My Knewton Experience

Question

Just to give you some background about me. I am an engineer and non native English. So when I decided to embark on this journey of GMAT, Knewton looked like a great option. And why not, they have 50 points money back guarantee. Anyways, my hope was not that if I score less I will get my money back but that the course material will be very competent. In the hopes of getting a score of 700+, I signed up with knewton in february. After I finished knewton course work in march, I took Manhattan GMATs free test, in which I scored 600. I was completely shocked, since I thought I was reasonably good in quant and was improving reasonably well in verbal, at least according to Knewton. I realized very quickly that it was not me, it was the poor quality of Knewtons class. I bought Manhattan GMAT's strategy guides and started preparing. For non native speaker, there cannot be a better guide. At that point, I realized I just gifted my 600 dollars to knewton. Knewton did not help me even a bit to say the least. But then I cannot claim any money back as I have scored more than 50 points, though on by my own effort, nothing to do with Knewton. I wish I could just take that money and give it Manhattan GMAT.

The classes from knewton are extremely basic. They are good enough if you want to score up to may be 650 at best (even that I doubt). The whole question set is based on OG's. I have taken GMAT twice and guarantee you OG is in no way representive of actual GMAT. Questions are much harder in GMAT. Furthermore, Knewton 5 CAT's poor at best. Some questions are plain OG question with some numbers changed. And their scoring extremely poor. To give you an idea, I scored 580 in the last Knewton CAT, a day after that I took GMATPrep (although I got two SC questions, for which I knew the answers, from OG) and scored 740. Long story short, if you want to join a course, just join Manhattan GMAT. Don't get fooled by 50 points money back. If you don't have money to spend on actual tutored class from MGMAT, take it's self prep, trust me you will be better served than taking Knewton's.

I only have experience with these two coaching services, so I dont know anything about other coaching classes. (Everyone thinks Manhattans are the best anyways, why risk it). Trust you will not go wrong with Manhattan GMAT. And use their forum as well. There cannot be anything better than their forums. The first time I took GMAT I got 670 (of course I got really tired in the middle of the exam and started loosing concentration). For the second time, all I did was to go through Manhattan GMAT's forum. I scored 730. In fact in the middle of verbal section the questions got really tough, so I just guessed on couple of questions so I can get easier questions and save time. In the end though, I was left with some time. In short I could have scored more. But oh well, I am pretty happy with my score. And I dont attribute even 10 points to Knewton. Like me, lot of people may not have much money to spare. Dont waste your money on Knewton.

Good Luck!!!

pranrasvij · Answer

thanks for your feedback here .. I was hoping OG and MGMAT will be enough to sail me to d-day...

ChrisBKnewton · Answer

Hi  ramaskar1 ,

First off, I'm sorry that you had a bad experience! We appreciate the feedback, though, and we're always eager to hear from students -- both on the positive and negative side of things.

To that end, we recently added a set of materials targeting high-scoring students in particular: extra difficult mid- and end-of-course challenge quizzes, as well as additional on-demand strategy lessons for each section of the test.

If you're willing, we'd also be happy to speak to you in depth about your feedback. Just send me a PM if you'd be interested in talking to a member of our GMAT team about the areas that didn't work well for you.

Thanks again, and let me know if you have any questions,

Chris

ramaskar1 · Answer

Chris,

Sorry about being this harsh on your GMAT program. But I did try the newly added tough problems, most too tough. Even with a 50 in quant, I did not face that tough a quant problem. Besides, I would not recommend a program for 60 extra tough problems that may or may not represent the difficulty level of questions in actual GMAT. I have not looked at your on demand strategy guides. So I cannot comment on those. Anyways, in my view, there are three aspects to solving a GMAT problem. First, concept related to a question, second, recognizing that concept and third, using strategy pertinent to that concept to solve that problem.

A GMAT program can teach concept and strategy for most types of concept(I faced some weird questions in GMAT though). But, recognizing a pattern can only be learnt by good combination of problems and, to some degree, the GMAT program itself. I think Knewtons program concentrates too much on just the concept. It seems that knewton is trying to address the other two aspects, but its too late for me, and your competitor(Manhattan GMAT) is doing a pretty good job in all three aspects. So, I have to strongly recommend MGMAT instead of Knewton (Note "instead of" though correct is not preferred by GMAT).

I apologize for being this harsh on you guys. I know its a new radical program, and there are real people behind this program working hard to make it better for its students. But this debrief is my experience and those who liked the program should feel free to rebut my comments.

So Long!!

Lethal · Answer

I am a current Knewton student and my GMAT retake is scheduled for Oct. 5th. I scored 590, 620, 620, 640, and 660 on the Knewton CATs taken from July thru August and scored 620 on the actual GMAT back in June. I took both of the GMATPrep CATs this week and scored a 700 and 730. Rewatching the Quant videos seemed to help a lot and now I'm going back over the SC videos to have all the rules and tips fresh in my mind. Going through the concept videos and reworking the missed HW problems also has helped. Overall I think Knewton has helped me more than if I just chose to study on my own again. Hopefully I won't have to take them up on their 50 point guarantee.

shaselai · Answer

i found knewton useful. if you are experienced the basics concepts will seem well basic and boring. i pretty much watched tv and played video games while on math sessions but listened carefully on verbal since that was my weak spot. i did get a 10 pt increase on verbal which i attribute most of it to knewton since i didn't have any change in basic materials except another problem book (princeton 1012 ques). I had a 640 coming in and wouldve been content with a 690 but i got lucky and got a 720 - maybe i get similar improvement with mgmat/veritas etc but who knows?

ankitranjan · Answer

Thanks For the feedaback,

rite2deepti · Answer

HI Guys,

I also enrolled for Knewton in August this year.I am not quite impressed with the quality of questions that Knewton offers.Most of the questions are copied from OG-12 and OG-11.Also in some sections they have just changed the names of the characters,so I almost knew the answers of most of the questions as they were repeated again and again.
Even for the tests questions were from OG-10,11,12 ,for this reason my scores really went high in some of the tests.Also I find that their scoring system is quite wierd.
I would recommend Kaplan or Manhattan , guys dont waste your money on Knewton..most of the stuff is copied there is hardly any originality.

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