I have taken three courses,
MGMAT, Knewton, and mastergmat.
here are my views:
Mastergmat: the course is average. The content is not enough for you if you are targeting above 710.
Pros:
1. Excellent support from instructors. This i think is the best part. even though the course is not really adaptive, but i could schedule many sessions with them and in those sessions they shared with my specific weak areas and strong areas(like "special triangles" / "paradox resolving") from their back-end data based on my performance on the course-ware. Ditto for AWA. These were one-to-one sessions and were the most helpful in bettering my performance. Such one to one attention was not there in the other two.
2. detailed and patient one-on-one CAT analyses.
2. Awesome AWA analysis and preparation support. This included templates for both essays and detailed analysis of 4 essays each (issue and argument).
3. quick responses to emails. There was also constant encouragement and morale boosting, even in my one to one session on the lest day of prep; a personal touch:)
Cons:
1. average content. Not very reflective of actual GMAT. I would say i found the content easy and tricks (covered extensively on knewton) were there but not as good.
2. CATs were not good. For one they give the score in a range. my ranges were smtimes 690-710 and smtimes 730-770: clearly confusing. second, i used to get more than 4 RCs on my tests (smtimes even 7! ) with 2 - 5 questions each. The reason they gave for this abnormality is that their system ran out of higher level questions to give me and since RC had highest weightage on their system, thats wat used to pop up for me.
Knewton: Good. but not enough if you want extra help. Id say take it if you can study entirely on your using their online material.
Pros:
1. Good content, and CATs: GMAT like.
2. very explanatory videos (on demand or live) covering the session topic very well.
3. good coverage on realistic test taking methods/ tricks. really helped, especially their "tells" for identifying sentence errors in verbal, tricks in math, and their guessing techniques for desperate situations. coming to the 50-50 split was greatly emphasised and it works well on test day.
4. gave very handy "Knotes" covering entire syllabus in a few pages.
Mixed:
1. It's 'adaptive'. This is the most discussed and publicised part of Knewton. But honestly, having seen waht exactly is adaptive in there, i think it is a little too hyped (and takes away attention from other things)
Cons:
1. extremely bad support. I didnt attend live sessions so i cannot be sure how much time the instructor wud spend with you after a live class. but as such queries you put on their query platform (answres.knewton) went unanswered fr days! reason they gave: nature of query is such that they get qued, hence the delay. One of my verbal queries(something on identifying paradoxes) was unanswred for 20 days inspite of my emails/additional queries. i didnt understand wat was wrong with its nature.
I gave up.
2. bad test analysis system. they only explain why the correct answer is correct and why the worngs are wrong. if you disagree or cannot understand only option is to post a query. they also do not provide the difficulty level of questions on your results page. so you cannot analyse your test performance even yourself very accurately. i posted queries for help on analysing my tests, never got replies. i saw others too on their forum who got no replies to similar qstns. they gave Same reason: 'nature of query'. AWA analyses/preparation support was also pretty limited.
3. Once you exhaust their material(i did in two months, my gmat was due after another full month) theres nothing more you can do except go over their "concept que"
ne page dedicated to one highly specific concept. while these pages help, theres still no content left fr you to practice on. couldnt even retale my CATs. i ventured to ask for more material. of course i got no reply.
4. in case, for any reason, you wish to restart the course you cannot get the adaptive aspect back. you can only retake section wise tests you have already taken. They dont reset your account. their reason: resetting will cause loss of data for them (and you)
one case specific problem was that their live classes are held for students across the globe. their timings never suited me (3 am /4 am/ 1am...) hence i completely lost out on a part of wat i paid for.
My experience was bad with knewton. with the money i paid, i needed good support for answering my doubts and not just unending interconnnected concepts and material left or me to do by myself. personally i found the scoring awkward too. on one instance i got two verbal questions(far apart frm each other) wrong and scored 41 while on another i got 7 wrong (3 consecutive plus 2 others consecutive, and 2 separate) and got 42. didnt underatnt it. but cant say.... cz i dnt know hw it wrks. no knowldge abt diffcutly level compouned problems.
MGMAT: By far the best. even its test series alone can bring about great improvement. I didnt go through the entire material. just did the tests and used parts of the material (a few PDFs). Ill therefore not list the pros and cons but just say that whatevr i did from
MGMAT was fresh and great. The CAT analyses was absolutely fabulous! very detailed and helped me improve A LOT. It ensured that i never slipped downward. only went upward in my score. I didnt need any support. BTW, they also provide you the option to reset your account to start from scratch if you want to(in case your prep got a break or somethng). PS: their flashcards were very handy.
Phew. long post. i hope this helps. These are completely my personal views based on my personal experience.
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25 Dec 2010, 06:28
