Students preparing for the GRE, the GMAT or the LSAT now have a University-sponsored preparation program as an option.Shannon Carlson, program coordinator for the University, said its Continuing Education program has worked with educational testing consultants to offer students an affordable option for test preparation. She said the program is offering these classes for students and non-students, while also offering an ACT prep course for high school juniors and seniors. Five classes are offered, totaling 24 hours of instruction leading up to each test, and the last class is the weekend before the testing period.Carlson said a free test prep workshop will be held Thursday in Coates Hall.”Students will meet the course instructors and learn basics about tests,” she said. “They will also learn test strategies that night.”The price of the course is about $700 — about $300 less than its competitors, which include Kaplan and The Princeton Review. Carlson said the money pays for course books and the instructors’ and coordinators’ salaries.Steven Shotts, program coordinator, said all of the class time is spent learning test strategies from actual tests.”All of our time spent in class is face-to-face,” he said. “There is no testing time included in the instruction time.”Carlson said the course offers an affordable, high-quality program, and the instructors all have more than 20 years of experience. She said there will only be six to 10 students in each class.”This is the first opportunity [for the University] to partner with a program we know is successful and make it successful for our students,” Carlson said.Shotts organized programs similar to this one at other flagship universities including the universities of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.—-Contact Ellen Zielinski at [email protected]