Kaplan

I worked for Kaplan for a couple of years, after working for another test prep company. For students: 1. You're either going to do the work to raise your scores or you're not. Spending a fortune on Kaplan won't help, because it comes down to your intelligence and persistence. 2. Their materials aren't a good representation of the actual test. I was constantly having to nix material because it's just not representative of what you'll find on the actual standardized tests. 3. The teachers have no training. Either they're good, or they're not. Kaplan does nothing to affect that. For instructors: 1. They are dishonest about pay. They claim they pay $35/hr, for example, but that is only for the actual hours you're standing in front of a class. A lot of the other work is minimum wage. Actual pay evens out to $12-15/hr. 2. Kaplan runs on its reputation as the king-pin of test prep. The company and materials are just not that good. You, as the only face-to-face person, are left to clean up the mess with students. 3. When I qualified for unemployment from my full-time job, Kaplan blocked all my benefits and actually took me to court to save themselves the couple hundred dollars that would have been their share. Lesson: if you work for a multi-billion dollar company, you are bound to get screwed at some point.