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The following is a review of Kaplan GRE Prep, Kaplan GRE books, and Kaplan GRE courses. 

Kaplan is a massive test prep and education company. They sell tons of books, courses, video courses, and tutoring. One of their main product lines is their GRE line.

So, is Kaplan GRE prep worth it? In short, no. Kaplan is great at marketing, but they’re not so great at GRE materials. Let’s go through their products, talk about their weaknesses, and discuss better options.

Kaplan GRE Prep Plus Book Review

Kaplan’s GRE Prep Plus book is not good. There are two parts to a test prep book: the practice material and the strategies.

Kaplan does not use any actual GRE practice material. Their practice questions are only imitations of GRE questions, and they’re not very good imitations. Practicing on Kaplan’s GRE questions will not make you better at actual GRE questions, and you will waste your time.

Kaplan’s test strategies are also bad. Kaplan tends to aim their strategies towards the middle of the pack. So, if you are particularly weak on a certain subject (like if you haven’t taken math for a decade), Kaplan will not provide materials for you to learn the fundamentals that you need. If you are looking to get a top score on a subject, Kaplan will also not provide you with the advanced strategies needed to get a top score. It’s really only suitable for people who are average, and want to receive an average score. Those people don’t really need a test prep book.

What I’d recommend instead for a GRE prep book

For practice materials, I’d recommend working with the free material from ETS. These are actual retired GRE questions, so they are guaranteed to be good practice.

For strategies, I’d recommend working with the Manhattan GRE guides. They’re a bit pricey, so it’s best if you can find a used copy. You can also try working with these $1 online GRE strategy guides.

Kaplan GRE Test Prep course review

Kaplan’s GRE courses are poorly taught. Their instructors receive no training, and don’t even have to have taken the GRE! I’ll repeat that: Kaplan’s instructors do not have to take the GRE in order to teach a course on the GRE. It’s terrible.

GRE prep courses that I’d recommend instead

Honestly, I wouldn’t really recommend GRE prep courses. I’m not a big fan of them. They’re pricey, and I don’t think they are an effective way to study for the GRE. There are much more effective ways to study for the GRE.

Instead, if you’re looking for an instructor in a group setting, I’d recommend a video course. They’re cheaper, you can do them from your home, and you can rewind when you’re confused. I’m a fan of Magoosh, which has pretty good instructors and pretty good questions for a good price. I don’t think it’s perfect, but it’s a great value for your dollar.

If you’re looking for personalized work and are willing to spend some extra money, I’d recommend a tutor. Trevor Klee, Tutor is a GRE tutor with 99th percentile scores, 5 stars on Yelp, and 5 stars on Google. Trevor Klee, Tutor is also the official instructor of the GRE for MIT.

I. Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as an Asian female (full text follows below):

1. Take extra time to prepare for your GMAT (5 months)
2. Look at where people similar to you got in
3. Use GMATClub as a resource for GMAT and applications
4. Work with the people who write your recommendations, and make sure they know you well

If  you’re looking for high-quality, effective GMAT tutoring, check out Trevor Klee, Tutor. 750 GMAT score, 5 star ratings on Google and Yelp. Tutoring can be done over Skype or Google Hangouts, or in Boston.

How to get into Harvard Business School from Business Insider

II. Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as a 30 year old with a low GMAT score (600) (full text link follows below):

1. Have a high GPA (>3.5) from a good engineering school
2. Be an under-represented minority female
3. Have track record of promotion and leadership abilities
4. Network with alums, executives at HBS

How to get into Harvard Business School from Over 30

III. Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as a veteran

1. Have a good GPA (3.9).
2. Have a good GMAT score (750)
3. Do sincere community service, not fake. In this guy’s case, it was teaching personal finance to soldiers.
4. Use your essays to show your true colors.
5. Rely on recommendations from supervisors who know you well.

How to get into Harvard Business School as a veteran

I. Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as a 30 year old with a low GMAT score (600) (full text link follows below):

1. Have a high GPA (>3.5) from a good engineering school
2. Be an under-represented minority female
3. Have track record of promotion and leadership abilities
4. Network with alums, executives at HBS

If  you’re looking for high-quality, effective GMAT tutoring, check out Trevor Klee, Tutor. 750 GMAT score, 5 star ratings on Google and Yelp. Tutoring can be done over Skype or Google Hangouts, or in Boston.

How to get into Harvard Business School from Over 30

II. Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as an Asian female (full text follows below):

1. Take extra time to prepare for your GMAT (5 months)
2. Look at where people similar to you got in
3. Use GMATClub as a resource for GMAT and applications
4. Work with the people who write your recommendations, and make sure they know you well

How to get into Harvard Business School from Business Insider

III. Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as a veteran

1. Have a good GPA (3.9).
2. Have a good GMAT score (750)
3. Do sincere community service, not fake. In this guy’s case, it was teaching personal finance to soldiers.
4. Use your essays to show your true colors.
5. Rely on recommendations from supervisors who know you well.

How to get into Harvard Business School as a veteran

Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as a veteran (full text follows below):

1. Have a good GPA (3.9).
2. Have a good GMAT score (750)
3. Do sincere community service, not fake. In this guy’s case, it was teaching personal finance to soldiers.
4. Use your essays to show your true colors.
5. Rely on recommendations from supervisors who know you well.

