Best Verbal Course out there

Question

I am preparing for Quant with the help of target test prep and loving it till now. The thing is I want a course for verbal as well. My weakness is sentence correction (According to Egmat mock test). Target Test Prep will be launching verbal but I am a bit skeptical about it as it will be an untested product. I am extremely confused between Egmat and Manhattan Prep. I am loving Manhattan Prep but it is way too pricey for me. Is it worth it? Secondly any other courses that you would recommend?

Plus is buying OG 2021 a good idea?

Plus is buying OG 2021 a good idea?

Leadership · Answer

Hi Khattak2144 .. Welcome to Gmatclub. If you do not have the OG, then you must buy the recent or an earlier version. As per experts, one should focus on OG Verbal questions. There are many companies offering a trial version of their courses. You should check if you have not tried. Both E-Gmat and Manhattan are good courses but you need to decide which one suits you best. You can also check the reviews at - https://gmatclub.com/reviews/gmat_courses/?fl=menu. If you are out of budget, go for E-gmat.

Khattak2144 · Answer

The thing is I have heard many negative things for Egmat also that it is heavily marketed mediocre product on other platforms like quora and reddit. I have OG 2020 but should I go for OG 2021?

EducationAisle · Answer

Best way would be to attend a couple of free trial classes at a couple of service providers and then decide.

Ultimately, it is the competence of the  instructor  that should matter to you.

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Khattak2144 The biggest challenge that students face while solving Verbal questions is with Application of Concepts using the right strategies. Hence, it is very important that you learn the right strategies and master them through Structured Application. That's why while building GMATWhiz, we have ensured that the focus is entirely on Application.

We dedicate the first unit of Every Module (SC, CR and RC) on Application and we ensure that the solutions are not just highly detailed but also following the same methodology consistently. Hence, over a period of time your understanding improves and you start performing much better. I would recommend that you check out the free trial version of the course and I'm sure you will love the pedagogy and find it much better than other courses. You can access the free trial using this link: https://www.gmatwhiz.com

Let me know if you have any questions.

Leadership · Answer

Do not buy OG 2021 when you have OG 2020. Surely, some people will not like a product and some will. That's why me and  EducationAisle  asked you to take trial lessons. If you understand the approach of an instructor in teaching, go ahead to buy. Otherwise, try another. You can also try EducationAisle course and GMATwhiz course:)

Khattak2144 · Answer

I dont have access to official guide online thing as I bought second hand books that is why! how much is that beneficial?

Leadership · Answer

Well, it depends on you. Online access is helpful if you want to choose questions according to section and level. Another thing you can do online is to create personalized tests from those questions. Your call mate

Khattak2144 · Answer

Thank you very much for taking time out for helping. Grateful!

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Khattak2144.

For what it's worth, we just spent basically the last close to four years creating the TTP Verbal chapters that were recently released. The chapters have been created with the aim of providing users with everything needed for scoring in the upper 40s or 50s in GMAT verbal, and the practice questions were carefully crafted in much the same way in which official questions are, through hours of initial creation follow by multi-person reviews and tuning.

Further, while the chapters have only recently been completed, they are not completely untested. Incomplete draft versions were used by some people, most of whom found them rather useful, even in draft form, and one of whom succeeded in going from V33 to V41 and in getting every SC question correct when he took the actual GMAT.

If SC is your weakest verbal area, then I suggest going directly to the TTP SC chapters. I am sure that, by using them, you can drive your SC score as high as you want.

So, I encourage you to check them out.

Khattak2144 · Answer

Great to hear that. So you are saying I need not buy any other verbal course If I go full on religiously with TTP Verbal & Quant. And at the moment I can only comment on quant and really kudos to that. Its an awesome in depth course with great analytics. But extremely lengthy. When you are planning to roll out the chapter tests as without those tests I think it will not be that much helpful

Posted from my mobile device

Posted from my mobile device

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Yes, the TTP Verbal Course is comprehensive like the quant course, though, of course, at the moment it is missing RC.

Regarding the Chapter Tests, as you said, they are an integral part of the course. At the same time, it is rather common for people to use mostly official verbal questions for their verbal preparation. So, until we have the verbal Chapter Tests up, using official questions is a viable option. In any case, the verbal chapter tests will be added at the rate of one or two chapters per week, with the CR questions preceding the SC questions.

