Online Courses v/s Books

Question

Hi all, 

I am planning to give my GMAT within 6-8 weeks time period. Before starting my preparations I need some guidance. 

Based on my research we have two major competitors Kaplan and PR for test prepartions. Both claims to be the best in the market and provides same kind of services at almost the same cost. Now my problem is which one to choose and secondly should I buy their books and do self study or buy thier online courses. 

What is the difference between online course (not live classes) and reading from the books ??? 

I am currently employed full time and want to fit my study schedule with my work. Also my math knowledge is now become pretty much rusty. 

Please advice me accordingly......... Best Regards and thanks for maintaining such a nice and resourcefull site

chihao · Answer

Hi login4imtiaz
I have also the same condition with you.
But, you can watch previous post from this site.
In fact, there are many similar question on former post.
In sum, I believe you could obtain satisfied answer from this site.

In my experience, I have brought a series of kaplan's and princeton's workbook to prepare my GMAT. However, I find that to studying princeton's materials is easily digest and recognize because their questions is more easy than that of actual test. Thus, based on princeton's stuff, I began to study Kaplan's book and then do its quiz or practice question even though I still can not do well on this exercise.
To tell the truth, I think kaplan's stuff is great and sufficiency practice for crackinging GMAT test because some of its questions are rather tough.
This practice is great opportunity to drill skills and strategies.
In addition, official guide is more important than any other prep books.
I still think official guide is necessary because it contains past-actual questions which are simliar to questions you encounter on actual test.

As for math, you could do some math review workbook to refresh your math concept. I think kaplan's math book is a wise choice. 

I don't know understand which one is more great betwwn on-line and book. Therefore, I could not give you any opinion.

Above it is my personal experience and opinion.

Eli John · Answer

Hi guys, One has to carefully way the pros and cons of taking a course and doing self study. I took the PR course last summer and scored a lousy 570

. The course did teach me a few little tricks in terms of math for answering easy to medium questions but left me totally unprepared for harder questions. Right now I am taking a little break from GMAT preparation. I have purchased all of the Kaplan books (math,verbal, general book). I've heard a lot of great things about Kaplan.

sejinro · Answer

Yes, I would have to agree.

I took the PR classroom course, and my score did not improve at all. After buying the Kaplan books and Official Guide - and studying vigorously for about a month, my score improved by a 100 points. The Kaplan CD is an excellet resource for test taking strategies and practice tests, and the Official Guide is an excellent resource for practice questions.

bb · Answer

Hey, I have not taken a course, so I can't really say pros/cons, but I think a course should give a guarantee or money back. Many say that they scored high only because they worked their butts off (there are a few posts on PR's course in one of the previous posts - https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=788)

I know that most of the time, the course just forces you to study.... do you really have to pay $1,200 for that? I would force myself for that much... or I can try to force you :wink:

login4imtiaz · Answer

Well thanks to all of you (chihao, Eli John, sejinro and bb) for your precious comments. Well I was waiting for bb's comments and finally he posted it. As far as the fees is concerned I am talking for the online course which is for $ 499.00 either from Kaplan or PR. Yes, I also want to force myself and want to follow some schedule and path so I can get good score. I am working full time and its been long time I am out of school....so need some reason to start with. I have been adviced from couple of people that online courses are worth it....... whats your stand :?:

bb · Answer

Login4,

Can I ask you to promise something?
When you take the course or while you are still taking it, can you come back here and post your feedback? Just general feelings, what you think what you thought you should have done, etc?
This will make questions like yours much easier to answer in the future.

Can you promise to do that?


And I have this stuff I found on Gmattutor.com. It is an old site that was offline for the last few months, but is up now again....

 https://www.gmattutor.com/courses.html 


-=-=-=-

login4imtiaz · Answer

Sure, I will try to constantly give feedback on the course material and how much it benefited me.

Wish me luck, and yes thanks again for all your feedbacks... :D 

Regards,
Imtiaz

Sameer · Answer

Thanks BB, for info that GMATtutor is up again. Yes, I had started to prepare with this site before I logged on to your site !. The site as our Club, does not try to promote any particular bokk or Course (especially themselves :wink:

bb · Answer

Actually gmattutor is a wierd place. I wrote to the webmaster a while ago and did not get a reply. I wrote the second time, and the next day the site went out. I thought it was due to my persistence, but I guess not. I wonder who runs it... it has some good stuff. It is outdated, but there are some good articles there....

Just wondering.
Bogdan.

GrahamCracker · Answer

Best thing to do, really, is go through the online demos they have on their sites to see how they're really different. I've gone thru PR's demo and it was pretty interactive - more engaging than I thought it would be. They send you the same course materials you get in the class, so that's a bonus. I prefer PR's teaching method and test strategies (used Cracking the GMAT for my first sitting several years ago; the score has since expired), so I personally would go with their online class. Check them both out and see which one suits you.

bb · Answer

GrahamCracker,

I usually don't pressure people or address them personally, but I guess I will 8) ; Do you mind writing a small review of the course?

We would all really appreciate it.

Bogdan.

login4imtiaz · Answer

Hi Guys,

Finally I enrolled for the online GMAT course. Graham is may be right that PR's online course is more interactive and has excellent Graphical User Interface, but as far as the content is concerned I beleive that Kaplan has more to offer. Only thing which disappointed me is that on Kaplan's site they dont have online demo as compared to PR's demo. The link on the Kaplan's site for online demo just show few advertisement kind of demo of thier online course.

Kaplan's course covers not only the tricks and strategy but also the mothodology. Kaplan online course is well designed and hit the right target. You need the course books which they will send in mail once you enroll with them and you need these books in order to follow the online syllabus. You dont have these books avaliable online or in soft copy (as far as I know) and they are not available off the shelf too. I wish they would have provided the course books as soft copies (pdf format).

This review of mine is not final reveiw coz I have just started the course. I just wanted to share this experience so far which might be helpful for someone.

I'll keep updating especially on the Kaplan's online course and will give the pros and cons of it. Meanwhile, if anyone of you out there have any questions please feel free to ask

Regards,
Imtiaz

Regards, Imtiaz

bb · Answer

Thanks Imitiaz. That's fabulous. :good

You can either post here/start a new thread/post in the Active Members Section, which is restricted. Bogdan.

nicolagabb8 · Answer

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