Kaplan courses for appropriate test should be mandated

Junette Reyes/Staff Writer 

Kaplan Test Prep is exactly what the title suggests; a program intended to prepare students for all major standardized exams such as the GRE, GMAT, LSAT, and the MCAT.

FIU partnered with Kaplan Test Prep in order to further prepare students for their exams for graduate school, making it the official test-preparation program of our University.

The program offers “…on-campus classes, expert advice, [and] free events and seminars on the graduate school and university admissions processes…”

The program is located within the Graham Center at the Modesto Maidique Campus and within the Wolfe Center at the Biscayne Bay Campus.

The presence of the Kaplan Test Prep program beyond GC, however, seems to be scarce, which presents a flaw in the promotion of the program to all students on campus.

All of which could be solved by making it a requirement for students to enroll in the program.

Such an important and useful program should be advertised as much as possible, yet its existence is near extinction outside the program’s location.

The advertisements themselves are quite simple but succeed in stating the purpose of the Kaplan Test Prep program.

Some flyers might be found on the many bulletin-boards located within buildings all around campus, but it will always be a matter of whether the students even have time to look. Not only that, but whether the students even have intentions of looking for something on the boards.

As students, we are always on the move to our next class and can barely afford to be distracted. This problem is even more prevalent within the Graham Center itself.

The Graham Center is, by far, one of the busiest buildings on campus and is not necessarily the best place to focus on one thing, considering that there is almost always a lot of ongoing traffic there.

There are more Kaplan ads there, considering that is where the program is located, but it still is, and will always be, a matter of the students’ time and intentions.

I sought information to somewhat determine where students’ intentions lie based on the number of enrollment and their way of discovering the program but Kaplan would not release such information to me.

In order to eliminate the need of promoting the Kaplan Test Prep program on campus, as well as eliminate the students’ time and intentions factor in this situation, I propose that the University makes it a requirement for all students to take a Kaplan Test Prep course in accordance with the exam they will eventually need to take to move onto graduate school.

Making it a requirement benefits the Kaplan Test Prep program because it obviously rules out the need to promote their program, but it will also benefit students in their preparation to excel.

junette.reyes@fiusm.com