<p>After lurking some boards and browsing through some threads, I've seen something negative about Kaplan (without mentioning what's wrong with it) 100% of the time.</p>
<p>I've been doing fairly well on the practice tests and whatnot (well my CR score keeps staying exactly at 690 or 700.. but my writing and math scores are 750-800s most of the time), but is this program really that bad? I don't want to go into the SAT thinking my score will improve 200-400 points and it goes down or stays the same...</p>
<p>I ran into basically the same problem as you… before I heard that Kaplan was bad for SAT/ACT I bought the SAT 2400 and 12 SAT Tests books by Kaplan (spent around 40$) and I had finished 6 tests from the book and completed the entire SAT 2400 book. When I went on collegeconfidential I was dismayed to hear that Kaplan was not reliable in helping improve a score. HOWEVER, last year I got a 175 on the PSAT (really low, I know) and I studied a ton over the summer with the Kaplan books. I bought the official SAT Study Guide (MAKE SURE YOU GET THIS: official tests are the reason why everyone recommends the official guide over any third party ones) and took 4 of the tests: I scored 2240, 2290, 2320, and 2350 on the official tests that I took (after reading through the entire book and also disregarding the essay portion). I also think I may have gotten National Merit Scholar on the PSAT this year (but not really sure… I stayed up the whole night before the test and wasn’t feeling too well).</p>
<p>So basically, people on CC say that Kaplan is bad but that doesn’t mean it won’t help. Read through the book, and then jump to other books that are better (I like “The Underground Guide to the SAT” and “The Official SAT Study Guide”). The main reason that people say Kaplan doesn’t help is because they don’t offer official SAT questions, and thus the nature of the questions may slightly differ from those on the official SAT test.</p>
<p>The kids who write the Underground Guide to the SAT are tools. They know nothing about ETS and yet they make such ignorant and rude claims about them. If you go to a top-level institution sometime in your lives, please don’t think you know everything - like they do. They really don’t.</p>
<p>Ah, I see. I noticed that the questions seemed a bit different from the actual SAT ones. I’d buy an official guide if I could… I’ll see if I can find anything on TPB though.</p>
<p>I think you may have taken a too literal interpretation of what the Underground Guide to the SAT was saying… I mainly thought they were just joking around and trying to appeal to their audience (although some of the stuff they said was a little harsh).</p>