You can see them everywhere on campus: brightly colored posters promising better results or your money back. Preparatory courses from companies like Kaplan and Princeton Review guarantee higher scores on graduate school admissions tests, but not without a hefty price tag. A course to prepare someone for the MCAT, LSAT or GRE will set students back $1,000. With the cost of education on the rise, is it worth it to take a prep course?
Associate Dean Jeanne Dillon, Tufts' pre-law advisor, says no. She recommends that students forget about taking a course. Dillon bases her recommendation on studies by the Law School Admissions Council, the organization that administers the LSAT.
"[The Law School Admissions Council studies] have found that people who self-study using two separate books get the highest average on the LSAT," Dillon said. "People who self-study with one book have the second-highest average, and the people who take those prep courses are the third-highest average."
Kaplan, a popular prep course provider that advertised at a table in the campus center last month, did not return calls asking them to comment on these statistics.
Carol Baffi-Dugan, director of health professions advising at Tufts, echoed Dillon's sentiment. "I do not encourage pre-med students to take a commercial review course," she said. "There are good review materials available."
Practice tests and previous tests are available online, for a fee, at www.LSAC.org and at www.aamc.org/students/mcat. The tests are available for $8 each for the LSAT, and $40 each for the MCAT. Purchasing multiple books and practice tests, however, still costs less than a prep course: a Kaplan LSAT prep course costs $1,249, while the MCAT prep course runs for $1,549.
For Dillon, the cost of such courses is unacceptable. "People know how to study," she said. "They're offering a service that you already know how to do for a lot of money. What's wrong with this picture?"
Some students, however, find that the courses offer them something they can't find on their own: structure. "It was good practice, because I don't think I would have studied as much on my own," senior Sarah Wong said of her MCAT Kaplan prep course. Still, Wong confessed that the course was "probably not" worth the cost.
Senior Priti Julka, who also took an MCAT Kaplan prep course, signed up for the same reason: "I knew I needed structure in studying," she said.
Julka was upset, though, with some of the methods employed by her Kaplan instructor. The course focused on what Kaplan refers to as "high-yield" topics, which are topics that frequently appear on the tests. But when Julka took the MCAT, she discovered that "there was a lot of non-high-yield stuff on it ... [the course] kind of hurt me in that way."
Still, Julka said, "the course was helpful." As for the high price tag, she remains unsure of whether or not the course was worth it. "I guess I have to wait to see my scores," she said.
Wong, on the other hand, has already received her scores. "I was satisfied, but I was hoping for better," she said. Still, she said that she recommends the course to students who feel they need it.
Baffi-Dugan agreed that sometimes there is a "psychological advantage" to taking a prep course "for the student who is not confident enough to prepare on his or her own."
For some students, the reasons not to take a prep course are not strictly monetary. Pre-med junior Ron Brown feels that the courses are a scam. "I've never seen conclusive studies that people do better after taking it," he said of prep courses. "They're capitalizing on parents... they get parents to fear that their child isn't going to do as well as other people's children because their kid isn't taking this course."
The high cost of the prep courses was enough to dissuade second-year graduate student Nick Stone, who self-studied for the GRE. "There's no way I was going to pay that," Stone said of the $1,049 price tag accompanying a Kaplan GRE prep course.
Instead, Stone chose to study from a book that cost about $30. "The books have six practice tests in them, and they've got hundreds of vocab words that you can go through," Stone said. "It just seemed like it would be easier to do that on my own time."
Stone's self-studying paid off: he received an 800 on the mathematics portion of the GRE, the highest possible score.
Stone's experience substantiates Dillon's position on self-studying - a position that the dean finds it difficult to effectively communicate while competing with a constant barrage of posters for preparatory courses. "I don't have national advertising," she said. "I'm this lone voice saying it's good to study on your own."
When Dillon receives advertisements from prep course companies, she throws them in the garbage. "You'll never see [advertising materials] in my office or in the resource library," Dillon said.
Still, Baffi-Dugan feels that certain students might profit from the courses. "Basically, a student needs to examine his or her study skills and motivation, and decide which way to turn," she said.
