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I would like to share my positive experience with Manhattan Gmat Prep self study kit and a 9 week prep course taught by Noah Teitelbaum. In addition to very interactive and engaging instruction, the material and strategies covered during the preparation helped me improve my score from 570 (Q37, V29) to 740 (Q49, V41). The key to my preparation was blocking out time slots throughout the week to go through the material and follow the syllabus during the course and then focusing on practice and solving the problem from GMAT Official Guide for a few weeks after the course was completed to allow the information to fully sink in, timing per problem to improve and become more consistent. Keeping up the pace throughout the exam and being ready to endure the 3.5hrs exam without loosing focus is also crucial.
I'm a non native, schooled and educated in English. I have been working for almost 3 years now and recently, decided to write the GMAT. My work schedule makes it difficult for me to travel to a physical class and I wanted an online course that helps me improve my concepts. I gave the eGMAT Verbal Online a try. Here's my analysis :
For each topic, using eGMAT's course material and following these 4-steps rigorously helped me immensely :
1. The video lessons built a strong foundation of GMAT English in an extremely organized manner
2. Testing skills learnt in their application files (questions to specifically test those topics, irrespective of solid understanding of any other topic) - This really helps if you're completely out of the zone and find yourself struggling with different other parts. Their solutions are detailed video solutions. There's also a forum on the question itself where you can read / post doubts on the particular question.
3. The GMAT OG (Multiple years) / Verbal Review (Ed 2) question list for each topic : This helps you gain confidence on OG questions and post-analysis helps you get in the zone!
4. Scholarium : If you're not timing yourself well on GMAT OG - The scholarium comes to your rescue. You can design your own test - pick the number of passages, CR questions, RC questions. It recommends you a time, but you can keep it above average at the start and reduce it gradually as you get better.
5. GMAT involves a lot of reading and from what I hear BSchool too - the course has a LOT of articles. It's good reading practice specially if you're not in a reading habit anymore (The articles are GMAT specific topic, not general pieces)
Individual Sections
1) SC : For me, this section helped me the most. My accuracy shot up pretty soon. The detail with which each topic is covered seems just right. To keep up with the older topics, I kept attempting unattempted OG/VR2 questions randomly to identify pain points. The scholarium comes to the rescue as well.
2) CR : I was falling for a lot of traps that were being laid out. A lot of people kept telling me that CR skills don't improve soon, which made me skeptical of whether I could improve. After getting done with the topics, I could see myself classifying the questions into an assumption, flaw etc. (which I didn't do in a hurry otherwise) and started to pre-think before looking at the options.
3) RC : The CR/RC section in tandem made me understand structure of passages better, which in turn led to more time for reading and solving questions and higher accuracy.
I could see the results after covering a small portion of the course. The structured approach to the topics and the simplicity of the course is awesome. I CANNOT mug to save my life and a lot of notes online / material online and offline involve mugging rules, something I feel isn't for me.
Hope this review helped, hit me up if you want to know something else. Thanks!
Hello everyone!
I took e-GMAT Course for both verbal and quant. I must say the approach these guys use to make you understand the concepts (be it quant or verbal) is unparalleled. Being a non-native, my verbal section was quiet weak in comparison to quant section. E-gmat helped me to revise all my grammar concepts to improve my SC section. The pictorial representation, using stories to build on the concepts, quizzes at the end of every topic helped me to engage myself completely in the topic taught. Their 3-step approach also guided me how to select a correct answer with confidence. In CR section (i found the toughest of the three) , egmat helped me to improve my accuracy using their structured approach. Quant section in this course is pretty tough.People who have weak basic fundamentals will find their videos quite impressive as they start from square one. Most Quant ques in their scholaranium are of 700-800 level. They have very structured solutions which helped me in understanding "How to approach a particular question" and breaking down the question stem into small and easy parts.
Coming to their the customer support , all my queries were timely addressed and a detailed and apt answer to all my doubts was provided throughout the course. Though they have more than required amount of questions in their scholaranium, they do not have full-length practice test to estimate your overall GMAT performance. I would say, this is the only drawback which i found using this course. Except this, everything is superb.
To sum up, i think there can be no better course than E-gmat to nail the exam and achieve your targeted score.
The e-gmat verbal live prep helps in enhancing the required skills for GMAT.Since I am a non native i find egamt very helpful.
The best product available in market so far.
The SC has always been my weakest point and i believe SC is very important for the 700+ score in GMAT. Luckily the egamt SC is totally technical and not much to memorize,just a good practice will help you a lot.
