e-gmat RC - equally important as SC

I bumped into e-gmat (through some posts in GC) very late in my preparation cycle. I had only 1 month left for the actual GMAT and my verbal was stuck at 32-33 even after months of studying. I had completed MGMAT SC and improved my accuracy to 75% in SC but that was not sufficient. I realized that most of the times the main killer of my verbal score was RC. Sometimes I scored as pathetic as 25%. e-gmat was about to start the beta trial of their RC course and I thought there could be nothing better than trying this out. I had already tried other courses such as Kaplan, MGMAT for RC and found them a bit unsuitable for my style of study since I am not a voracious reader and hence always struggled to comprehend a long or unfamiliar passage.

Thus I went ahead and volunteered for the beta trial. The kick off session was interesting as Rajat mentioned about the pedagogy of the course and how it has been split into Concept files, Application files, Practice files. I found that quite interesting as it resembled the structure of some tutorial companies in India who conduct courses for Engineering and medical entrance exams. Belonging to a typical Engineering aspirant (common in India), I had already experienced this format and hence was comfortable in following the RC course of e-gmat.

I could see the improvement after the first week itself. RC passage was no longer scary to me and my accuracy started to improve. By the time of reaching last week before my actual test, I was confidently scoring 70-80% in RC and my verbal score in mock CATs ranged from 35-41. On the actual test I managed to score 38 in verbal and was really comfortable even in answering the last RC passage (by the time you reach there you are almost dry of energy and the anxiety to view the score dominates the senses).

Few interesting points I found about this course are:

1. Illustrative and well paced narration: The course flows smoothly and is divided into several sub topics such as: Reading Strategies, Main point, Inference, Detail Concept, and Structure Concept which eventually covers all kinds of questions possible in RC. So targeted focus on each area helps in understanding how to tackle all types of RC questions.

2. Audio Visual tutorial: As I mentioned already, I found reading through hundreds of pages on how to answer RC questions or how to read RC passage was not my cup of tea. Rather the audio visual aid used in e-gmat had a lasting impact on me till the test day and I was able to remember how should I tackle the RC passage and question.

3. Generating interest in the passage: The course focuses more on generating an interest on the topic of the passage by setting short goals of summarizing a small paragraph or few lines after you read through, predict what the author could write next etc. This helps in getting involved in the passage and no topic would appear dry afterwards.

4. Lots of practice material: I found e-gmat contains a decent number of practice passages from every walk of life (after OG 12 edition of course) and the passage analysis of each of these passages certainly wires the brain on how to read the passage in the actual test.

5. Short tutorials: All the files in this course was relatively short, lasting to a maximum of 20-30 minutes. This ensures you are not yawning midway and are able to follow what you are studying.

Since the course is still in its inception and will be released soon, I see more improvement coming into the course and thus would recommend the non-native and not voracious readers to gain most from this course, which makes reading a passage more fun than a struggle.