Here's my overall assessment.

We were going to wait to release the SC and CR chapters until we had the chapter tests ready, but at a certain point, we realized that we were holding back a set of resources, that, while incomplete, people would find very useful. So, we decided to release the verbal course on a rolling basis, an approach that has the additional benefit of allowing us to get feedback from many users and see user accuracy stats as we complete the course.

Thus, admittedly, the course is not complete. That said, I do feel that the SC chapters themselve are a complete, accurate, and powerful set of resources for learning to master GMAT Sentence Correction. So, as a practical matter, you could use them as they are in combination with whatever practice questions you would have used had we not made the chapters available. Also, for what it's worth, the chapters themselves do contain dozens of practice questions with detailed explanations that outline just the type of thinking in which one has to engage in order to ace GMAT SC.

egmat · Answer

Khattak2144 - I am honored you are considering us especially considering that you probably have access to TTPs Verbal course free of charge.

Quote:

The thing is I have heard many negative things for Egmat also that it is heavily marketed mediocre product on other platforms like quora and reddit. I have OG 2020 but should I go for OG 2021?

View any course that "only" has positive reviews suspiciously. Why .. because no test prep company (or admission consultant for that matter) can make everyone successful. Success after all depends on your efforts as well. I would rather look at debriefs and reviews that have been validated either by score reports (as GC does) or by B-school email addresses. Those are very difficult to fake (how would you fake an mba.com score report that is linked to MBA.com). What else is difficult to fake - the 75+ success story interviews you will find in the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... caQTR6mAia

With a premium LinkedIn account, you should be able to look any one of them up, see what they are doing, and speak with them.
Lastly, check the identities of those who have posted negative reviews on quora. You would find that most of them are fake.

Bottom line: Your GMAT score will probably have a huge impact on your future. So it probably wont hurt to do some primary research. What do you say?

What about the course being "heavily marketed"?

One thing I can tell you is that a company is defined by two things:

1. The kind of people who work there
2. What jobs do they do

Out of ~47 people who work full time at e-GMAT, just 3 work in Marketing. On the other hand, we have 8 "full-time" employees who work in technology and many more in SM (Quant + Verbal). We just completed a hiring round in March. While the positions themselves are closed, you can compare the # of open positions we had for sales/marketing vs. those for other functional roles (SM, Tech, CSC, GMAT Strategy) etc. Here is the link to our careers portal.

One other thing - check out this company orientation if you want to know about our values.

How should you proceed?

Good managers/leaders make good decisions. Try doing the same. Evaluate multiple products, starting with TTP. See what works for you. A good way to evaluate e-GMAT would be to attend the strategy session this weekend. That way you would be able to compare how we approach the test vs. how others do. Here is the link to the same.

I am glad to see that you are putting in effort. Just stay focused and you should be able to ace the GMAT.

Cheers!!

Rajat

Chris3 · Answer

I did the entire TTP verbal course and my verbal went from 27 to 28. I found TTP verbal an immense waste of time. Not only is it very lengthy and time consuming but the results were very poor. Now i am stuck having to start verbal over again.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Chris3. I'm sure that you have made more progress than it seems. By putting in all that work, you must have picked up many key concepts and strategies that will serve you well in your quest for GMAT verbal mastery. So, now the thing to do is to press on, both by reviewing the course material and by continuing to practice in order to develop skill in applying what you are learning, because GMAT verbal is not just a test of concepts. It's a game you have to learn to play. Often, in learning to play a game, people plateau before they see improved results. They develop their knowledge and skills and make a lot of progress, but for whatever reason their stats don't show the difference, perhaps because they haven't put it all together or because things haven't "clicked" for them yet. You can be sure though that, by continuing to practice and by reviewing to fill concept gaps and ensure that you fully understand things, you'll put it all together and things will click for you as they have for so many other TTP verbal users. Stay in touch. We'll make this happen for sure, and you'll have another TTP success story to tell, like this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/GMAT/comments/ ... ?context=3

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Chris3,

To start, you will likely receive more of a response if you start your own post-thread (instead of piggy-backing on this one).

