Thursday, January 22, 2009

Kaplan should pay their MCAT teachers more

So I work for Kaplan as an MCAT teacher, and the other day something occurred to me. It was right after I declined another course to teach this semester, and a discussion with my boss on how he was struggling to find someone to teach it. I realized that MCAT teachers are getting a bit ripped off. I personally am ok with the money and don't really care, because I'm doing it for the teaching experience rather than because I want more money. However, there are 4 MCAT teachers and like 20 SAT teacher at my Kaplan site. We all get paid the same, despite the fact that MCAT teachers are more scarce (and we teach approximately the same number of students as the SAT folk, because our classes are much larger). It also takes a lot more work to teach a class room for pre-meds, though admittedly with a little prep and if you follow the material religiously you could probably fudge your knowledge. MCAT students pay more than twice that of most other test prep takers at Kaplan as well. And yet, Kaplan MCAT teachers don't get a cut of this. I'm surprised that this has never come up, because quite honestly each MCAT teacher is more valuable and difficult to come by than SAT teachers. We tend to have more education as well, since SAT teachers can start teaching at age 18, but few 18 year olds are prepared or capable of teaching the MCAT. Like I said, I don't care that much, but it does seem a little unfair.

1 comment:

  1. What do you expect? They're profit-hungry capitalists preying on people like you or me who won't take action and either demand a raise or quit. That's why I've been developing material for my own test prep. business where teachers will be paid decently. Maybe someone will do the same for MCAT

    -A Kaplan SAT/GRE/GMAT instructor

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