Thursday, January 25, 2007

Kaplan vs. Pass Program

1) PASS program is less expensive and less time. ($3K vs $7K+...4 weeks vs 6 weeks from what I've heard)

2) Kaplan course sits you down 8 hours a day in lectures and gives you huge notebooks of things to memorize. PASS is also about 8 hours a day with decent breaks but then has individual tutoring and teaches you how to systematically learn all the material instead of just giving you thousands of pages of material and saying "memorize this!"

3) PASS program has a VERY high pass rate with students who are retaking the boards (which speaks well if you haven't already had the experience of failing...) Dr. Francis was actually investigated by the USMLE people for cheating at some point because he had so many students passing (he was cleared).

4) The PASS program still highly recommends that you do the qbank and works with you in individual tutoring sessions to develop a style of answering questions quickly and accurately.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're working for Pass program. Here's why:

1. WHO on earth told you it's 7K for Kaplan??? The person should get their information straight
2. The whole point of USMLE is to test your knowledge on BASIC medical sciences...which Kaplan books carry, if you were going to complain about the volumes of books you have to read, you should not be in medicine.
3. Could the reason why 'comment moderation' has been enabled be that others may actually *gasp* speak the truth here???

In conclusion, get your facts straight first; that is the first rule of advertising...which is clearly what you're doing here!

usmlestep said...

Mary,

Thanks for your comments.
I will re-write this post using the comments you have provided. I am also open for suggestions - if you have your view on Pass Program vs. Kaplan - I am happy to publish it here.