GMAX vs Knewton

Question

I like both. Going by the reviews, I haven't heard anything negative about them; besides, the price seems to low compared to other players out there. However, I'm not sure where to put my money.

Praet, has put together a great review for GMAX (https://gmatclub.com/wiki/GMAX_Online). This really solved a lot of my problems, in understanding what GMAX has to offer. Do we have a similar review for Knewton?

I'm inching towards GMAX, because they have custom course for Quant and Verbal - just what I was looking for. I'd like to take up the Verbal course ($249), but before I enrol, can someone share their experience about the Verbal course? Thanks a bunch!

Thoughts/views..

bb · Answer

We don't have an official review for Knewton, but we have this one by Avernusaur: knewton-online-course-review-78282.html

P.S. Not sure if it still works, but there was a special going on for Knewton ($150 off) today only - $540 total cost with Code MONDAY-GMAT. The offer still seems to work.

pm4553 · Answer

Thanks, bb! I've seen the posts by Avernusaur on that thread, it really helped me evaluate, however, not too much written about GMAX. And, I did see your post on Knewton discount - it complicated things now :-D

bb · Answer

ha-ha. Sorry - it can be tricky.
Go with your gut. one differentiator between the two is the 50-point guarantee from Knewton - is that something useful/valuable? (covers the worst case scenario).

pm4553 · Answer

That's the biggest distinguishing factor, IMO. No body guarantees so much! However, because of the lack of time, I might go with GMAX - because it caters to my need - ONLY Verbal course.

JoshKnewton · Answer

While clearly not objective, I believe that Knewton is superior to GMAX for several reasons:

-our 50-point Money Back Guarantee
-live classes
-live online office hours
-adaptive learning engine
-proprietary CATs.

Hopefully helpful,
Josh

phillypointgod21 · Answer

I have found Knewton to be tremendously helpful. You may think that learning via an internet classroom would be a bit dull, but Knewton's instructors do a nice job of entertaining in addition to teaching. In fact, several of the Knewton instructors have prior experience in theater and acting. Moreover, if you have a question, you simply type it into an instant message and one Knewton's able teachers will give you a quick response. Should a question arise during your out of class study, all you have to do is fire an email to Knewton and wait for a response. Every time I emailed Knewton, I got a quick, accurate response to my query.

The other component of Knewton's offering that is superior to any other GMAT tutoring service is the manner in which Knewton stores the data from your homework and then tailors future homework assignments so that your weaknesses are tested rather than your strengths. For example, if you demonstrate competency in work rate problems, but struggle with the geometry of cubes, Knewton will give you more practice work to do regarding cubes. This personalization is invaluable for most folks because it (kinda, sorta) eliminates the need for an error log. If you read the debriefs of those in the 700 club, they all state the necessity of an error log so that you can identify your weaknesses and then work to eliminate them. Knewton's personalization does the error logging for you.

If that were not enough, they back it all up with a 50 pt improvement guarantee. I have not seen anyone else offering that sort of guarantee...seems to indicate a heck of a lot of confidence in their product, if you ask me.

JasLamba · Answer

Hi,

I recently finished the course and I hope I can provide some input based on my limited experience. I wrote this a couple months back in another forum so I am just going to copy paste and do little editing.

Firstly, the CEO of Knewton is a mastermind. He got his MBA in HBS and worked for Kaplan. He truly developed a domain expertise and then was able to launch Knewton. In the first class, he presents many of the points in favor of getting an MBA. His expertise seems solid and he clearly gets along well with his students and leaves an impression. Over and above this, he's very open minded and approachable. He definitely provides a sense of trust and confidence and has led me to have faith in this group of people. Now about the course itself:

The first thing I would recommend for you to would be to form a basis of judgement about Knewton. To do this, simply sign up and get involved in their trial period. Sign up - for free - give it a try. You can attend a live class, access some of the concept videos, or even take a diagnostic test. After all, my opinion is just another one, it is subjective and the best way for you to know something is to experience it on your own rather than read my experience.

