The Orange County Register: “Want help getting into business school?”
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
New York, NY (August 2, 2010) – To meet would-be law, business and graduate students’ desire for convenient, efficient and effective test preparation programs online and to provide students with more affordable options in test prep, Kaplan Test Prep announced that it is lowering the price of its GMAT, LSAT and GRE On Demand and Classroom Anywhere TM courses from more than $1,000 per course to as low as $449.
“Test preparation gives prospective grad students an edge, and we’re pleased to help make prep more affordable for them,” said Jason Moss, Vice President, Graduate Programs, Kaplan Test Prep. “Kaplan recognizes the challenges of today’s economic climate and wants to do its part to help aspiring graduate students by reducing tuition for those who choose to study for their graduate admissions tests online. This price reduction provides students with superb comprehensive test preparation options and enables them to get top rated Kaplan instructors no matter where they are located,” he said.
Kaplan Classroom Anywhere courses allow students to take the exact same real-time course that they receive On Site, but their class meets in an interactive, live, online classroom. Students enjoy the convenience of attending class from anywhere they have Internet access, and choose from class times that work for their schedule. Students are able to ask questions and interact with their teacher, teaching assistant(s), and other classmates using audio, video, instant chat, whiteboard, and polling functionality.
Kaplan On Demand courses provide comprehensive, video instruction from Kaplan’s expert teachers. Students receive the exact same instruction, strategies, and resources offered in the On Site courses, while also benefiting from the ultimate convenience to prep at their own pace, wherever and whenever they choose. Students can also review the lessons again and again.
Kaplan continues to lead the industry in meeting the needs of all students by offering different modalities to suit the needs and learning styles of each student. The newly priced offerings are the next step in Kaplan’s history of innovation. Over the last two years students on five continents have studied test preparation online with Kaplan, the proven leader in test preparation and admissions.
Pricing for the On Demand and Classroom Anywhere courses are as follows:
The courses, offered globally, are available at www.kaptest.com.
About Kaplan Test Prep
Kaplan Test Prep (www.kaptest.com), a division of Kaplan, Inc., 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 and a complete array of books, 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. Kaplan also provides private tutoring and graduate admissions consulting services.
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The Result of Exam’s Administrator Feeling the Pressure of the GRE’s Increasing
Acceptance as an Admissions Alternative by Leading MBA Programs?
AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW: KAPLAN BUSINESS SCHOOL ADMISSIONS EXPERT
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
New York, NY (June 25, 2010) – In an acceleration of its own timeframe to change the exam in the face of MBA programs increasingly accepting the GRE as an admissions alternative, the GMAT’s administrator announced today the addition of a new integrated reasoning section, which aims to measure test takers’ ability to respond to challenges they may face in the business world. The new section will replace one of the essays currently part of the GMAT’s analytical writing section. The exam’s length will remain at three and a half hours.
According to the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC,) the exam’s administrator, the questions in this new section will be based on multiple sources, including charts, graphs, and spreadsheets. Test takers will have to analyze information, draw conclusions and determine relationships between pieces of data, just as they would have to do in business school. According to GMAC, these changes are based on research and surveys of business school faculty.
“By making the GMAT more focused on practical business world skills, the exam’s administrator is making a strategic decision to convince MBA programs that the GMAT is the best exam to evaluate students on,” said Jason Moss, vice president, graduate programs, Kaplan Test Prep. “In recent years, the GRE’s administrator has had some success in convincing some top MBA programs to accept their exam as an alternative to the GMAT. This move by GMAC may make those schools that already offer the GRE option reconsider their decision and encourage other MBA programs mulling it over to think twice.”
The current scoring scale of 200-800 will remain the same and test takers will receive a separate score for the new section, just as they do now for the essays.
For more information about the GMAT’s planned 2012 changes, how it may affect its 200,000 plus annual test taking population and possibly alter the business school admissions process, please contact Russell Schaffer at russell.schaffer@kaplan.com or 212.453.7538.
About Kaplan Test Prep
Kaplan Test Prep (www.kaptest.com), a division of Kaplan, Inc., 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 and a complete array of books, Kaplan offers preparation for more than 90 standardized tests, including entrance exams for secondary school, college and graduate school, as well as English language and professional licensing exams. Kaplan also provides private tutoring and graduate admissions consulting services.
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Kaplan Helps Future Lawyers and Doctors in Need Get an Edge in a Competitive Admissions Environment
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
New York, NY (June 17, 2010) – As part of ongoing efforts to help students and young professionals succeed, Kaplan Test Prep is donating over $1 million in LSAT and MCAT prep courses to be awarded to students in need seeking to apply to law and medical school. The donation will benefit students at approximately 1,000 colleges and universities across the United States.
The donation of 100 Kaplan LSAT courses was made at this month’s combined national conference of Northeast Association of Pre-Law Advisors (NAPLA) and Southern Association of Pre-Law Advisors (SAPLA), which was held at Duke University. Every advisor in attendance was eligible to receive a scholarship certificate redeemable for any comprehensive Kaplan LSAT classroom, Live Online or LSAT On-Demand course, to be awarded to a deserving student at the advisor’s school. Recipients will benefit from Kaplan’s newly launched LSAT course – a personalized program, which includes, among other offerings, more than 40 hours of supplemental video instruction and online access to every released LSAT, with answers and explanations for all 6,500+ questions and over 37,000 answer choices. According to Kaplan’s annual survey of law school admissions officers, the LSAT is consistently listed as the single most important factor they evaluate applicants on.
