Knewton online course. Review.

Here is the Master Thread we maintain for all the Test Prep Classes and Courses. Knewton is quite new, so not much info on them. There is plenty on PR.
gmat-prep-courses-classes-reviews-ratings-and-comparison-78451.html

Hi there any update on knewton? I also received the discounted rate offer. Hope to read the reviews first before I commit though.

Which part of the GMAT is your weakness? I am very strong in math so I didn't pay much attention to the math part during the class. But the math practice questions does cover all the basic concepts.

But there verbal session is very good. And all the explanation I got for the verbal questions I never gotten those from Kaplan or Manhattan gmat. It seems like the class is taught by multiple instructors, each of them will have his/her specialty in some kind of question type. David Inburg is excellent in sentence correction. He had English degree from Harvard. I can do some of the sentence correction in 30 seconds or less now. The exercise they have is a little bit different from Kaplan or Manhattan. Instead of give you all the GMAT like sentence correction problem for practice, they give you a GMAT like sentence and just ask you to identify the subject and verb of each sentence. Once you mastered that, you can move on to do some GMAT like sentence correction problem. If you are native speaker, it will be very easy for you. To me, this exercise is very very helpful for me, a non-native speaker.

Thanks eileen for your reply. It's very helpful. Math has always been my weakness, though I need a lot of improvement in verbal as well. I'm intrigued by Knewton's adaptive learning technique. Surfing its site, I liked what I saw. What's holding me back is the lack of testimonials about Knewton in any forum. But, darn, I forgot that the deadline of Knewton's offer was only until June 9. Oh well, I'll probably wait for another promo.

Tonight will be my 3rd session with Knewton. Like Eileen said, they have a different approach to studying verbal on their pretests. Given a sentence, you will be asked to identify the subject, verb, prepositional phrase, etc. The math pretests employ a similar technique. Data Sufficiency uses the standard format, but Problem Solving questions require you to input the actual answer - no multiple choice.

It's too early to judge the content of the program, but I like it so far.

Now that I have completed two CATs from knewton. I have to agree with others that the scoring algorithm does seem a little weird. I missed only 3 questions in quantitative section and I got 45 or 77%. Consider that I have taken the real exam before and scored 51 in Q in the real test. This 45 makes me a little suspicious. I missed 8 questions in verbal section and I got 41 or 93%. This does not seem right either. From my experience, in order to get score like 41 on the verbal, I can't miss more than 5 questions. Since I have never had that high verbal score before, I really can't tell. Except for the weird scoring, the question content is still great for practice purpose. Those questions are rewrite of the OG questions, though SC questions does seem easier.

Depending on the number of incorrect answers that were experimental questions, I would say that a V41 with 8 incorrect answers is a possible outcome. However, it's interesting to see that your Quant results were similar to mine. I missed two questions and received a Q46. I think the issue with their scoring is not the weighting of incorrect answers, but rather the lack of difficult questions. I'll go out on a limb here and say that it's absolutely impossible to get a Q46 on the real exam by missing only 2 questions (one in the #8-10 range and the other in the 20-25 range).

I'll post my findings on CAT #2 this weekend.

The rest of the material still seems pretty good so far.

CAT #2 Update

Score: 730 (Q46, V45)
Quant (55 mins) - Missed 8 questions
Verbal (63 mins) - Missed 5 Questions (2RC, 2CR, 1SC) <-- combination of MGMAT SC and Knewton concept videos

Well, the scoring seems to be quite different than the results of my first (rusty diagnostic) exam 640(Q46,V32). However, I did make legitimate improvements in my Verbal ability.

I haven't analyzed my right/wrong answers yet, but I probably made some careless errors on Quant. V45 seems really impressive, so hopefully it's an accurate representation of my ability.

I'm going to take a GMAT Prep in a couple of weeks, so we'll see how accurate these really are. I can say this much about the course so far though, the concept videos are great. For each problem you miss on a pretest, practice problem, or CAT you can click a link that takes you directly to a video that explains the concept being tested.

More detail to come later... It's golf time now

Excellent job Avernusaur. You are giving detailed progress through a new prep course. I hope your GMATPrep and, ultimatelly, GMAT will be even better than Knewton's CATs you are taking right now.

When you say 55 min and 63 min, Are you saying that you completed Q and V in those minutes rather than total of 75?

How many problems do they assign for homework? How do you like the content?

Was your SC & CR accuracy this high before?

Wow excellent score avernusaur and thanks for your updates. Will your 730 be the baseline score for your moneyback guarantee or your official gmat score of 700? As Knewton promised in their site you either get a 50 point increase from your baseline score or your money back. If they take your 730 as the baseline then you will probably get at least a 780 in your next exam. And even if they take your 700 as the baseline you're still guaranteed a 750 by Knewton. Or else you get your money back. Either way it's a win win situation for you.

