Being a non-native speaker, I was literally struggling in verbal and my score remained stagnant for quite some time. After analysing mock tests, I have realised that SC was my pain point. Looking desperately for help, I came across e-GMAT's Verbal online course and went ahead with it.

I religiously followed the SC approach explained in the concept files and within no time, my Verbal score increased significantly. e-GMAT has helped me structure my approach towards verbal and played a huge role in improving both accuracy and speed.

I will recommend e-GMAT's verbal online course 11 out of 10 times if you are struggling in verbal (especially sentence correction).

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After almost a 10 year break from academia, I wanted a course that could really help me develop a solid foundation for my verbal skills. Also the fact that I had not been using English as a primary language for conversation in all these years made things even more difficult for me. After a lot of deliberation and attending a lot of free webinars from e-GMAT, I finally decided on e-GMAT verbal online course. And honestly, I was not disappointed at all. The online course did help me create sound basics and strategies to tackle different types of questions. The webinars and personalized doubt solving sessions complemented the course content very well. The practice questions and explanations provided in the scholaranium are of great quality and the inbuilt analytics help you identify and focus on your weak areas.
I scored a 570 on my first mock test before the course, and by the time i finished the course and practice from scholaranium i scored a 700 on a GMAT prep 2 on the day before my actual test (my first attempt on which i scored a 690). In the end I was pretty satisfied with my score in the first attempt and of course it took a lot more practice from various other materials to reach my target score of 740 in my third attempt. The foundation set by e-GMAT in my early days did help me throughout my GMAT journey.

So in short for eGMAT:

"The content is great but what makes it even better is the way it is delivered. I highly recommend it to everyone looking to develop strong foundations for the verbal part of the test"

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I subscribed to E-gmat Verbal online course and I must say that it was totally worth every penny.
The subject presentation is very enticing. Learning grammar rules is a piece of cake of cake using E-gmat's interactive modules.

If you are not an pro in English and looking for a course that provides you wholesome material, this is what you are looking for.

Later on. I purchased Quant online module as well. The Quant Online course is also good but not that necessary for Engineers or someone who's good in aptitude. But it definitely helps in practicing GMAT style questions.

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(The following review is an honest, unpaid and unbiased assessment of e-GMAT's Verbal Live Prep course as a satisfied user.)

I signed up for e-GMAT on July 27, went through their general instructions, and went straight to the SC concept files. I discovered that the concept files provided very good explanations of the fundamental rules of grammar and sentence construction that are most relevant to the actual GMAT test.

The quizzes at the end of each concept file allowed me to test and solidify my understanding of the lessons I had just completed.

I also found the explanatory notes at the end of every answer quite comprehensive, precise and easy to understand. These explanations showed that any question can be attempted by sincerely following the approach laid out in the concept files.

I didn’t always score well in the quizzes that followed the concept files. However, I followed e-GMAT’s suggestion to flag the incorrect or trickier questions and return to them as often as required, until I began to answer them correctly. Gaining complete clarity on e-GMAT questions in this way proved to be the game-changer for me, because those questions seem to be designed to closely resemble actual GMAT questions.

I scored relatively lower on most RC and CR quizzes for quite some time. The breakthrough happened when I began to patiently apply pre-thinking steps and started to zero in on the correct solutions faster and with significantly better accuracy.

My suggestion to anyone who signs up for e-GMAT -

Pay attention to the instructions and try not to deviate from the suggested way of using e-GMAT.
Try to stick to the order in which concept files are presented.
Don’t skip the quizzes at the end of the concept files.
Don’t get discouraged if you cannot score well on the quizzes in your first, second or even fifth attempt. Just read the explanatory notes carefully, flag the question, and come back to them.
e-GMAT’s RC and CR questions can be intimidating, but that's only to prepare you better for the actual GMAT. The trick lies in perseverance and practice.

- Anupriya

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I cannot recommend Target Test Prep enough.

I come from a non-traditional background (Musical Theater), and, when applying to MBA programs, knew I would need to perform at a competitive level in my quant and IR scores in order to make a mark in my applications.

I'm stubborn and cheap and didn't want to sign up for an in person class or one-on-one training (also very uncomfortable failing in front of people, and I knew there would be a lot of failure as I relearned all the math I'd forgotten since high school). I initially used a different program-a long set of books that gave me a good refresher on conceptual knowledge with basic questions about each chapter just enough to cover the basic principles. Even though I spent two months with these books and countless hours studying, my first sitting at a real test was a disappointment. I scored a 39 (37th percentile) for quant and a 6 (70th percentile) for IR. I knew these scores would not prove to an admissions team that I was ready for their business oriented programs. And what was worse, I knew that I was capable of a better performance. I just didn't have the right tools.

