New Exam to Emphasize Skills Important for Success in the Workplace and in College;
Will Move to a Computer-Based Format; Price to Increase
Note to editors: Kaplan is a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO)
Russell Schaffer, russell.schaffer@kaplan.com, 212.453.7538
Carina Wong, carina.wong@kaplan.com, 212.453.7571
Twitter: @KapTestNews
New York, NY (June 10, 2013) – One of the most widely taken exams in the U.S., the GED, is undergoing an overhaul. The new exam launching in January 2014 will be more challenging and expensive, raising the bar for earning one’s high school equivalency, even as the number of U.S. adults without a high school diploma has risen to 39 million—nearly the same number of U.S. adults with a four-year college degree (40.5 million).
While only 2 percent of non-high school graduates take the GED every year, for these 800,000 individuals, the bad news is that the new exam set to launch in January 2014 is going to be more rigorous and more costly to take. The good news is that those who pass should be better prepared to succeed in whatever next step they take, whether seeking employment, advancing from their current jobs, or entering college. Among the changes to the GED:
“In today’s competitive, global work environment, having a high school diploma or equivalent is an employment imperative for individuals, and having a high school-educated population is an imperative for our economy to thrive,” said Lee Weiss, executive director of GED programs, Kaplan Test Prep. “The changes to the GED make the test more rigorous in order to better prepare test takers for college and career opportunities. It’s critical that adults take the test to avail themselves because job options for those without high school diplomas are rapidly shrinking. It’s equally critical for states to invest in this population, as numerous studies demonstrate that a more educated workforce means lower unemployment, lower taxpayer burden, a more competitive market, and better opportunities for economic growth.”
While the GED has far more test takers annually than the admissions exams to business school (GMAT), law school (LSAT) and medical school (MCAT) combined, it’s an often misunderstood test. Here are some facts about the GED and GED test takers that you may not know.
To take the GED, you must register with an official GED testing center. There are more than 3,400 testing centers across the United States and Canada operated by community colleges, local school boards, and adult education centers. Contact a local testing center by calling 1-800-62-MY-GED (1-800-626-9433).
Time is of the essence to prepare for and pass the current GED, as test takers who do not pass all five GED tests by the end of 2013, will need to start over again with the 2014 GED tests. Kaplan offers preparation books and guided-study courses to prepare test takers for the current and 2014 series GED tests.
For more information about the upcoming changes to the GED and the challenges its test takers face, please visit Kaplan’s GED test change center at http://www.kaptest.com/GEDChanges or contact Russell Schaffer at 212.453.7538 or russell.schaffer@kaplan.com.
*”Bill Cosby,“ Biography.com: http://www.biography.com/people/bill-cosby-9258468
**”A Lesson in Life from Michael J. Fox,” NPR, April 16, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126052271
***”Pink,” Biography.com: http://www.biography.com/people/pink-562098
About Kaplan Test Prep
Kaplan Test Prep (www.kaptest.com) is a premier provider of educational and career services for individuals, schools and businesses. Established in 1938, Kaplan is the world leader in the test prep industry. With a comprehensive menu of online offerings as well as a complete array of print books and digital products, Kaplan offers preparation for more than 90 standardized tests, including entrance exams for secondary school, college and graduate school, as well as professional licensing exams for attorneys, physicians and nurses. Kaplan also provides private tutoring and graduate admissions consulting services.
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1 CommentProgram Will Help Foreign-Born and Trained Doctors through
“Match” Process and to Understand American Medical Culture
Note to editors: Kaplan is a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO)
Russell Schaffer, russell.schaffer@kaplan.com, 212.453.7538
Carina Wong, carina.wong@kaplan.com, 212.453.7571
Twitter: @KapTestNews, @KaplanMedical
New York, NY (June 7, 2013) – International medical graduates (IMGs) hoping to practice medicine in the U.S. face particular challenges. Like their American-born and educated counterparts, non-U.S. born doctors who attend medical school overseas must pass all three steps of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) to legally practice medicine. But, they also have to overcome language and cultural barriers.
