A lot of Kaplan Hate on the boards lately.

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I don't know if its just because MCAT season is well underway but I have been seeing a lot of trash talk about Kaplan and how their resources really aren't great. How true is this?

Does anybody who has taken, or is taking, the course have any insight/opinions regarding Kaplan's MCAT prep?

 

[MedPR]

I don't know if its just because MCAT season is well underway but I have been seeing a lot of trash talk about Kaplan and how their resources really aren't great. How true is this?

Does anybody who has taken, or is taking, the course have any insight/opinions regarding Kaplan's MCAT prep?

I think the issue is primarily that it costs $2k. I know people who took the course and loved it, and others who regretted spending the money on it.

 

[kasho11]

Class was useless for me, materials are good. I'll tell you how useful they were when I get my test score back.

 

[Caitlin0206]

I don't know if its just because MCAT season is well underway but I have been seeing a lot of trash talk about Kaplan and how their resources really aren't great. How true is this?

Does anybody who has taken, or is taking, the course have any insight/opinions regarding Kaplan's MCAT prep?

I took the on demand course last year. I can't say that it was completely useless but it sucked a lot for something you pay that much money for. Their books are nowhere near as good as exam krackers which are apparently nowhere near as good as Berkeley review and TPR. The on demand course blows hardcore I hated it. The required assignments are completely useless and in order to get the high score guarantee you have to complete all the required assignments. Their diagnostic test sets you up for failure because they use that as the basis for wether or not your score improved. The diagnostic is 10000x more difficult than the actual test and is intentionally made that way so you do crappy and they don't have to refund your money if you tank the Mcat. Their "lectures" are nothing but test taking advice with very limited explanations of concepts. If I could go back in time I would have self studied. It would have given me a much higher score and I may not have needed to retake.

 

[MedPR]

I just realized you put the exact same thread in two different spots. I thought I was going crazy.

 

[shaboobly]

I have the Kaplan on demand and have my test 5/19. I think it works well in science content areas, but their verbal strategies and verbal assignments aren't right for me. Both Kaplan FL tests and AAMC practice tests seem to have a good indication on what you could score on the real test. All the tests I've taken from Kaplan and AAMC fall between 29-33 (hopefully I choose right 40/40 times on VR to get in high 30s lol).

Kaplan verbal seems to throw the most abstractly 😕 written passages at you with difficult questions. The practice AAMC tests do have longer passages I feel than Kaplan, but they aren't as hard to understand and I am able to get more percentage right on AAMC compared to Kaplan. Not only this, but their strategy of mapping I found useless because most questions require you to go back to the passage anyway, and writing even just a little bit about each paragraph I feel is a waste of time and disrupts the fluidity of my though process.

In the end, Kaplan has prepared me for the science sections pretty well (I average between 12-13 on each test. I gotta add that I have a pretty good science foundation as my major is Chemistry 🙂) and for verbal it led me to the conclusion: if an answer talks about even one minute thing that wasn't discussed in the passage it's probably wrong.

 

[IRASNA]

It was an expensive study schedule

 

[98md]

My Kaplan experience has been quite positive. Here is a summary.

1st Attempt at MCAT
End of sophomore year
Kaplan Advanced Anywhere summer class
Other summer activities: 20 hours research/wk and a tough engineering class.

39N (PS:13, VR:14, BS 12); 10 point jump from Kaplan diagnostics
99.1-99.4 percentile

Here is my testing summary,

P V B Total
1-Jun 10 10 9 29 Kap Diag
25-Jun 10 12 12 34 Emcat
31-Jul 12 10 11 33 FL1
5-Aug 12 13 11 36 FL2
11-Aug 13 14 14 41 FL3
16-Aug 14 13 14 41 FL4
21-Aug 14 14 12 40 FL5

22-Aug 14 15 14 43 AAMC3
23-Aug 13 13 13 39 AAMC4
26-Aug 13 12 12 37 AAMC5
31-Aug 13 12 12 37 AAMC7
4-Sep 14 12 12 38 AAMC8
5-Sep 12 13 12 37 AAMC9
7-Sep 13 11 11 35 AAMC10
9-Sep 14 13 13 40 AAMC11

 

[803]

I have gotten alot of use out of the text books.... the class is worthless. Way too expensive, and if you have to take the MCAT the next cycle, they want to charge you close to full price again.

Highly suggest trying to find books online and studying yourself. Kaplan sucks

 

[Mehd School]

I took the Kaplan course this past spring semester.

I would not recommend it. The online resources are great (qbank, tons of FL's, quizzes, workshops etc) but the instruction is poor (I had a 40+ Vandy MD graduate instructor). The books are a terrible mesh up of EK's concise approach and TBR's detailed version.

I got the course for a steal of a price.

 

[BurntFlower]

I think the issue is primarily that it costs $2k. I know people who took the course and loved it, and others who regretted spending the money on it.

Yep. I think $2k is way too much money and completely out of my budget. And even if I had the money, I don't think I would take the class. I'm better studying by myself.

 

[psychkub]

I think the number of people that KAPLAN works for is very small. I took their summer accelerated course, and didn't feel comfortable enough to take the test, and they allowed me to retake the class for free, which was pretty cool.

After it was all said and done, I ended up just using their books for content review, and I used EK and TPR Hyperlearning books for practice. In my opinion, I would just go the SN2ed route. It's cheaper, and you'll probably do better. I have seen more people do better with SN2ed's schedule than with KAPLAN. If I could do it all over again, SN2 all the way!

 

[angldrps]

The practice material that comes along with Kaplan's online course is EXCELLENT. Kaplan's content review books are terrible. I would even go as far as to say that Kaplan's section tests that came along with the online course are better practice material than the AAMC exams. These section tests along with the remaining practice material-11 FL tests, subject tests, tropical tests- were a MAJOR factor in my ability to raise my score by 10 points on my retake. I think people who are disappointed with kaplan are those that take their course and end up using kaplan's instructors and/or their review books. I used TPR's books to do content review and then practiced with Kaplan's material. I would be SHOCKED if someone was to go through the plethora of practice material provided by kaplan's online course and still not manage to get a good score.
Also, I would advise everyone to do more research than just reading posts on SDN. Sure, SDN can be a great resource but reading all the negative Kaplan reviews on SDN made me not even consider Kaplan to study during my first MCAT attempt. Thankfully, i enrolled in Kaplan's online course for my retake and raised my score.