The CR is fabulous.I know i have improved a lot in CR with the help of instructors such as Krishna.
I believe non natives will surely find this course more than their expectations.
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Magoosh is an excellent product. The video lectures are really helpful and easy to access. The access of the material can be also done using your iPhone or Android phone.
The sections are well defined and very well explained.
Although, the Verbal lectures delved a lot into the grammar and terminology parts of things and I being a non-native speaker found it difficult to understand and ended up with V30.
The support was good and any doubts or questions were cleared within 24 hrs no problem.
Overall, the experience was good and I would also like to mention that I saw the AWA part in the morning on test day and scored 5/6 :).
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
I gave my first diagnostic test in Gmat Prep and scored Q47, V26. So you can see my strength is Quant and my weakness is Verbal. So I searched in the GMAT club for the best online verbal course and found e-GMAT. It has good ratings and many suggested for the non natives. So I attended their free strategy sessions and enrolled for their trail courses. I liked their way of teaching and enrolled for the e-GMAT verbal online course. The best thing about their courses is that the course videos are designed interactively and you wont get bored. They don't use the grammar jargon's such as Gerund instead they use Verb-ing. The emphasis on meaning in SC questions helped me a lot and able to solve a lot of problems easily and also the pre-thinking approach in CR questions. I used to have a timing problem and after approaching the 3 step process explained in the CR and RC questions, I'm able to complete the verbal section in time. Their scholaranium is very helpful for practicing the questions. After the course my verbal score improved to 32. I would definitely recommend the verbal online course especially for the non natives.
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My background is engineering, both in Bachelor and in Master degrees. My assumption was that quant should not be any problem for me at all. Unfortunately, my first quant score was very low (Q45) comparing to peers with the same or similar background.
I was devastated and decided to try e-GMAT Quant Live Prep.
Along the way, I realized that GMAT is not an ordinary math test. e-GMAT has laid a great quant foundation and effective approach to tackle the problems. Though I haven't taken a real test just yet, I was satisfied by the improvement on accuracy. Again, thanks to scholarium.
Another great thing about e-GMAT is the staff. They are extremely helpful answering the questions I have. The response is extremely fast and comprehensive.
Please give it a try and I promise that you will get the result you need.
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My weakest part of GMAT has always been verbal part. Since I don't have much time to study because I was very busy with my work; therefore on-line platform offered from e-GMAT is extremely helpful. Prior to taking the course, I never scored higher than V24. After 30 days of strengthening the vital concepts with e-GMAT, I could raise my score to V35!
The feature that I like the most is Scholaranium system which allows me to track down my weaknesses and improve them immensely.
Another great thing about e-GMAT is the staff. They are extremely helpful answering the questions I have. The response is extremely fast and comprehensive.
Please give it a try and I promise that you will get the result you need.
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I am a non-native English speaker. As an Engineer with good quant skills, i was specifically looking to improve my verbal.After my first attempt at GMAT i could manage a pathetic 25 in Verbal which hampered my chances of applying to a good B school.
After going through reviews of various online materials available, I selected e-gmat verbal prep course because i had heard about their great video lectures of SC concepts and " pre-thinking" concepts in CR. my verbal score improved to 37 and i would surely credit e-gmat for this change.
Let me share my experience of e-gmat. I will analyze my experience of verbal by further breaking up into SC, CR and RC experience
1> SC experience -If you don't know the technical grammar terms such as participial phrase, gerund phrase or prepositional phrase, don't worry at all . e-gmat has their own way of explaining these modifiers to the extent that you can clearly build your concepts. Their analysis of question while solving SC problem is a big take away . You should read the complete sentence rather than just the underlined part, a mistake that i was doing before .
2> CR - Pre thinking changed the way i used to look at CR before . Their analysis of breaking the argument into premise and conclusion helped me a lot. My accuracy in CR improved from 60% to 80% .
3> RC - the step by step method of analyzing a passage and summarizing it helped me a lot to improve RC. if there is any section of verbal which is very uncertain, it is RC section. Different level of passages from schloaranium helped me improve my reading speed and attack the questions in a better way. i could summarize the main point in my own words more effectively.
If you are looking to improve your GMAT score , why not join e-gmat online course and progress and improve at your own pace . Rajat and Payal are awesome and cool teachers who will make sure they clear all your doubts. their webinar are really helpful and i suggest people should attend some of the webinar .
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` .