1. Professors - I am going to talk about the people first because it is truly the most important factor of production and they are the most important intangible resource at Knewton. All the professors are based New York teaching via Adobe Platforms online - this not only creates operational efficiency but also enables consumers to get the TOP TOP NOTCH teaching. All their professors are not only incredibly smart in their fields but they are extremely passionate, energetic, and collaborative. They seriously channel so much motivation that you feel like doing all the GMAT problems right after class. The mix of technical expertise + educational transfer of knowledge is present so far in my experience.

2. Classroom Live - During the class sessions, there are two professors who are being broadcasted and there is a teaching assistant helping you with your query's. Additionally, the slides are broadcasted and any supplementary material is available for those. It's not a boring lecture, but an engaged hands on session (nice because it starts to prepare you for business school). Everything is extremely well organized and coordinated in your screen and you need not to worry about a thing. If you miss, there are archives of all the lectures taught by other professors. So you can access the class anytime. If you want to truly learn something and get different perspective - you can attend the live class and view the archives of the same class to get a more accurate grounding on the subject (this is not a necessity, but for some it helps engrain certain concepts).

4. 50 point money back guarantee - basically if you don't get 50 points from your baseline score (1st diagnostic) they give you your money back. Mr. Ferreira in his initial speech mentioned that there have been students who surpassed this and have gotten 100, 200, and even 300 point increases. However, all this with dedication, effort, and hard work. Also, as per the previous post, I wasn't aware that many people complained about the diagnostic as it is misrepresentative of your actual score in terms of quant ... but essentially it translates into them giving you a (50 point + margin of error) money back guarantee. So, look it at from the bright side. I still, however, am skeptical about this and would love to hear a representative from Knewton regarding this issue.

5. The system - the system is very well organized and has all the tests youve taken, all the concepts you need to learn based on the answers you have provided for all the questions. Basically, Knewton adapts to you and figures out what are your weak areas and then introduces concepts + practice to improve. I'll leave this to an expert

6. Feedback service - Any questions, queries, suggestions, tips--> within 24 hours you have your answers and on top of that there are weekly office hours - addressing difficult questions that students send in.

It spent quite a long time surveying the industry of GMAT prep courses before actually joining and I opted for two online tools - Knewton, and Grockit. I think both make the GMAT not a grueling test but a fun intellectually stimulating experience that can truly be beaten if you have the right tools, adopt a strategy, and follow thru.

As a soon to be MBA entrepreneurship student - I think that Knewton is doing extremely well. It is building up its brand extremely quickly - thru brand associations, quality service, and deep domain expertise from Mr. Ferreira. Aside from these factors, its competitive advantage is innovation and a lean operation- their adaptive software is unheard of in the industry. And last but most importantly, the human resource factor - highly motivated brilliant minds. All this will be reflected in customers experience who will come back to forums like this one when they beat the GMAT and talk about "Their Knewton Experience."

Any further questions, I can try to help.

All the best,
Jas

6. Feedback service - Any questions, queries, suggestions, tips--> within 24 hours you have your answers and on top of that there are weekly office hours - addressing difficult questions that students send in. It spent quite a long time surveying the industry of GMAT prep courses before actually joining and I opted for two online tools - Knewton, and Grockit. I think both make the GMAT not a grueling test but a fun intellectually stimulating experience that can truly be beaten if you have the right tools, adopt a strategy, and follow thru. As a soon to be MBA entrepreneurship student - I think that Knewton is doing extremely well. It is building up its brand extremely quickly - thru brand associations, quality service, and deep domain expertise from Mr. Ferreira. Aside from these factors, its competitive advantage is innovation and a lean operation- their adaptive software is unheard of in the industry. And last but most importantly, the human resource factor - highly motivated brilliant minds. All this will be reflected in customers experience who will come back to forums like this one when they beat the GMAT and talk about "Their Knewton Experience." Any further questions, I can try to help. All the best, Jas

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