GMAT Club
August 02, 2016
Mortysmith

Joined: Dec 01, 2015

Posts: 25

Kudos: 7

Verified GMAT Classic score:
740 Q49 V41

Top value in quant preparation

REVIEWER IDENTITY VERIFIED by score report [?]

Improvement 120 Points

Course Magoosh Math

Location Online

Really excited to write my review of Magoosh's quant section. Overall, I can say with confidence that this product facilitated my final 740 score, including an improvement from Q40 to Q49. I will be limiting my review to just quant.

Context:

GMAT Prep 1 - 620 40/35
GMAT Prep 2 - 640 42/36
Started with Magoosh here. Before my next CAT I worked with its videos and practice questions for a solid month - ~40-50 hours
GMAT Prep 3 - 710 48/37
GMAT Prep 4 - 720 48/39
Official GMAT 1 - 620
Huge disappointment given where practice CATs were but performance largely attributed to nerves - lesson: plan on taking the test more than once. In terms of practice, I continued to drill and redrill the Magoosh quant questions - everyday whenever I had free time.
GMAT Prep 5 - 740 49/42
Goes without saying that this was a confidence booster.
GMAT Prep 6 - 760 51/41
Official GMAT 2 - 700 48/37
To this point my verbal had been unpredictable and I felt I got the "wrong" verbal questions. Still unhappy given my practice performance but breaking the 700s barrier was huge for my psyche
Retake GMAT prep 6 - 760 49/44
Official GMAT 3 - 740 (done!) 49/41

Magoosh quant is the complete package. I spent time watching all of the math videos and doing each of its 500+ questions.

The videos, narrated by Mike Mcgarry, offer deep explanations of every math concept tested on the GMAT. Mike is incredibly clear and grants you access to his brain, walking you step by step through each problem. The system focuses on fundamentals first then builds well on those fundamentals to some of the tougher concepts the GMAT tests. The format offers the type of flexibility that those of you with either unpredictable or simply demanding schedule would require. I work 70 hour weeks and enjoyed this. Additionally, every one of the 500 problems has their own explanation narrated by a Magoosh math expert and includes that experts notes. An extraordinarily helpful feature.

Comparative Value:

I found that this site writers dont do a great job of defining the differences between the variety of Prep products out there so the below represents a summary version based on my experience.

Magoosh vs. MGMAT self study -
Some people swear by MGMAT books and I know some people that have been very successful using them. I am not one of those people. The MGMAT books have a lot of material but I actually found them lacking in some detail and lacking enough relevant examples. The cost compared to Magoosh is simply not worth it in my view. It could be part of why the books read the way they do is because they are really meant for people who sign up for the class.

Magoosh vs. GMAT Club (cats)
GMAT Club CATs are tough, but they offer amazing insight into your performance. I actually view Magoosh and GMAT club CATs as complementary to one another. Where Magoosh offers excellent lessons and excellent practice questions, GMAT Club offers more realistic challenging questions and the ability to really pin down your weaknesses. The tests are the money.

Magoosh vs. OG Books

Obviously, get your hands on all the OG books for problems. For learning why questions are wrong/right, the books lack severely. Magooshs strength is the OGs weakness. Another complementary option.

Magoosh vs. Kaplan 800

Kaplan 800 was fine at best. Decent question bank but nothing too special. Not needed. Magoosh +OG+GMAT Club CATs would render this book useless.

Magoosh vs. Princeton Self Study
Princeton's question sets are a bit easier than the official GMAT and noticeably easier than Magoosh's. For its tougher questions, i found these questions to be quite dissimilar from the official.

For your CATs I would not recommend using Magoosh. They have some tinkering to do with their scoring system and the order of questions is not representative of the order on the GMAT. Note Manhattan CATs suffer from this issue as well (I achieved a 680 on Manhattan one week before my official 740!)

I hope this review helps!

Mortysmith

December 13, 2016
warpdrive

Hello there,

Thanks for a very detailed and insightful review. Do you mind telling me what material you followed for your verbal prep ? I am just starting out on the prep and your write-up gave me a pretty solid idea about where to look for the quant but would appreciate if you could comment on a comparison between different verbal material available and which one you think would be the best to go for. I have 2.5-3 months before I sit for the exam.

Faisal` .

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