Many GMATers find some aspect of the Quant, the Verbal or both to be challenging - so you're not alone. The Verbal section is as consistent and predictable as the Quant section is, but Verbal questions have no 'safety net' - meaning that if you make a little mistake or miss a vital piece of information, then you will convince yourself that one of the wrong answers is correct (and not realize it). It might be that the combination of study materials that you've used so far hasn't helped you to make the proper adjustments to how you "see" (and respond to) the Verbal section, but before we can discuss how you might best proceed with this next phase of your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied in total? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) On what dates (or approximate dates) did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Chris3 · Answer

1) I have studied for 8 months, approximately 18 hours per week.
2) I have used exclusively TTP and OG
3) After 6 months of studying I received Q45/V27. I studied 2 more weeks and took another test to get Q48/V28. I feel confident in my quant and believe I could get Q50 with a bit more practice, but I have zero confidence in verbal.

4) I will apply fall 2021.
5) Target schools are M7 or nothing. I already have a good job and I would be taking a salary cut if I did not gain admissions to an M7 business school.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Chris3,

To start, since you are interested in some highly-competitive Schools, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile and plans. Those Experts should be able to answer your Admissions questions and help define the specific areas of your profile that could use some improvement (and the more time you have to potentially improve your overall profile, the better - meaning that the earlier you discuss your plans with an Admissions Expert, the greater the potential benefits could be). There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admissio ... tants-124/

If you've taken just these 2 CATs - and you took them 2 weeks apart - then it's not surprising that the results are so similar (re: you haven't had much time to improve in-between and without any other CAT Scores to use as a basis for comparison, we don't know how long you've actually been performing at this level). It's possible that you developed some 'bad habits' over the months of study that are keeping you from scoring higher - and we'll need to fix those bad habits (and ultimately replace them with new 'good habits') before you'll be able to score at a consistently higher level. Thankfully, the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level - and you've got plenty of time before the Round 1 application deadlines later on this year.

1) What is your overall Goal Score?
2) Are you planning to take the At-home GMAT or are you planning to take your GMAT at a Test Facility?
3) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi Chris3,

Sorry to hear that you could not improve your Verbal score even after putting in so much effort. Lack of structure is the most common reason most students aren't able to achieve their dream score. And the other reason could be not doing the prep in the right way.

As you are planning to start your Verbal prep again, I suggest you to do it properly this time. Make sure you focus on learning the right methodology to solve questions. Let me help you with it.

The right way to prepare for GMAT Verbal: 
The Verbal section in GMAT consists of three modules –
  Reading Comprehension 
 Critical Reasoning 
 Sentence Correction

The popular practice among beginners is to take all modules together instead of focusing on one module at a time. While alternating between the three modules may seem like its leading you somewhere, you might not be able to effectively build the required skills to crack GMAT Verbal in the best way possible. Here’s why –

To score well on Verbal, students need to master three important skills: 
  Comprehension Skills 
 Analytical Skills 
 Ability to Focus on main points

Since the three skills are interdependent, it is important for beginners to build them progressively. Now, when we say progressively, we mean you should first take up the skill that is least dependent on the other two, i.e. the Comprehension skill and then move on to the other skills.

Since, Sentence Correction requires you to master only one skill – the comprehension skill – you can start your prep with SC. In SC, you need to focus only on one sentence and choose the one that communicates the correct and logical meaning. 
 Critical Reasoning requires mastering two skills, i.e. comprehension and analytical skills. You must understand the meaning of every sentence and you also need to understand how the given sentences are linked to identify the logical gaps. By learning CR after SC, you will only need to learn the analytical skill while studying CR. 
 Reading comprehension requires all the three skills – comprehension, analytical, and the ability to focus. So, even if you find yourself acing the RC naturally, it is best to save it for the last.

It is also important that you focus on one module at a time, master it, and only then move on to the next. For instance, while working on CR, you should first ace inference, as it helps strengthen your current understanding of the information provided. Once you learn to correctly infer the information, you can move on to the other topics where you not only need to master inference, but you need gap filling as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeVrfdf__jU

I can suggest you in a much better way if you can give me a little background about your GMAT preparation till now because without knowing your weak areas it would be premature to suggest anything. So, we could get in touch over a call and have a detailed discussion on the same. You can use the below link to get in touch with me.

Click here to schedule a call

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