IN THE NEWS.

"High school juniors Jonah Lopatin and Shital Patel are sitting down on a recent evening with their exuberant, 28-year-old instructor, Ian Ivey. The topic isn't preparation for the SAT, but a whole new market for Kaplan: college-admissions counseling.

... `I feel like I'm getting a step ahead of everyone else with this class,' says Mr. Lopatin.

He and Ms. Patel are among 15 students in the Washington area Participating in the pilot test of Kaplan's college-counseling classes.

Kaplan, best known for its test-preparation services, is not alone. Its main competitor, Princeton Review, is also adding college-counseling services to its array of test-prep classes. Both companies have offered some form of admissions help for years, but they are upgrading the service in response to an upstart West Coast entrant called Achieva College Prep Centers.

Achieva, which has just eight centers but hopes to expand rapidly, is attracting attention for an all-inclusive approach that covers study habits, test preparation, college admissions, and even strategies for picking a freshman-year college schedule.

... All three companies are looking to the Internet as a potentially enormous source of new business.

`To some degree, we have been a bit brain-dead to wait until 1999 to pull all this together,' said Andy Lutz, the vice president for high school programs at Princeton Review, based in New York City."

--Education Week, Dec. 15, 1999

ACTE Editorial and Publications Committee members are responsible for Division Report content. Judy Peterson is the representative for the Guidance Division. Techniques Assistant Editor Marnie Roberts compiled this Division Report.