Aside from the mgmat sc what other materials do you supplement Knewton? Thanks.

Good luck and kindly keep us updated in your preparation.

Took the Knewton practice test . Would say the score is representative of the approximate GMAT score.

Yes, I completed each section in 55 min and 63 min, respectively. Although I typically have pretty good timing, this does seem faster that I'd expect.

Here's how the homework is managed:
Each class has a pretest, a retest, and practice problems. The pretests and retests ask questions that are not multiple choice, testing your knowledge at a deeper level. For a pretest, you typically have between 20 and 46 questions (i.e. Reading Comp. vs. Sentence Corr.). The number of questions on a restest is determined by how many questions you missed on the pretest - it only tests the concepts that you originally got wrong. The problem solving questions are all in the standard GMAT format and are based on your ability. Many of the practice questions appear to be re-phrased questions from OG, OG Supplements, etc. The re-written questions are significantly different, so they're still useful, but the "stories" look familiar. As for whether I like the content, I'd say yes. The format for pretest/restest was awkward at first, but I think it might prove to be one of the strengths of the program.

SC & CR accuracy:
Well, I'd say that SC was typically my weakest area with CR coming in 2nd place. Listed below is an excerpt from a journal that I used to record my progress in my first GMAT attempt.

The MGMAT SC has really helped me learn most of SC, but Knewton's practice problems and concept videos have helped me put it into practice and commit it to memory.



This was my second CAT with Knewton, so my baseline score will actually be my official 700.

I'm supplementing the Knewton program with several materials:
-OG 11 & Supplements (As necessary for supporting the MGMAT SC and semi-targeted practice)
-MGMAT SC (I think this is still really valuable if you're aiming for 0-1 errors)
-MGMAT CR ( I just ordered this one, so it hasn't arrived yet)
-PR 1012 (I just ordered this one also, but I think it will be good for targeted Quant practice)
-GMAT Club Math Tests (These are going to be critical if I want to hit Q49/50)

I'm also using my other books for reference:
MGMAT Number Properties
Kaplan Math Workbook (mostly when I was warming up again)

I'm probably using more supplemental materials than most people would, but I think each resource offers something unique.

Avernusaur,

Awesome! The pretest/retest concept sounds great. So Is the price 890/590 USD?

Some one said above its 590 and Knewton website shows 890.(or) Do they make the 590 offer after you try it for free for a week? Is it mandatory that you take the class during class times? I mean all these classes are recorded and I do not have a good time to take these classes. Can you complete them as per your schedule?

Thanks

I'm not sure how the pricing works, but they seem to have a lot of different promotions. If you send them an email saying that your friends just signed up for $599, they might give you the discount. I registered during their March Madness sale for $695.

All of the classes are available prerecorded, some even have several recordings from different sessions. This is probably a perfectly acceptable option, but the live classes are nice if you can fit them into your schedule. They put up practice questions throughout the class and you participate my selecting your answer choice in a poll menu. They also ask you to type answers into the chat window for other topics, like identifying the subject and main verb in a sentence correction question. This classroom participation really helps the student learn the concepts being discussed, but you can probably participate on your own if you watch an archived video.

Be aware that the 50 point guarantee requires that you take your first CAT before using any of their materials and it also states that you must complete all of the coursework. The refund process might be a bit difficult, so I wouldn't count on receiving one until we see someone at GMATClub go through that process. Of course, I'm hopeful that all GMAT Club members will exceed the 50 pt guarantee and thereby become ineligible for a refund

Avernusaur, my two knewton CAT scores are a little bit different from yours.

My previous real GMAT was 51Q 28V 660 total
My first diagnostic knewton CAT was 48Q 31V 660 total (missed 2Q 5V)
My second knewton CAT was 45Q 41V 700 total (missed 5Q 8V)
I did complete the CATs faster than all other practice CATs or the real deal especially in verbal portion.

I have to say I love the concept videos. Concept queue show all the concept that you have not mastered. Once you mastered a concept, the concept will be disappeared from the concept queue. I also like the model of having a team of instructors. In Kaplan course I took before, one instructor teach the whole thing. But somehow, he maybe great at math, but not verbal or vise versa. With a team of instructors, each one is teaching the part he or she is very good at. This way he/she can teach it efficiently. Besides the class, you can also attend office hours on weekends for additional help. So far, my favorite instructor is Dave Ingber for sentence correction.

Looks like Knewton is really useful. I already signed up for their 7-day free trial and saw some concept videos which I thought were very useful, this was a while ago - 2 months. I wanted to sign-up for their session but at the time their were no offers and I price was ~$1000 which was very expensive. So I decided to buy the MGMAT guides and work on them. I guess once I am done with the MGMAT Guides I will try to sign-up for the class if there are any promo's.

Thanks and keep us updated.