@ Roscoe11, Thanks for the very passionate testimonial. We are so happy you enjoyed the program and did well on test day. We hope to help many students like yourself do likewise!
@sweetx56, your comments are unfounded libel. Defaming our integrity by suggesting that there is some "secret" or "dishonest" way we calculate the stats is completely uncalled for. No one needs to PM you for this info, the exact methodology is posted on our website for all to see, on the same page as the stats themselves. All stats are tabulated by a third-party accountant and his methods are widely accepted. I have cut/pasted both the methodology and the third-party certification below for anyone interested. Mostly, your comment is sadly ironic because we are the ONLY mcat program of which I am aware that is publishing student score results. This holds us accountable to students and to ourselves in a remarkable way. We cannot just take your tuition and wish you luck, as is the case in most courses. Our work begins AFTER you have begun the program. That is why we have all tutors track the progress of every student and report it individually to management, why tutors are held financially responsible for student performance, and why we have a student success committee that regularly reviews ways to help our struggling students. In the end, however, the biggest predictor--by far--of student performance? Program adherence. If you do everything we ask of you and do it well you will score almost without exception. I've seen that time and time again with my personal 1-on-1 students. Those who follow-through with my assignments do absurdly well on test day--far better than the national trends. Those students who have a thousand excuses, with whom I feel like I am constantly BEGGING them to adhere to the program or follow my advice...a few months later I get an email from the main office saying "Student X wrote us saying you are an awful tutor and altius is awful....etc." There are some students who pay for the program and then do very little of what we suggest. There are others who do most or a lot of our suggestions but have a very deficient skill set or background to overcome. We have never claimed that NO ONE scores poorly after taking Altius. We just show the distribution, which is an impressive "upward push" of the entire curve. Notice on the website that 10-15% of students still score below the national average---the impressive thing is that it is 10% instead of the 50% of students who score below average nationwide. The upper end is similar: one would expect 1% of examinees to reach the 99th percentile, but we see several times that among Altius students. No one can guarantee you 'x' score because YOU have to put in the work and YOU have to take the test.
There is a reason no other prep companies publish score results--they would reveal a broken test prep industry wherein most students of prep courses score in a distribution nearly identical to the national AAMC stats--revealing the futility of these status quo courses. That is the reason so many on SDN suggest self study. If they really understood Altius and how differently we are doing things over here, the self study vs. prep course debate would be very different. Our results page on our website sets a new standard in terms of accountability and transparency. What if every MCAT course published such results? I am proud of our record and the company I work for. These are stellar people, some of the best you'll find. You couldn't accuse more honest people with your false statements.
FYI: From the Altius website, Results page:
Methodology
The 2014 MCAT Score Results Survey was conducted by a third-party accounting firm using the following methodology.
First, each enrolled student was assigned a random number as an identifier. A random number generator was then used to select students from among the population. When a student’s number was randomly chosen, they received an immediate phone call. If they picked up the phone they were asked three standardized questions about their MCAT score. If they did not answer the phone another number was selected. 621 phone calls were placed to obtain 121 successful survey responses. One person declined to reveal their MCAT score. After sufficient data was collected to achieve statistical power, the data were tabulated.
Included in the survey were all students who graduated from any Altius MCAT course during the 2013-2014 cycle. To be considered a graduate, students were required to complete a minimum of 7 of the 10 indicators of program completion provided to them at the beginning of the program—as verified by their private tutor.
CERTIFICATION STATEMENT
“TD Price & Associates hereby certifies that the ‘2014 Altius Student Score Survey’ was conducted independently by our firm in accordance with industry best-practices and a widely-accepted methodology. All data were collected, analyzed, and tabulated in-house and kept strictly confidential until the certified results were delivered to Altius management on January 2014. In our professional opinion these data are an accurate statistical representation of the population surveyed.”