Hi there, this is actually an area of expertise for me as I was one of the instructors selected to join the faculty team for the 2006 MCAT Summer Intensive Program. I am serving as one of the instructors of the MCAT SIP this summer as well. As you might imagine I am quite enthusiastic about the program, and I'll share some of my impressions about the program here:
From the instructor's perspective, I had a blast teaching for the MCAT SIP. I originally jumped at the chance to teach for the MCAT SIP because I was attracted to the idea of being able to work closely with your students every single day. In a regular classroom course, you see your students twice a week for three hours and that's it. Despite the fact that I hold weekly office hours and send out a lot of emails, it is difficult to ensure that you can truly drive home the concepts. Furthermore, there is a lot of difficult "next level" material that is left out of the standard Kaplan classroom course embedded in the topical tests, workshops, High-Yield Problem Solving Guide, etc. To the instructor, this program offered the opportunity to work closely and intensely with a small group of students...I now had the opportunity to pause and spend 45 minutes explaining the nephron, rather than rushing through it as usual. And then when I was done with that, you have the ability to isolate out the best passages related to that topic and review it right there...all in a small group setting, which I find to be more deeply penetrating than just only tutoring (there's plenty of tutoring that goes on too). And you get to see your students every single day. You eat all your meals together, go to the same gym and live only one floor apart. The ability of a student to just drop everything and disappear is eliminated. As a result, you do get close to your students. I still keep in touch with the students who were in my section last year.
Moreover, I learned a ton last summer b/c Kaplan flew in expert admissions consulting speakers to speak on their experience of what admissions officers are looking for, how to craft your personal statement, and how ace your interview. Even though I thought I knew a lot of information about the admissions process, most of it was anectodal and based on word of mouth. Having the opportunity to listen to professional admissions consultants breakdown each facet of the admissions process was quite the eye opener. I attended those sessions and took notes myself so that I now can give more focused and accurate advice when I am informally asked for advice on a personal statement or interview.
Finally, I have to gush about the accommodations b/c they were breathtaking (floor to ceiling windows in the living room with a view of the river and downtown Boston!) -- from top to bottom the Kaplan MCAT SIP is really the Rolls Royce way to prep for the MCAT.
This year I know that we're running the '07 SIP a bit differently than last summer. The student:teacher ratio has been reduced as they've hired 10 full time instructors (you can read a bio about each one of us on their website at
www.kaptest.com/mcatsummer), plus the daily schedule has been optimized to more carefully balance the need for free time vs. class time. Finally, even though the program doesn't begin for eight weeks we have already started to provide guidance to the '07 class of SIP students to ensure that they get the most out of the '07 program once it actually begins.
As you can tell, this program is all about delivering extremely high-end service to the student. Of course, that kind of service is going to be expensive. However, that doesn't mean there is only one type of student who enrolls for this program. The most common misconception (even among the other Kaplan instructors who didn't teach last year) is that there is a generic SIP student. One of the most interesting parts of the SIP is that the student population is incredibly diverse across all types of divisions: geographic, ethnic, socio-economic and even age. Outside of seeing the students improve, one of the most rewarding aspects was seeing students have fun and make friends for life. For example, three students from my section are planning to travel to Europe together this summer.
Overall, I highly recommend the program. Feel free to follow up with any specific questions via PM or within this thread, and regardless of how you choose to prepare for the MCAT I wish you good luck.
