The biggest advantage of attending a course rather than working alone is the discipline of regular study. I attended the Kaplan GMAT course twice a week for three weeks and found the course to be well organized and the teachers to be knowledgeable and experienced. The Kaplan centers also have excellent resources. However, unless there are major gaps in your knowledge of elementary math and grammar, there is little that you will actually "learn." Kaplan are big on teaching tricks and shortcuts, but I found that their much vaunted "Kaplan method" was frequently slower than my own methods. Further, since the logic behind the tricks and shortcuts were not explained, some students I spoke to had difficulty adapting them to slightly different problems.
Technique is the key to success in the GMAT or any similar standardized test. Practice, lots of it, with questions of the appropriate level of difficulty is therefore the most important factor and that is where Kaplan falls down. The course books come with a CD-ROM of problem sets and four full length adaptive GMAT tests. The problem sets are great for brushing up on specific subject areas, but there should be a major health warning on reading too much into your performance on the full length tests. The Kaplan full tests are no indication of the score you will achieve on the real test. At the high levels, the questions on the Kaplan tests are far more difficult than anything you will ever see on the real GMAT. I know at least two students who did not know which areas to focus their practice in the last days before the test because they were scoring so poorly on all sections of the Kaplan tests. Had they had a more realistic assessment, they would have been able to pinpoint the few areas in which they really did need more work. I achieved a very high score indeed. But I used none of the Kaplan methods and ended up using Princeton Review for test practice.
In summary, if you feel that you need to brush up your knowledge, I would recommend Kaplan without hesitation. If however, like many prospective applicants, all you need is a quick review and lots of question practice, buy two or three of the review books - I would suggest Princeton Review and Barrons - and stay at home.

Recommended: No