Can GMAT prep companies really be trusted? Very valid concern.

Sure. I am all for it and verification. I think if you are signing up with one of the, you absolutely can ask for a verification/proof/etc. It will be unusual, I can tell you that, but an absolutely valid request that they should not be able to deny.

the problem is they absolutely DO deny request for official score verification. both firms i have mentioned have told me that they do not, and will not offer the official score report, which i believe is the only way to verify a score. both have told me that the customer has to either trust the firm, or not.

In that case, you should assume that those instructors did not get the scores they are claiming. It is pretty much like the adult movie industry in which Governments require that every actor involved must be Adult and that it is the duty of movie producers to ensure that and keep the proof same.

That's a very valid concern. At least in my case, the reason I haven't made my score report public is that there's a lot of personal information there that I wouldn't want floating around. But perhaps we should just start with this.

Added to my LinkedIn.

i dont see personal information as a substantial concern. many instructors at various companies have taken the test many years ago. the scores and the information are often expired.

even if we agree that personal information is of importance, firms can always redact all information except for the instructors name, and the test scores. This is really all a prospective customer would care about anyways.

props to Ajitesh for his transparency.

also im wondering whether, at least in the USA, there is a government agency that regulates marketing claims (such as the 99% claim) made by test prep firms. anyone know? i would think the department of commerce would be in charge, but the test prep market is probably too small for them to really care.

the FDA regulates drug claims.
the SEC regulates financial claims
doesnt seem like anyone is regulating the claims made by test prep firms. even if they were not truthful, it would be nearly impossible to find out. one would have to have a decent amount of evidence (which is impossible to get unless a instructor willingly admits guilt), take the firm to court, and the court would demand proof. it is very unlikely a customer would do this, as the legal cost would be prohibitive.

so nothing realistically stops a test prep firm from making any claims. if a test prep firm stated the average student comes in with a 500 score, and leaves the course with a 750 score, and they refused to verify this, there is nothing a customer can do.

I had a recent student come from one of the big GMAT companies. He inquired at this company about doing some tutoring after the class was done. He was assigned a tutor who had never taken the GMAT. The tutor had taken and done well on other standardized tests but no GMAT score and no GMAT experience. So, yeah, it's a valid concern that people should have even in working with well known companies. In terms of reviews, yes, be skeptical. I think if you actually read through a whole bunch of reviews you can get a sense for what is real and what is BS (you can also note if all of the reviews are written over a short period of time). I saw one company having teachers fill out google reviews. It looked like the company had tons of 5 star reviews from students but it was the teachers reviewing their own experience working at the company (I assume the company instructed them to do this).

I agree with BB that an impressive GMAT score doesn't indicate a great teacher. Teaching is its own thing. That said, having an excellent GMAT score is certainly one way to show that you've mastered the content and that mastery is a pre-requisite for being a great GMAT teacher.

Whether you're going to do a class or tutoring it's an excellent idea to have a conversation with whomever you are going to hire and to ask a lot of questions so that you can get a sense for the person and their experience.

Hope that is helpful.

A.

I agree with the rest of you that GMAT teaching ability is not directly proportional to GMAT test-taking ability. Though I would expect any expert GMAT instructor to be able to score at least 700 consistently, I do think that 99th percentile scores are a bit overrated in that they require a certain degree of luck.

Some GMAT tutoring companies are very strict and require you to send an official score report through GMAC, in the same way that you would send a score report to B-schools. Others will take you at your word, or will simply require some sort of physical evidence, such as a copy of an ESR, or an unofficial score report (which is problematic, because these types of documents could easily be doctored). Many of these companies also don't require their tutors to retake the GMAT every 5 years, so those high GMAT scores are a bit deceptive, because they could be over 10 years old, and the test has become significantly more difficult since then.

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask potential tutors/instructors for their official GMAC score report PDFs, which can be accessed/downloaded online with a unique URL and the date of birth--the worst they can say is no. My score report (I have taken the GMAT 4 times total, and 3 times within the last 5 years) includes only my real name, my email address and my office address, all of which are public information, so I certainly don't mind sharing it with any potential student who asks. The problem is that this online score report (unlike the score reports sent directly to B-schools) contains ALL of your GMAT scores within the last 5 years, including AWA and IR scores, and even your cancelled scores and your lower scores, which is another part of why many tutors/companies are reluctant to share them publicly.

GMAT Club's new score verification feature (the green checkmark on the left of this post) will serve useful in this regard--it allows tutors to verify scores without sharing personal information. However, it is only able to verify GMAT scores earned within the last 5 years, and it currently verifies only your most recent GMAT score. It also doesn't display AWA scores or IR scores.

You are right to be skeptical of these score claims when no proof is provided, but you also have the right to ask potential instructors for the links to their official GMAT score reports (and dates of birth), or to ask that they verify their scores on GMAT Club. It's the only way of guaranteeing that your tutor/teacher has actually taken the test, and that his/her score claims are valid.

If I were to start my own GMAT prep company, then here would be the score requirements:

-If you want to teach the entire test, then you must have taken the GMAT within the last 5 years, and scored 700 composite or better, along with a score of 6 or better on IR and 5 or better on the AWA, as proven by an official score report link, or by sending the school report directly to the GMAT tutoring company. Remember that the IR section is only 5 years old, so many tutors/instructors have never taken that version of the test! You must continue to take the test periodically to stay sharp and up-to-date, as well as to prove your continued competence on a challenging computer-adaptive exam, one that is continually evolving and growing in difficulty. However, you can't take the test too often because of the 8-test lifetime limit.

-If you want to teach Quant, then you must have scored at least 45/51 in the last 5 years.