Especially challenging for IMGs is the increasingly competitive process of securing a residency spot at a U.S. hospital, commonly referred to as “matching.” To help IMGs through the residency application process, Kaplan Test Prep has launched ResidencyPrep, which includes three services:
Application Support: ResidencyPrep consultants, who have program director experience, provide three rounds of feedback on students’ applications, interview responses and personal statements with Kaplan Medical’s
Application Support website. Four hours of On-Demand video explain every step of the application process.
Simulated Interviews: Students receive three practice interviews and extensive feedback on presentation skills via face-to-face video calls with standardized interviewers trained by program directors to precisely simulate the interview experience.
Live Online Seminars: Students get access to 16 hours of instruction on the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education core competencies from program directors who are experts at training IMGs. This will help them understand the competencies required in residency before applying and become better candidates.
“By the time MDs are applying for residency, programs can see from their scores that they are smart. It’s here where interpersonal and communication skills and other competencies make the difference,” said Greg Samios, president of health programs, Kaplan Test Prep. “Because the approach to medicine can vary from country to country and from culture to culture, it’s crucial that IMGs learn about the norms and customs in American medical education. If not, they’ll be at a distinct disadvantage.”
Samios notes that training foreign-born and educated doctors will help alleviate the worsening doctor shortage hitting the United States. The American Association of Medical Colleges, the organization that writes the MCAT, the medical school admissions exam, estimates that the doctor shortage will balloon to nearly 63,000 by 2015 and to around 100,000 over the next decade.
“The United States is in the midst of a historic doctor shortage*, which is predicted to worsen in the next few years. Twenty-five percent of U.S. physicians are international medical graduates and they have a huge role in caring for Americans, especially in underserved areas**. IMGs are going to be key to finding a solution to this crisis and our goal with ResidencyPrep is to better prepare IMGs for U.S. residency as well as continuing to help them to achieve high scores on the USMLE,” Samios added. “It is great news that U.S. medical schools have enrolled more students and will graduate more in the coming years, but this alone won’t solve the problem. The other important piece is increasing the number of residencies, which are currently woefully underfunded. If that piece isn’t fixed, the road to practicing medicine will be harder for all aspiring doctors, not just IMGs, and patients will likely suffer as a result.”
For more information on ResidencyPrep and the matching process, students can visit www.kaptest.com/ResidencyPrep. Journalists interesting in discussing how the process works and the unique challenges that IMGs face should contact Russell Schaffer at 212.453.7538 or russell.schaffer@kaplan.com.
*“U.S. doctor shortage will get worse unless Congress ups funds,” UPI, May 11, 2013:
**http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/img/img-workforce-paper.pdf
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Kaplan Will Provide a Total of $50,000 and Academic Resources to Assist Selected Researchers
Note to editors: Kaplan is a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO)
Russell Schaffer, russell.schaffer@kaplan.com, 212.453.7538
Carina Wong, carina.wong@kaplan.com, 212.453.7571
Twitter: @KapTestNews
New York, NY (June 4, 2013) – Legal education in the U.S. is at a crossroads. Against the backdrop of a tough job market for recent law school graduates and decline in law school applications, many academics, professionals, and students are questioning the effectiveness of how future lawyers are currently educated*. To help find solutions to these challenges, Kaplan Bar Review will donate a total of $50,000 in research grants to academics to study the efficacy of varying approaches to legal pedagogy. Additionally, Kaplan Bar Review will support chosen applicants by making available to them Kaplan’s unique expertise in research and educational assessment.
“At Kaplan Bar Review, we work with thousands of students every year, in addition to working with law schools themselves, which provides us with a unique understanding into the challenges of the current climate of legal education, including the diminishing resources earmarked for research,” said Steven Marietti, general manager and vice president, Kaplan Bar Review. “These uncertain times provide a great opportunity to examine legal education and how we prepare young people to enter the profession. We want to be able to help support some of the promising experiments and initiatives that may provide new, evidence-based methods to teach the law.”
“Kaplan Bar Review’s new research grant program comes at a particularly opportune moment because some law schools are cutting faculty funding for research,” said Michael Hunter Schwartz, dean and professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law, who sits on the grants program decision committee. “More significantly, the particular types of projects that Kaplan will be supporting, including studies focused on the teaching and learning process in law school, are of critical importance to a field searching for innovative ways to be more effective.”
