginning, everyone was coming, but by the end we had classes with over 60% missing. I think some people just got frustrated, and quit going-even though they paid quite a hefty amount to attend.
However, please don’t get the impression that the classroom experience is a waste of time. It can be very, very helpful, depending on the instructor, and you really get what you put into it. I stayed caught up with the course load for most of the lectures, but taking it while also trying to keep your grades up may be rather difficult. Being able to actually ask someone in person about questions I had on specific issues (biology, chemistry, etc) was also helpful. Finally, taking the course with several of my friends also helped keep us all motivated. We had two instructors; one that we could tell really cared for us, and one that seemed to just want to teach us as quickly as possible. I’m totally fine with a lecture getting done quickly when all the material is covered, but I could tell that he didn’t like teaching us very much. The other instructor really went all out in teaching us-she even made quick review notes for us all! Amazing! We could really tell that she wanted us to succeed, and was there to help us.
Kaplan also offers a totally online course experience, with movie of lectures, and (as far as I know) most of the same practice material. If I had to do it again, I might (I’m still not too sure) have taken it totally online. It would have probably worked better with my schedule, and would have helped avoid some of the mishaps of the classroom. However, having a class to go to helps keep one on their feet, as it forces them into a regime of MCAT preparation (which is very, very important).
If you feel very motivated, and can keep yourself studying, I would suggest taking the online course. However, if you have a little more time, and need the extra push of the classroom, go ahead and take the classroom experience. In the end, it really comes down to how much you put into either review method-Kaplan will help you, but you still have to study very diligently.