If  you’re looking for high-quality, effective GMAT tutoring, check out Trevor Klee, Tutor. 750 GMAT score, 5 star ratings on Google and Yelp. Tutoring can be done over Skype or Google Hangouts, or in Boston.

How to get into Harvard Business School as a veteran

Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as an Indian engineer (full text link below):

1. Don’t be afraid to reapply if you don’t get in the first time.
2. Have diverse work experience, not just in one industry. This will help you tell interesting stories.
3. Practice before the interview. Video yourself, and fix your body language.
4. Your hard stats go into your CV and application form. Your anecdotes and personality go into your essays.
5. Have a GMAT of 760.

How to get into Harvard Business School from Accepted.com

Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as an Indian engineer (full text link below):

1. Don’t be afraid to reapply if you don’t get in the first time.
2. Have diverse work experience, not just in one industry. This will help you tell interesting stories.
3. Practice before the interview. Video yourself, and fix your body language.
4. Your hard stats go into your CV and application form. Your anecdotes and personality go into your essays.
5. Have a GMAT of 760.

By the way, if you’re looking for high-quality, effective GMAT tutoring, check out Trevor Klee, Tutor. 750 GMAT score, 5 star ratings on Google and Yelp. Tutoring can be done over Skype or Google Hangouts, or in Boston.

How to get into Harvard Business School from Accepted.com

Summary of how to get into Harvard Business School as a veteran (full text follows below):

1. Have a good GPA (3.9).
2. Have a good GMAT score (750)
3. Do sincere community service, not fake. In this guy’s case, it was teaching personal finance to soldiers.
4. Use your essays to show your true colors.
5. Rely on recommendations from supervisors who know you well.

Official Guide to the GMAT 13th edition	Official Guide to the GMAT 2016 edition	Official Guide to the GMAT 2017 edition	Official Guide to the GMAT 2018 edition
Verbal questions, answers, and answer explanations	Verbal questions, answers, and answer explanations	Verbal questions, answers, and answer explanations	Verbal questions, answers, and answer explanations
Quant questions, answers, answer explanations	Quant questions, answers, answer explanations	Quant questions, answers, answer explanations	Quant questions, answers, answer explanations

This table shows links to questions, answers, and answer explanations for the 13th edition, 2016 edition, 2017 edition, and 2018 edition of the Official Guide to the GMAT. Oh, and if you’re looking for high-quality, effective GMAT tutoring, check out Trevor Klee, Tutor. 750 GMAT score, 5 star ratings on Google and Yelp. Tutoring can be done online or in Boston.

Now, if you’re looking for an effective way of using this content, here’s some advice. First, before you start, here’s a list of what you need to do:

What you should do before starting studying for the GMAT

1. Check your desired program to see what their median scores are for the GMAT. Normally, this will be either a total score (400-800) or broken down by Quant (Q) and Verbal (V) subscores. Schools generally will not care about Integrated (IR) or Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) scores, which is why they are not reported.
2. Have plans for the rest of your application. You will not get into business school or graduate by GMAT scores alone. You need to have an excellent application otherwise.
3. Estimate how far your current score is from your goal score. Your goal score depends on the median scores for your desired program. Your current score can be estimated in the following ways, in order from most to least accurate: take a practice GMAT from mba.com, take the diagnostic test from the Official Guides (email me for this), extrapolate based on previous standardized tests .

Now, the best way to use the questions themselves is as follows. Obviously, do a bunch of questions. For each question, you should approach it in 3 stages.

The stages to best learn the content of a GMAT question

Stage 1: How to do the problem

If you’re at this stage, you are approaching this material for the first time. The key is then to put in the legwork to be able to replicate, independently, a solution to the problem. Once you can do that, take notes in your “permanent” notebook as to how to do the problem. You’re going to want to review this later. The end result is that whenever you are presented with a problem with an identical set up, you are able to find an answer.

Stage 2: How the problem works

Once you have an idea of what process reliably gives you an answer to the problem, you should begin asking yourself if there’s another way you could have solved that problem. Or, more importantly, if you had an incorrect intuition as to how to solve the problem, why your intuition was incorrect, and how it could have been correct. This will require some serious work on your scratch paper as you work your way through the dead ends. The end result is that if someone asked you why you solved a problem in a certain way, you are able to give a coherent answer

(One technique you might want to use here is the Rubber Ducky technique: place a rubber ducky (or stuffed animal) on the edge of your desk. Explain to him/her/it how to solve the problem, so that they could do it themselves. Anticipate any questions they’d have. Sound ridiculous? It is, but it’s also a real technique used by coders: look up “Rubber duck debugging” on Wikipedia. If you can explain what you’re doing to a Rubber Duck, you’re done with step 2.)

Stage 3: Going beyond the problem

If you want to get a 700+ score on the GMAT, you have to be prepared for problems to come in completely unfamiliar forms. You need to be able to recognize the concepts behind the question in whatever form they come in, and address them appropriately. The end result is that you can answer any problem based on the material you learned, even if the problem form is completely new.