The Princeton Review
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Image:Tpr logo.gifThe Princeton Review (TPR) is a for-profit American company that offers private instruction and tutoring for standardized achievement tests, in particular those offered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), such as the SAT, GRE, and GMAT. They also offer courses for the LSAT and MCAT, as well as many other special programs. The company was founded in 1982 by John Katzman and is based in New York City. It is not affiliated with either Princeton University or the ETS.
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Description
The philosophy of The Princeton Review is that by "studying smarter, not harder," it is possible to raise one's score dramatically on the standardized tests offered by the ETS. In particular, TPR promotes the somewhat lighthearted notion that ETS really stands for the "Evil Testing Service", out to reduce everyone's score to the median if possible, and that the tests ETS offers can be beaten by understanding how ETS thinks and operates.
The company offers courses world-wide through company-owned and third-party franchises. A typical instructional course on studying for SAT lasts for five weeks and costs approximately 900 USD. Instructors lead students through workbooks designed to illustrate strategies and tactics for raising one's score. Courses typically offer a guarantee to repeat the course if the students score does not go up. The company also offers private tutoring for a variable fee depending on the experience of the instructor and market demand. In some markets, such as New York City, the company also offers instruction on local standardized admission tests. Countries outside of the U.S. where the company offers courses in India, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
TPR hires its own test-takers to take all standardized test (like the SAT and LSAT) to keep abreast of changes through its TAP (Test Assessment Program). In its SAT courses, it uses its own diagnostic tests, which the company claims are designed to be as close to real SAT as possible. There is a debate regarding whether these tests are accurate as mock versions of the SAT. The company tests its LSAT and MCAT students with real practice tests purchased from the Law School Admission Council and the Association of American Medical Colleges, respectively. In a typical SAT course, students are tested three separate times throughout the course to monitor their progress in learning the course techniques. Despite the company's assertion that ETS is somewhat "evil", TPR has an overall cordial relationship with ETS.
The course techniques in the instruction workbooks vary depending on the particular test. In general, the company philosophy is that standardized tests are quite predictable and use the same types of questions repeatedly.
The company also has several other divisions, including K-12 and Admissions Services. K-12 provides assessment, intervention and professional development programs to school districts and Admissions Services charges colleges for leads to PrincetonReview.com students. Still, over 70% of the company's revenue comes from test preparation.
SAT Techniques
In the case of the SAT, the company's largest market, the techniques are based on the idea that ETS prefers that all students score as closely as possible to 500 (the median) on both the mathematics and verbal sections, each of which has a score range of 200 to 800. (As of March 2005, the SAT includes a third 200-800 point section on writing). A perfect score on the new SAT is 2400.
Because of this, TPR counsels students to identify the difficulty level of questions (easy, medium, or hard) based on the numbering patterns used by ETS. On easy questions, ETS attempts to make the correct answer obvious in order to push lower scoring students upwards towards the median. On difficult questions, ETS tends to include an obvious answer that is always incorrect in order to pull higher scoring students downwards towards the median.
TPR instruction invokes the idea of "Joe Bloggs", a typical median-scoring student who is fooled by the obvious answer choices. Part of the core instruction method of the company is to learn "what Joe Bloggs will pick" and to know when to choose the same answer and when to avoid it.
Other General techniques for the SAT
- Many students score poorly because they rush through the exam. It almost always pays to slow down.
- All but the highest scoring decile of students can raise their SAT scores by skipping the harder questions entirely and leaving them blank.
- Most questions should be solved through a process of elimination method.
- If you can eliminate at least one answer choice, it pays to guess. If not, leave the question blank.
- On sentence completion questions, it is possible to find the correct answer even if you don't know the meaning of one or more of the answer choices.
SAT Math
- Algebra and geometry problems that contain variables in the answer choices are best solved without any algebraic manipulation. Rather, they are sometimes efficiently solved by plugging in sample values for the variables.
- Many mathematics problems can be solved by "ballparking" (estimating the size of the correct answer) and then eliminating all the answers that are not near to it.
- Questions on the exam involving average, ratios, combinations and other common mathematical situations can be solved efficiently by certain shortcuts.
SAT Verbal
- Sentence completion problems should also be solved by avoiding looking at the answer choices but rather by jotting down a possible crude choice for the answer. Afterwards, the answers are compared to see which one best fits one's trial answer by process of elimination. Using this method, two-blank sentence completions are actually easier, since they give one two chances to eliminate the wrong answer through process of elimination.
- On reading comprehension problems, one should avoid reading the passage first, since they are purposely dry and unexciting. Instead one should scavenge for the answers after reading the question and use process of elimination.
- If the reading passage concerns a minority group, member of a minority group, science or scientists, skip reading it entirely and go to the answer choices. Since the passage invariably takes a positive attitude toward these subjects, the "politically correct" answer is the correct answer and often stands out broadly against the other choices.
Criticisms
The PR diagnostic tests do not use actual SAT questions, and are considered by many to be harder than the actual SAT. In addition, the curve TPR uses to score the diagnostics is only a guess at what the actual SAT curve will be, and the grading on the essay portion of the diagnostics is done by PR employees, opening it up to subjectivity issues. For this reason, many believe that the score increase students see from their first diagnostic to their SAT is not due to an improvement, but to a difference in difficulty and grading.
Princeton Review's "11 Practice New SATs" book is criticized for giving students an unrealistic idea of what the SAT will be like due to the fact that it uses no actual SAT questions, unlike the College Board's "The Official SAT study guide" and "10 Real SATs." Ironically, the "10 Real SATs" book is distributed by TPR for some of its courses in place of its own publication.
Many students have reported unqualified or incompetent instuctors teaching their courses. While many good reports have been given as well, it leads many to question whether the quality of instructors hired at TPR is discordant.
Competitors
Princeton Review has a number of competitors in each of its various subdivisions:
Kaplan, Inc. is Princeton Review's biggest competitor in the test preparation and K-12 education markets. Kaplan offers many of the same offerings as Princeton Review -- SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, and State Standards preparation in a similar classroom format.
External link
- www.PrincetonReview.com - Official website