Has anyone taken those master or premeir courses from kaplan or princeton review are they worth the money?

Question

I recently researched Princeton and Kaplan SAT private tutoring classes. The Princeton review costs about 9000 dollars for 23 hrs and Kaplan is about 4500 dollars for 32 hrs. I was just curious, are these master and/or premeir courses, those w/ elite tutors, worth the money. Do they necessarily help that much? I'd prefer if you answer if you've actually taken either of these?

Answer 1

If you have money to spend, anything that improves your scores, however little, is worth it, because money is no object. Kaplan and Princeton Review have been shown (by them, who else?) to improve scores on a number of tests, and anecdotally people agree they get a "minor" improvement. The problem is that Kaplan use pre and post-course assessments where they initially give students a "real" sample test that is hard, and then after the course they test them on easier exams- which almost always show an improvement. And let's face it, don't we all get a little better with at least SOME study anyways? That need not mean Kaplan/PR improved their scores. It's possibe that familiarity with the test over time, and practice, improved the score. But you can practice at home too.

Here's my suggestion. Take a few sample tests under timed conditions. Find out where you stand. If you score very high, forget the Kaplan thing, just study and practice, you'll do fine. If you score really low, then either forget the test entirely, or consider Kaplan as a way to improve your scores by a minor extent (no one ever went from 25th percentile to 99th percentile after a course with Kaplan).

If you are marginal, say you did OK but not great, and say you want a slight edge of a few points (especially for law school, where they're crazy over 1 or 2 points even though they're statistically insignificant differences), and say you don't care about spending money, sure, Kaplan will help, but not much.

Answer 2

Im not sure about the princeton, but ive heard Kaplan does not use real questions but rather makes up their own questions.