fighting not only with gmat but also with egmat....

Dear Deepika,

I am sorry to hear that you did not do well on the GMAT. I do sincerely hope that you do well on your next attempt. One of our experts brought this post to my notice. Frankly, I was quite startled when I saw this post. Here are the reasons:

1. You decided to create this post less than 48 after you sent this email on May 19
2. Secondly, after your initial email you did not send a reminder email, and just assumed that we are not interested to help you.

What pains me is that we have had not one but multiple email conversations in the past and we have always responded to you within 24 hours. That should have been reason enough for you to at least send a reminder email before taking such a step, especially when there is nothing in your email that we would not want to respond to. I mean.. you did not do well on the GMAT, and are seeking a path forward. We are experts in this area and have good answers for you.

Lastly, I am not sure why – a lack of response from our side would lead you to make a statement



You don’t make a statement such as above based on lack of response to an email. You make such a statement based on the quality of an offering. The lack of response to a retake strategy email and the quality of course offering are entities that are not related and should not be mixed. It’s similar to saying that a Professor’s course is bad because the Professor did not respond to my email regarding helping me secure a job. Whether the Professor responded in time to your email regarding helping you secure a job has little to do with how he teaches/conducts his class.



I know that you are a BITSian and I know that you will bounce back. BITSians are resilient. Yet, I am surprised that Despite being a BITSian, you scored a Q42. This clearly indicates that you had a very bad day. Wouldn’t you agree. We have had 200+ IITians and BITSian students – the average score of this group is about 710, with the average quant score being Q48. Clearly, you will do much better on the exam next time but don’t do it because you want to prove a point to e-GMAT. Do it because you want to do better and doing so will help you get to the school of your choice and overall make you a better person.

Now let me tell you why we were unable to respond to your email. On May, 18 IST, we moved to a brand new platform. Big technology moves lead to a lot of support overhead, especially when you move 100 hours of learning content that has 10K interactions, 7000 forum posts, and move 100K users, 5000 of whom log in every day. Despite planning and our best communication efforts we still had to support about 1,500 students who had queries. The e-GMAT team responded to about 700 emails on Monday, May 19th and yes your email did slip through. However, we would have definitely responded had you just sent a reminder email or waited a couple of days.

Before I sign off, I would like to tell you that GMAT is just an exam. You work on it and you will ace it. We have had many students who have. Bhagwatis a great example. He is an IITian who bounced back from 630 to score 750. Similarly, Satish– your fellow BITSian improved from 610 (V27) to 750 (V41). They both were diligent and if you are diligent, you will succeed too as long as you treat is just as an exam and as a stepping stone to bigger and greater things in life. However, it’s not worth making statements in haste because you had a bad day.

Good luck for your next attempt and MBA admission!!

-Rajat Sadana

Hey Rajat

I thought I replied earlier this morning but somehow i don't see my last reply.

Anyway here it is...

Thanks that you took time to reply on my experience in less than 4 hrs after the post when you guys are super busy .I think ppl can guess why

I am not into writing "long fancy" emails. so long story short into two points.

1. thanks for attaching email which shows that it was more than 48 hrs.Moreover,I was not aware that i have to send you guys reminders. its a good learning for me.
2. you din't have to attach the positive reviews about egmat. Internet is flooded with that ...

Again, When i was deciding to take your course,i read reviews too[ mostly positive]. Few people said that you guys don't respond or ignore. didn't expect soon i will be writing one in that queue

This post is just for those who are deciding between courses ..checking over internet about reviews....this is just my experience and my two cents.
Will be soon putting into review section.

Regards

I have been a verbal online student with E-GMAT, their responses were really quick. I think with the number of inquiries and popularity of EGMAT they have just been loaded . Soon they will realize this with posts like these and get it corrected. But, honestly the amount of positivity with which you(Rajat) replied to this post is amazing. I am just jumping on this bandwagon because I have sent a request 4 days back, please look into it

Think you have a bit unrealistic expectation regarding what a test prep company can do. The kind of personalized attention you are looking is very difficult for any online test prep company to provide. GMAT Tutors exist for this reason. I mean any prep company will at any one month will have 100s of test takers out of at least 50 will NOT achieve their target.
Another alternative would be to post your retake strategy - what materials/test you used, what were your mock test scores, what are your areas of weakness etc - on this forum and/or e-GMAT/MGMAT forums. MGMAT Forums will respond after 1 week or so of posting each post. I can vouch for this forum as it provided me with great support and allowed me to move from 570 to 710.

Dear Abhi,

You are correct in your assessment that Online companies cannot spend the same time on one individual student as a private tutor can do. I think that's the very definition of a private tutor. However, there is another side to that equation, which is that Online companies have a ton of data about you. Every response, every click that you perform our our system is recorded and there a lot of rich information in hidden in that data.

While we have just started mining that data, we are already seeing insights that could be very helpful for students. Moreover, we offer tools such as workshops that can help students diagnose your weak areas. Trust me - for students willing to put in the effort these workshops can provide insights which may be much beyond what a private tutor can provide. Similarly, with the new platform, we are getting data that is very interesting and students will benefit from the same as we work towards shaping insights from the data.

Despite this, one thing that will not change is that we will not be able to provide a level of service that a private tutor provides, and that is understandable because a private tutor bills you for his time. We don't work that way. However, in the normal course of things, we are pretty responsive and strive to respond within 24 hours. In other words, a private tutor is like a leased telephone line that you pay for on a per minute basis whereas an online test prep company is similar to a shared digital line that can deliver HD voice and provide very high quality of service for a flat monthly fee (or one time fee in our case).

As is the case with a digital line, we may have the occasional hiccup (such as the the case this time), but we work really well 99% of the time. It is really unfortunate that the one time that we are unable to perform, we hear a customer backlash (regardless of customer's prior experience). Further it's disappointing is to see is that even an apology and a good enough explanation is not enough for that customer. We have high standards for customer satisfaction and have people who are dedicated to the same. Click here to know more. We even provide support on the weekend. In fact, I personally responded to 50 emails today.

Regardless, I am very excited about where we are going in the next few months. So keep your fingers crossed. I am. The use of technology in education is only as further along as the use of data in cell phones was in early 2000s.

- Rajat Sadana