Any U.S.–based academic researcher working on the efficacy of pedagogy in the legal realm is eligible for a Kaplan Bar Review grant, with preference given to researchers associated with an American university; researchers associated with legal faculty; and/or academic support personnel. The research must be intended to be published as a substantive paper, article, or book chapter. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
● Pedagogical initiatives in core laws school subjects or electives
● Pre-law school admissions or preparation
● Bar exam passage
● Practice-readiness
● Continuing legal education
For more information about the Kaplan Bar Review Legal Pedagogy Efficacy Research Grants program, prospective researchers can visit: www.KaplanBarReview.com/ISS. For journalists interested in writing about the program, please contact Russell Schaffer at russell.schaffer@kaplan.com or 212.453.7538.
*“A Call for Drastic Changes in Educating New Lawyers,” The New York Times, February 11, 2013, Ethan Bronner. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/us/lawyers-call-for-drastic-change-in-educating-new-lawyers.html
About Kaplan Bar Review
Kaplan Bar Review (www.kaplanbarreview.com) provides full-service bar review programs in 38 states (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming) and Washington DC, making its courses available to over 92% of the U.S. Bar-taking population. Additionally, Kaplan Bar Review offers supplemental preparation for the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE).
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Note to editors: Kaplan is a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO)
Russell Schaffer, russell.schaffer@kaplan.com, 212.453.7538
Carina Wong, carina.wong@kaplan.com, 212.453.7571
Twitter: @KapTestNews
New York, NY (May 8, 2013) – At the height of the Great Depression, a 14-year-old named Stanley Kaplan tutored an adolescent underachiever to academic success, sparking a business that became an educational pioneer that has helped millions of students achieve their academic and career goals. To honor its inspiring and visionary founder and help make the college dream more accessible for students today, Kaplan Test Prep is again sponsoring its “Stanley’s Story, Your Story” contest. High school students are invited to write and submit an essay — of 100 words or less—about who inspired them most and why. A selected group of essay enthusiasts from Kaplan will then winnow down the thousands of expected entries to 10 and post them to Kaplan’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/KaplanSAT, where they will be voted on by the public. First prize will be $3,000; the second place winner will receive $1,000; the third place winner will receive a free 2013 Kaplan SAT or ACT Classroom Course.
“We are excited to launch our second annual ‘Stanley’s Story, Your Story’ contest not only because we want to advance our longtime goal of making higher education accessible to as many students as possible, but also because we know we will be inspired ourselves by what students share with us,” said Kate Hurley, SAT and ACT programs manager, Kaplan Test Prep. “We look forward to reading what this year’s group of students has to say on who inspires them.”
Derrian Lewis, of Bible Grove, Illinois, was among the more than 3,000 teens who participated in last year’s contest. Below is an excerpt from her first place essay:
“As I was flipping through the television channels one day, I came upon a news story about an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Ted Rummel. … He is a paraplegic surgeon who continues to practice from his wheelchair…As I watched this story, I felt so inspired because I myself have a physical disability that requires the use of a wheelchair. Throughout my high school career, I have had to make a plan for my future and have decided to pursue a career in the medical field. For a few years now, I have really been interested in becoming a surgeon, but have had so many people tell me, ‘you cannot be a surgeon, you’re in a wheelchair.’… Dr. Rummel has shown me that I CAN be a surgeon and a good one too…Dr. Ted Rummel has truly inspired me to follow my dream and become a surgeon!”
To submit a “Stanley’s Story, Your Story” essay, students should visit www.kaptest.com/stanley.
About Kaplan Test Prep
Kaplan Test Prep (www.kaptest.com) is a premier provider of educational and career services for individuals, schools and businesses. Established in 1938, Kaplan is the world leader in the test prep industry. With a comprehensive menu of online offerings as well as a complete array of print books and digital products, Kaplan offers preparation for more than 90 standardized tests, including entrance exams for secondary school, college and graduate school, as well as professional licensing exams for attorneys, physicians and nurses. Kaplan also provides private tutoring and graduate admissions consulting services.
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