My son, a rising junior, scored 1240 on his sophomore PSAT (550M/690V). He is prepping this summer with Kaplan for the SAT with a goal of 1400+. Today was his first diagnostic and he scored 1170 (530M/640V). The cynic in me says Kaplan makes the first few tests harder in order to show bigger improvements and to scare students into doing the work etc. My all-trusting side says the diagnostic scores are an accurate indicator of where he is and we should consider recalibrating our score goals and preliminary college list. I would have expected verbal to remain roughly the same as the PSAT, if not a little better, and some math improvement – rather than regression – after a 8 additional months in accelerated Algebra II. I’m curious what others who have experience with Kaplan would say regarding score accuracy. If you are going to post that we wasted our money and he should be self-prepping, please don’t bother – not helpful. This is how we chose to spend our money. He will self-prep with Khan, Meltzer and the CB practice tests once the Kaplan course is over.
My son is a rising senior and had a 1090 on his SAT in April. So he just finished a 2 week Kaplan course through his high school (luckily we only paid $5 for it), but we experienced the same thing with their tests. His first one was a 1010 and the second was a 1030. I did a bit of research online and the general consensus seemed to be that Kaplan’s tests are harder than the actual SAT and are designed to make students feel like they saw a big improvement in score when they take the real SAT. We’ll see I guess when my son takes the SAT again next month.
My D20 prepped with Kaplan for the ACT and scored considerably lower on the Kaplan practice tests than on the real thing.
We also found that my DS16 and DD19 had much lower scores on the Kaplan practice tests. Both did far better on the actual SAT. Good luck.