-If you want to teach Verbal, then you must have scored at least 40/51 in the last 5 years.

These scores would be readily available next to tutor profiles. If requested by a client, then I would also share a PDF of the instructor's score report information, with any personal information redacted. I would also encourage tutors/teachers not to register for the test using their home mailing addresses, so that they can share their online score reports with others more freely.

In general, if a GMAT company/person/U.S. president says "you just need to trust us," then that's usually a bad sign. It's 2017: skepticism reigns supreme, and transparency in business is paramount.

One note, that a grouping of reviews does not indicate anything suspicious actually. For example, we often do pushes for BSchool reviews at regular intervals (e.g. fall, spring, summer) and we will often get 20-40 reviews submitted within a few days. We then review and publish all of them usually on the same day, so it may look suddenly suspicious that we have 3 Reviews for Kellogg on the same day after not getting any for 3 months. That's not because i got super prolific and decided to post some fakers (i really have better things to do and what a miserable job that would be) but it is because we sent out an email to all of the current students.... which we probably should do about now.

In terms of reviews, Google, Yelp, and anything that does not require customer verification is going to be too tempting for "unknown" and "young" companies to trick the system. For example, once you reach a certain level at Yelp, they consider everything you post to be genuine. As the result, companies have been posting ads on craigslist looking for "Yelp gurus" and consultants to help promote certain products and businesses. It is possible to buy reviews on Yelp and google is even easier - you can just get a gmail account. On GMAT Club, we require many more hoops to jump and have additional levels of verification including IP address checking and other things I don't really want to disclose fully for obvious reasons. While I am not saying it is absolutely impossible to game the system (nothing is absolute), it is impossible to game it on a scale that would be practical or meaningful.

As to the whole industry and prep services, you really have to look at multiple elements and it goes beyond numbers, kind of just like profiles of people applying to BSchools. GMAT score tells only a part of the story.
1. A lot of courses these days are not involving an instructor. It is all online/recorded/perfected content that has been optimized and frankly, may be much better than you would have gotten from a live instructor may have been tired one of the classes, was sick during another, and so on.
2. Some companies have myriads of tutors but they contract out. I know a few companies that tutor a variety of subjects for High School, College, and also GMAT applicants. Anyone can tutor for them and anyone can apply - they provide a short description of how they work and how you should work with customers but it is nothing like the extensive training MGMAT requires for example. They take the "social" and "sharing economy" concept where anyone with a Prius can be a cab driver and now anyone with a high GMAT score can be a tutor.
3. As to instructors having to score a certain score - that's a good rule. I am not sure however, that scoring just a certain percentile is sufficient enough, however. Here is an example of a guy who claims to have studied for 2 days and scored 770 - https://gmatclub.com/forum/640-to-770-b ... 39439.html. I have seen a few of these over the years... some probably fakes but some are true, and while these guys would pass the "percentile test" with flying colors, I don't think they would make good teachers.
4. I believe, an ideal Tutor also needs to show a certain level of improvement since most of their customers would be an audience of people who have scored 550 or even less than that. Otherwise, you don't speak the same language or facing the same issues. It is kind of like a billionaire giving tips about money to the poor - many pay attention to them but when you listen in, you get a lecture about tax shelters, minimizing taxes on transaction costs, and tips for buying private jets. Not helpful when you make $10/hr. The same is here, it is not good enough just to score - you need to have been in the shoes of despair, you need to have been "GMAT-poor" and dug yourself out of the hole. Otherwise, you could easily have been a genius who easily scored 760 without putting any work into it and keeps saying it is "easy."

There is no perfect measure besides reputation and feedback... and that's for a course instructor. If you are looking for a tutor, there are many more things that come into play - personality, learning styles, mutual respect, judgement-free environment, etc, etc.

one of my friends used a test prep company that has a 4.9 rating on this site. i was browsing through the companies site, and i found this image on it. https://imgur.com/a/Ed02v AVERAGE TIME PER PROBLEM IS 6 SECONDS?????

my message to any person looking to sign up for a test prep firm. 1. be skeptical, ask a lot of questions 2. do rely solely on reviews.

LOL. That seems like a marketing agency was hired that was clueless about the GMAT. They saw the trees but missed the forest

i reverse searched the image. it's not a stock image. all searches lead back to the firm. i highly doubt any marketing firm is memorizing gmat questions along with gmat answers, at a speed fast enough to answer the questions at 6 per second.

so then who gave the website designer/marketing firm the image? id say reason leads to believe someone in the firm with knowledge of the gmat questions and answer went into the prep software and just answered everything really fast for a screenshot. wonder why they would do that....

could be wrong, but a reasonable person would think this looks a bit sketch.

I assumed it was photoshopped to make it look presentable and not have 200 like I have on my gmat prep after I have just randomly clicked answer choices as I can't imagine answering questions that fast.... at the same time if there is an instructor who can answer questions in six seconds, I definitely want to study with that guy... just don't think it is a realistic performance reflection. You should check with the company just to have closure.... and to see what they reply to you.


Sent from my iPhone using GMAT Club Forum

in terms of answering questions at a rate of 6 seconds per, i can do that now lol. take the OG questions for example, ive done them enough times to where i can just read the first two or three words and immediately know what the answer is. an instructor has probably seen the same questions many more times than i have.

ill contact the firm and see what they reply.

You're obviously not taking into account that this personally actually could've answer all those questions in 6 seconds on avg per Q. So you're being very presumptuous. Would you rather take advice from someone who takes 2 mins to answer a gmat question or 6 seconds? I think i know the answer to that.

Also while you're at it could you please inquire about the efficacy of gum chewing and winking at people during the test.

Thank you