I looked around online forums for programs specifically geared towards raising your quant score and Target Test Prep seemed to be the best course content for the best price. I loved the idea of the monthly subscription, as I was registered to take the test again two and a half weeks later, and didn't want to spend a ton of money on something I would (hopefully) only use for a couple of weeks. And with the awesome week free trial, I really would only be using the subscription for a week and a half. The week free trial let me test drive the software and see that it was the kind of guided progression that I was missing out on from my resistance to not take an in person class. It provided a structure that made sense and felt interactive and engaging. The dashboard, study plans, and chapter tests, are invaluable tools. The hundreds of practice questions littered throughout the study guides really drill typical test formats into your study process. Where I had learned conceptual knowledge from the previous program, Target Test Prep teaches operational knowledge that is of real use when approaching the GMAT.

Admittedly, I did not follow the study guide to the letter, as I only had two and a half weeks to use the software. I did make sure to work through all of the study guides and take most of the "easy" level chapter tests. Then I moved on to the mixed review tests. I love that there is always a timer for the tests that counts down two minutes and that the scoring of each test tells you whether a question was easy, medium, or hard. I knew I was ready when the only questions I was getting wrong were "hard" level questions. I also felt confident looking at the dashboard, seeing that I had answered 500+ questions with 80% accuracy.

On the day of my second test, I experienced some major differences in my performance due to using Target Test Prep: I was more comfortable with all question types, I had working knowledge of all quant principles and knew what kinds of problems each question was asking immediately and what formulas to use, I was much speedier and my internal clock told me when two minutes was about up and it was time to move on, and, maybe most importantly, I could immediately identify questions that were simply too tough for me or on insanely difficult subject matter not even explicitly covered by Target, allowing me to quickly guess and move on, buying me time for other questions and saving me the stress of wondering if I could have ever answered it correctly.

With just two and a half weeks of studying with the Target Test Prep software, I raised my quant score from 39 to 46 (60th percentile) and my IR from 6 to 8 (93rd percentile). My verbal section also improved drastically due to having less stress over the quant section (I didn't study any verbal between test 1 and test 2).

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I was not good at the verbal section. In my first attempt I scored 21 in verbal, which was really very bad. I got 49 in maths. But ended up in a low score because of verbal. In my first attempt I prepared mainly through Manhattan books and CATs. Manhattan SC is a really good book to understand the basics. But it is not good enough to score high marks.

While, preparing for 2nd attempt I purchased egmat. SC is really of gold standard. No doubt about it. It will teach you many concepts and make you feel very confident at the end of the course. I won't rate CR and RC in the same level of SC. But it is good to go. My verbal score improved from 21 to 29. I believe in RC no course can improve your score. It depends on your prior reading habits. But CR and SC any one can improve if they get good guidance. For SC I would rate it 9/10. For CR I would say 7/10. I would recommend this course specially to any non-english natives.

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Target Test Prep was incredible!! Hands down the best at what they do (i.e. GMAT quant). I had used other programs, including MGMAT and Magoosh before and for quant, there was no comparison to TTP. I used TTP’s online self-paced program but also worked one-on-one with a tutor in the final 5 weeks leading up to my test.

The online program is very well designed such that once you finish a chapter on a particular topic, you feel very comfortable with the material (b/c you've also been doing practice problems along the way that are built-in to the chapters). Beyond that, I really liked the ability to do practice sets via topic or build customized p-sets, and most importantly that all of the data analytics were available to you so you could clearly gauge what topics, questions types, etc. you needed to improve on.

As for the one-on-one tutoring, I would HIGHLY recommend Scott! He has clearly mastered the GMAT math content and it is evident in the techniques and approaches to specific problem types he is able to teach.

Particularly for my learning style, being able to say "I'm struggling with X,Y, Z topic " and then have Scott not only walk me through it, but also ensure I understood it by doing several more similar problems was very helpful. Something that would have typically taken me many more hours of trying to understand on my own, was usually cleared up in a few minutes, then drilled down to make sure I truly felt comfortable with it.

The combination of one-on-one tutoring WITH the online TTP program was key though. I would not have had the fundamentals to make our tutoring sessions as effective otherwise. The one-on-one sessions combined with the online program were a complete game-changer for my GMAT studies. This is undoubtedly what moved me from a 650 to 700. And for the record, it’s important to that I started studying for my GMAT in earnest with a very short timeline before I had to take my test to be eligble for R2 b-school apps (about 6 weeks). I know that had I started with TTP earlier my score would have easily been higher than this, but my goal given my timeframe was to get into the 700s club, which I did!

I’m still in the middle of the R2 process, but I am extremely happy to have been thus far extended interview invites for 4 out of 6 top 20 MBA programs I applied to. Don’t think I would have had the same outcome if I hadn’t raised my score with TTP! Great program! Cannot say it enough.

