Self study or lessons

Following are some of the points that will work for you if you join coaching. If none of these points resonate with you, then chances are that you do not need coaching:

1. Speed up the on-boarding process: If you are starting cold, then chances are that you would spend significant amount of time to just get into the groove.

2. Study Resources: For unsuspecting students who are self-preparing, chances are that they would burn their fingers a few times, before realizing the sanctity of authentic study-material for GMAT. If you join a coaching institute, then obviously the institute would ensure that you have firsthand access to the best study material.

3. Instructors: Passionate and genuine Instructors of GMAT can make every dollar and every minute of yours, worth the experience. However, if self-learning is something that has always worked for you, then perhaps this is a point that would not appeal to you too much.

4. Support outside the classes: Apart from the classes, coaching provides an invaluable support with concepts and doubt clarification all through your GMAT journey. In the current scenario, there actually are some good freely available support forums (such as GMATClub) available for students.

5. Structured approach: The kind of material that you need to get access to, the sequence in which you should be studying the various concepts, and the best sources of those concepts are few pieces of the GMAT puzzle that coaching centers would have solved for you.

6. Discipline and group-study: Classroom coaching, by its virtue of fixed timings, rigorous schedule, and predefined pace, would necessitate that you are disciplined in your preparation.

So, there you go, based upon the above points that come to my mind right now, do a self-introspection and decide accordingly.

Hi, I have been preparing students all around Greece for 10 years and worked in many teaching centers (frontistirios). There are good and bad teaching centers. many of them do not even ask if a teacher has even taken a GMAT test when hiring a person. And, yes, what they do with copies of kaplan, Barrons, OG and other books is definitely illegal. Almost everyone does this. On the other hand, paying a few hundred euros for books is rather expensive for a Greek student.

The big name of a teaching center does not necessarily mean good quality. What you need is to find a really good teacher, even if he/she works in a small teaching center. I know big teaching centers in Athens and in Thessaloniki with, as you say, 10-15 people in a class, which provide poor quality. Some are better. So, the point is to find a good teacher if you choose in-person tutoring.

However, if you have some math background, if your English is good, and if you have a few months ahead to prepare for the test, then you can try self-study. Let this not be an advertisement, but I just want to inform you that after all 10 years of tutoring in Greece I decided to found my own company which provides Greece-adjusted GMAT self-study online test prep. You may search for ExePrep, it has hundreds of Greek video explanations, and all exercises and theory lessons are created by our team of experts. We do not have any plagiarism or illegal copies.

Good Luck!!