Stanley Kaplan, the Brooklyn native who started tutoring during college and founded a firm bearing his name that earned him the title of the father of the test preparation business, died Aug. 23 in his Manhattan home. He was 90.
Mr. Kaplan established what grew into a nationwide network of Kaplan testing centers to ensure meritocracy in college admissions, because he had been rejected from five New York medical schools during an era of Jewish quotas. He was a contributor to several Jewish causes.
Recipients of his philanthropy included UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish Museum, the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, the Boston Jewish Film Festival, Storahtelling and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The Rita J. & Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation established by him and his wife funded a variety of programs that enhance “the continuity of the Jewish people.”
The son of immigrants from Belarus and Latvia, and a graduate of City College, Mr. Kaplan established his testing business in the basement of his family’s Flatbush, Brooklyn, home, marketing his services at first to yeshivot and Catholic schools.
His firm, now known as Kaplan Inc., was sold to the Washington Post Company in 1984.
