Veritas Prep Live Online-My Take

Veritas Prep Live Online-My Take

Well, I thought I would write a very elaborate review on veritas prep live online course after I have taken my GMAT so that it adds some credibility. But due to some work issues I had to postpone my GMAT to at least February and so here we go, before I forget what happened in those Live Classes.

Details of the course

Instructor: Bill Robinson and Mark Douglas.
Course duration: 6 weeks. 12 classes in total spanned over the weekends.
Duration: Classes normally take around 3-3.5 hours and the instructor stays as long as you want him/her to (i have to stress this) for elaborate Q & A sessions.
Instructor Support: Good. I have to mention that I did not hear back from my instructor after the course was over. Well, that happens everywhere I guess.
Practice CATs: Took only 1. Score 750. Good verbal. DS became especially difficult during the end.

Quant: Problem Solving and Data sufficiency

Veritas completely aced here. Not only were the classes stimulating, but also were probably the best in the business (I have been in a couple of MGMAT classes: courtesy friends). Veritas classes on quants really take it hard from the very beginning and is especially helpful for guys with a quant background (*cough* Indian IT *cough*) who think that quant will be a piece of cake. It WILL NOT.
The book covers almost everything. Couple of things to mention here about the books:

• Veritas has the BEST books on Statistics/Combinatorics, Word problems and Arithmetic. Dont get me wrong. The other books are awesome too. But these books stand out as the best in the market right now.
• I doubt there is any type of quant question you are going to get on GMATPrep or the actual GMAT which tests concepts that has not been discussed in the material.
• Veritas Prep does an excellent job by tackling data sufficiency as a standalone topic rather than fusing it with problem solving. Most companies do this but are not entirely successful.
• Coordinate Geometry is the only topic which I think veritas prep should give more importance to. There are a couple of DS questions on Coordinate geometry which takes some analytical graphical skill (better explained in thursdays with Ron and Bunuel's sets). Bunuel is a human quant course anyway so any help would not be far away.
• The problem sets were good and the instructor specifically mailed the problem lists containing the harder problems for people who are already familiar with the GMAT.

Sentence Correction/Critical Reasoning/Reading Comprehension

Although I used to be proud of my verbal skills, I was unpleasantly surprised with my verbal performance in couple of problem sets. I shared the class with Vips000 (moderator and an awesome contributor on GMATClub) and there was this day in which I just blanked out and we were getting almost all wrong (I would like to attribute my performance to fatigue after a nap, but then that would be as lousy an excuse as the new Apple Maps). Veritas CR and RC will make you cry if you thought you were a verbal prodigy. I had a CR accuracy of 93% in OG 13 in august and in 2 problem sets it was definitely below 80%. In RC, however it was below 70%. This not only served as a reality check, but also gave a nice little blow to my fledging over confidence. For people who struggle with RC, veritas prep, IMO, has the best RC strategy there is (STOP strategy they call it). Couple of points to note here.

• Critical Reasoning book is definitely satisfactory and surprisingly thin. This is not bad at all because too many theories is CR essentially reduces one's power of comprehension, which the GMAT tests in the first place.
• The RC book is nice and fat and worth every page. (thing to note here is that the books have plenty of spaces to take notes for a postponed review. Makes sense to include the space.
• The SC book, IMO, lacks content and needs some work. No matter how much we hate it, SC does need a lot of rules which the veritas guys decided to skip. So a second SC book is necessary (see competitor analysis below)
• Problem sets including SC are really great and a refresher to work through. Each problem is unique in the particular concept it tests which makes it more interesting.
• There is a separate book for advanced verbal strategy. Stay away from the book until you are done with the other ones. This book might make you scream. Remember the super tough CR from the GMATClub contest? Its there.
• The biggest advantage/disadvantage of the veritas problems is that they are not available in GMATClub or the other forum we go to sometimes. This enables you to really think about it rather than just looking through what other people said. I remember Vips (the same guy mentioned above) got into engaging conversations with a couple of questions, and I am sure it has helped him in some way or the other.

Final Thoughts

ROI: I won Veritas Prep live online course, thanks to the GMATClub contest. I got it for free. It is pretty expensive considering the conversion rates to international economy. However the ROI is pretty decent IMHO, as you get all the books, 15 CATs (too much though) and all the videos and the IPad app.
IPad App: This was the most brilliant feature of the course. I really really hope they would market the app more as the app is simply amazing. The app essentially contains video lessons of every GMAT topic on earth (taken from the veritas books) and also contains an amazing collection of questions and explanations (all in video; really interactive and brilliant stuffs).
AWA and IR: I skipped the class as I had a party. I will, however, watch the recording (a fairly common feature in prep companies).
Recommended?: Yes, absolutely. But Veritas is not the prep company which believes in spoon-feeding. You have to do a lot of work yourself and the pre assessment tests are pretty comprehensive and elaborate.

Competitor Analysis

Manhattan GMAT: In my opinion Veritas beats Manhattan GMAT in terms of Quant and RC books and course contents. MGMAT however, has thursdays with Ron, which most of us would agree as the most invaluable free material out there. Ron Purewal is the champ. So is Stacey Koprince. There are incredible people in veritas such as Bryan Galvin, Bill Robinson as well but they are not as available to people as Ron is. But then not everybody could be as awesome as Karishma (VeritasPrepKarishma in GMAT Club) and she does overcompensate for the absence of others. Kudos to her. I was in Manhattan GMAT advanced SC workshop and I am really sad that I could answer every question correctly. I really signed up for it to be a challenge. One or two questions in the advanced bank were wrong, though Ron was nice enough to acknowledge and correct them. Detailes here. Manhattan GMAT, has a very strong forum which has its experts participating in a very little turn around time and a lot of valuable discussions can be found there.

e-GMAT: e-GMAT is probably the GMAT Course with the best ROI in the market (there are other players in that budget such as GMAT Pill but I have always thought e-GMAT to be far superior in verbal). One of the major advantages with e-GMAT is that they will make you grind through official questions, which is unarguably the best source out there. e-GMAT SC, as acknowledged by countless users in GMAT Club is probably the best out there and I am a huge fan of their RC strategy as well (huge congrats to Shradhha for winning the iPad: Perhaps an iPad app in the news? ). Also I think e-GMAT is working really hard on content and they try to make you work as minimally as possible, in contrast to Veritas and MGMAT which really needs you to browse a LOT of forum, find out a lot of hidden topics that the GMAT tests and discover yourself. However, e-GMAT lacks quant and grockit does not compensate for a full blown course. There are a couple of minor errors with a couple of CR questions that they created (some SV errors in the prompt) which were being discussed in some other forum which got me depressed as I am a huge fan of e-GMAT. While I agree that e-GMAT has the best SC coursework, I do stand by veritas Prep in its RC and CR materials. Got me blown away.

Aristotle SC grail: Confused with the name? Read the 3rd edition SC grail and you would not. SC Grail 3rd edition, is by far the best SC book out there and yes I have read MGMAT SC more times than I have checked my Kudos count . MGMAT SC is priceless but was pretty difficult to grasp when I was just starting out. SC Grail second edition was a smooth journey and the 3rd edition is twice as fat and all the pages are well worth their existence.

Other PREP Companies: I took knewton because I adored Jose Pereira. It was good while it lasted. I did not know anything about GMAT when I started off and knewton gave me a solid groundwork. But I am sure it could not take me beyond 680-700. Veritas Prep, Manhattah GMAT, e-GMAT are there to do that but you must put a lot of efforts yourself.