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I always felt GMAT is a simple test but which is difficult to master. Initially, i relied on only test questions and practice tests to prepare for the test, hoping that i will learn the requisite concepts during those practice sessions. Those tests were helpful, however they did not translate into the scores that i was targeting- something above 730. Then i came across e-GMAT's online course and attended a free seminar. I liked the verbal course offerings (my quant was sorted anyways!) and hence i decided to give it a try. Plus, the 40 point improvement guarantee was a reassurance for me. The things that stood out for me were the meaning based approach to SC questions and the way the scholaranium questions were designed to test not only the rules but also the understanding of the meaning. So, when i retook the exam, i had a method to my reasoning - this resulted in more confidence and clarity in eliminating the wrong choices.No wonders i saw a significant improvement in my verbal score the second time around and ended up with a 740(V38,Q51).

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Taking the decision to quit your job of 14+ years and apply to B-school is risky. But once you take the risk, you need to make sure that your partners in the journey to MBA are dependable. And e-GMAT verbal and quant online courses are two really dependable partners who help you to cross that rickety GMAT bridge.

As for most non-native speakers, Sentence Correction was the greatest hurdle I had (or so I thought). I am an avid reader with more than 500 books in my personal library covering multiple topics. But still, I knew that relying on just that will not help me for sentence correction. I had attended the free SC and RC sessions by e-GMAT and did not think twice to order both the Quant and Verbal courses. And as per the plan suggested in e-GMAT, I started with SC.

To be honest, I had trouble with e-GMAT's SC process. Typically, I am a really fast test taker. 41 questions in 75 minutes does not pose a challenge to me, if it were not an adaptive test. In all the competitive exams I have faced, timing was never a problem for me. Following e-GMAT's SC process slowed me down. I started losing focus, and making a lot of mistakes. My score in scholaranium was pathetic for SC. But I had good scores for CR and RC, so I thought that may be enough.

Even though I knew SC was my weakness, I went ahead with the GMAT - to score a 630 with a V28. Given my demographic, I knew that was a low score. I ordered the ESR to see that while I was at the 83rd percentile on CR and 95th percentile on RC, my SC score was at the 5th percentile!

I had already booked my second test and had 22 days to improve my score. So basically, I had to figure a way to adapt the e-GMAT process. So, I decided to break it down. I started with subject verb agreement errors. If I could find the SV error or lack there of in a question, I would call it a win. Later I added other error types one by one till I was at least comfortable with 5 error types. It was the day of the second test by then.

The one mistake I did before the second test was to take 3 mock tests the day before. I scored 680, 690 and 700 in those mocks, but left me very tired for exam day. I was too tired going to the exam but still did feel that I improved well . But unfortunately, not enough. I got a 690 with a V35. A score just south of 700 was just not acceptable.

I took a whole month off after that. I started concentrating on my applications - but in the back of my mind I knew that this score was not enough. So after talking to my wife (2 GMAT attempts were all we budgeted for) I decided to do a third attempt - this time I planned it far off to the future. Got the ESR for the second GMAT- SC at 80th percentile, RC at 85th percentile and surprise, surprise - CR at 45th percentile!

Initially I could not figure out why such a low CR score. So I started taking more CR tests in scholaranium and started to pay more attention to my CR mistakes. What I majorly found was that for questions in topics I was aware of or those resonated well with me, I was developing some bias towards a view. For example, in a question regarding capitalists and socialists, my answer always had a bias to the socialists, even though it was not the right answer. So I had to figure out a way to suspend bias and be more open to other possibilities.

That was easier said than done. Combining that with being able to proceed with my natural speed of answering, the bias always won. I will not say it is something which I am able to control now - but it is better than before. For test number three, I made sure I was well rested the day before - I still did a mock anyways scoring a 710. The actual exam was better, scoring a 730 with a V40.

This whole effort was done in a period of 4 months from August to November 2017. In hindsight - I should have taken more time to prepare. Planning the prep in a more structured way, keeping a good error log and giving enough time to oneself to unlearn a few things that may hinder the GMAT exam is the best way to face the GMAT. e-GMAT provides the first - with a solid GMAT plan and excellent content. As a candidate we do need to find the discipline to learn and unlearn, so as to be prepared for the test.

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Magoosh provided some of the best video explanations out there. I was able to go from a 610 to a 710 in 6 months (I am not a quant guy either) from this program. I supplemented it with EmpowerGMAT, which has a lot more tactics, but Magoosh was still my base for studying, reviewing, taking notes, etc.

In addition, their lessons are fantastic for those who want to start from square one and grow. If you have the time and capacity to stick to their provided schedule and really focus on learning from the ground up, Magoosh is going to treat you well.

I strongly recommend this service to anyone and encourage you to stick to a plan (1, 3, or 6 month).

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