To support the aspirations of pre-med students, this week at the national conference of the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions (NAAHP) in Atlanta, Kaplan is donating over 900 MCAT courses, upon request, to each of the more than 900 pre-med/pre-health advisors in attendance and to those who were unable to attend. The courses are to be awarded to one deserving student at their college or university. For pre-meds, the MCAT remains one of the biggest hurdles to getting into the program of their choice, consistently ranked as the first or second most important admissions factor in Kaplan’s annual survey of medical school admissions officers.
Margaret Kovach, Ph.D., associate professor, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, noted how a past Kaplan donation made a life-changing difference for one student at her school:
“I had a young, but non-traditional student, in my genetics class who was preparing for medical school. She had a degree in geology, but as she put it, she just could not ignore the inescapable, internal voice calling her to the medical profession. She had terrific energy, worked hard and combined with an insatiable curiosity…a great package. Her parents were immigrants from Colombia and Cuba. She had the merit, she had the need, and she had the commitment and desire. She was very appreciative of the MCAT course scholarship because it provided her with an opportunity she would not have had otherwise. It did not go to waste…she got into medical school, and just this past spring earned her M.D.”
“Our mission as a company has always been to help students succeed, and we recognize the advantage test prep provides to students who are seeking admissions to competitive schools,” Jason Moss, vice president, graduate programs, Kaplan Test Prep. “This donation of LSAT and MCAT courses will help aspiring lawyers and doctors who are motivated, but economically challenged, to secure educational resources they need to achieve their career goals.”
Both donations are intended for socio-economically and educationally disadvantaged students; advisors are free to award the course at their discretion to any promising student. Through previous Kaplan donations, many advisors have selected students from under-represented minorities in law and medicine.
In the most recently recorded year, 86,100 aspiring attorneys applied to law school, the biggest jump in applicants since 2003 and the first increase at all since 2004. In that same cycle, 68% of applicants were admitted. In 2009, about 42,000 aspiring doctors applied to medical school, a slight increase over the prior year – only 44% of them were accepted.
About Kaplan Test Prep
Kaplan Test Prep (www.kaptest.com), a division of Kaplan, Inc., 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 and a complete array of books, Kaplan offers preparation for more than 90 standardized tests, including entrance exams for secondary school, college and graduate school, as well as English language and professional licensing exams. Kaplan also provides private tutoring and graduate admissions consulting services.
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1 CommentAlso: 37% of Students Would Put More Effort Into Their Coursework if Parents Were Tracking Their Performance
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
New York, NY (June 2, 2010) – A new Kaplan Test Prep survey* of high school students reports that of teens who say their parents are on Facebook, a much higher percentage (56%) provide their parents with full profile access – status updates, party photos and all – than with no access at all (34%). Only 9% of teens give their parents limited access. However, 58% of teens report that their parents are not on Facebook at all – though moms are more likely to have Facebook profiles (35%) than dads (27%). In keeping with the gender differential in Facebook presence, moms are somewhat more likely to have full Facebook access to their teens’ profiles (56%) than dads (49%).
Teens’ relative comfort level with having a “full access” Facebook relationship with their parents may be due to the high degree of involvement today’s parents have in their children’s lives otherwise. According to the survey, 81% of teens report their parents are “very” or “somewhat” involved in their academic work – a fact of life that may be a motivating factor in their studies. In fact, 37% of teens reported they would have put more effort into their SAT or ACT prep courses had their parents been able to track their course progress.
“In a Facebook era, the online arena serves as a new channel for parents to keep tabs on what and how their kids are doing, and it’s notable that a sizeable percentage of today’s teens seem comfortable with that dynamic,” said Justin Serrano, Senior Vice President, Kaplan Test Prep. “But for the most part, the parent-teen online relationship is still relatively uncharted territory. What we’re seeing is that parents are increasingly expressing interest in being able to monitor their kids’ progress online, and teens are adjusting to this in different ways.”
Reflecting parent interest as well as a growing trend among school districts around the country, Kaplan’s new SAT and ACT course, debuting in June, allows parents to track their child’s attendance, progress on each assignment, and performance on every practice exam and tested topic through on-demand parent reports. Kaplan’s new course will also be the first and only test prep program to integrate into its curriculum the learning best practices of differentiated instruction (in which teachers tailor their instruction and adjust the curriculum to individual students’ needs) and blended learning (mixing different learning environments for effective reinforced learning – e.g. online and classroom). The course’s unique combination of these educational best practices and revolutionary personalization technology sets the new standard in test preparation.
For downloadable B-roll of Kaplan Test Prep students taking a practice SAT, please visit: http://wpc.0355.edgecastcdn.net/000355/marketing/press/Kaplan_SAT_Students_Taking_a_Practice_Test.mp4
*Results were based on the answers of 973 aspiring college students who took the April ACT or May SAT and prepared for the exams with Kaplan Test Prep.
About Kaplan Test Prep
Kaplan Test Prep (www.kaptest.com), a division of Kaplan, Inc., 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 and a complete array of books, 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. Kaplan also provides private tutoring and graduate admissions consulting services.
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