I took the GMAT for the first time and scored a disapointing 19 in verbal. It was pretty clear that there was something seriously wrong in my preparations . So I decided to take some online course. I came across many courses but finally the non-native course e-GMAT attracted me. The CR course of e-GMAT completely changed my approach of attempting CR. No more guessing work remained. My speed and accuracy improved, although I was not able to to improve much from my second to third attempt. But one thing I realized that I could improve further by implementing the CR pre-thinking approach on each and every OG question. So that was the strategy I adopted to reach my target score for my future attempts.
I loved the way the approach of pre thinking has become a part of me.

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Magoosh is a big part in my GMAT journey. The video lectures are optimally designed so that i could save time in learning concepts and practice more. I prepared for one month (more than 200 hours) and improved from a 580 in CAT from MGMAT to 700 in actual GMAT.

Magoosh premium is also a good value for money. As to my research i couldn't find any comprehensive course that costs only $99 for 1 year subscription. The responses from instructors in case of any doubt is fast and the Magoosh blog too helps a lot in prepearation

However, one needs to look for other sources when it comes to IR sections. Magoosh material is not good enough to get a decent score in IR.

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I took the GMAT the first time after several months of sales, but I tried to "know" everything. Bombed it.

Second time I took it I used some strategy but focused almost solely on verbal. Did much better but still not where I wanted to be.

I purchased Magoosh after reading several reviews and looking at the trade offs for cost. I have found it was great in reviewing general concepts. The biggest thing for me has been the strategy review videos. I like that I can break down my performance by several criteria. To have the specific videos that deal with questions I got wrong has helped quite a bit.

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An excellent course, especially for non-natives, and a guaranteed score improvement is what e-gmat is. After my fiasco in my first attempt , I registered for e-gmat. Immediately after going through few of their course materials I knew I was at the right place.

About the course structure :

1) Structured and well defined.
2) Importance to meaning and logic.
3) No shortcuts.

Of the 3 verbal courses SC was awesome. E-gmat's stress on meaning really does the trick and will really help you nail SCs. Payal's meaning session is one of the best sessions I have attended. Though the approach would take time, once mastered ,will really help you solve Sc qts at a much faster rate and accuracy.

Regarding CR , Rajat will help you get at ease with the concepts and solving questions. Pre-thinking is an excellent technique to solve CR and helped me get through my exam fairly quickly.

Rc sessions by Shraddha are wonderful. They helped me improve my accuracy , most of all understand and get involved with the passages. I was even able to solve a 5-6 para passage that I got in my exam, thanks to Shraddha.

And of course , Krishna's and Chiranjeev's sessions were good too.

I owe my 140 point improvement to egmat and would recommend it to any non-native,especially the re-takers, who aspire 700+.

Thank you guys for an excellent course and please continue the same.

Thanks,
Sandeep

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The premium package of Magoosh was the best deal I could find for my online GMAT preparations. While the price was reasonable, I wish the content was a tad bit better.Not that it is insufficient, on the contrary it is a very good starting point esp. to brush up on basics.

During my preparation, I found Magoosh particularly helpful in finding my weak areas. The tests can be filtered down to difficult level , no. of questions, time, etc.

Another major plus was the email support. More often than not, my doubts would be cleared within half a day. The respondents were sincere enough to follow up till my doubts were fully cleared.

Overall, this was a great add-on for my 1-month GMAT prep, if and when I retake the test I look forward to using the new features that have been added!

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I decided to go with Magoosh because I needed a low cost GMAT prep option (I had barely any money to spend on GMAT prep). I had tried self study for a few months with no discernible progress, so I knew it was time to take another route. I signed up for Magoosh premium after a friend suggested the program to me and I began my study using 2 of the three month study plans offered by Magoosh. I did a combo of the 'Version B: Math Focused' plan and the 'Version D: For Advanced Students' plan. The Advanced study plan called for use of the MGMAT complete set of strategy books and the OG 13, so I used those as well. Between these three resources, I spent a grand total of roughly $275 on my GMAT prep.

Overall, I found Magoosh to be an awesome investment. For $99, I got a full year's access to a whole tome of videos on all the subject matter covered by the GMAT, all the way down from the most basic frameworks up to the 700+ level concepts and strategies. For me this was priceless, since I came to my study very rusty on Quant and needed a refresher bootcamp type of prep. I was already very strong on Verbal, having previously taken the LSAT (basically GMAT Verbal on steriods), so I didn't use that part of the Magoosh offering too much.

In any case, to improve on Quant, I watched all of the math videos, per the Magoosh study plan, and was able to re-acquaint myself with these math concepts that I have not seen since high school. Magoosh was helpful for me personally as someone with a short attention span and a busy schedule because the videos are short and to the point. No long drawn out explanations; instead, the material is practical and concise. Just the way I need it. What is more, Magoosh has an iPad app. This allowed me to conveniently study on the go. No need to lug heavy books around all the time; I could just use my iPad on the train or whenever I had a quick moment (the other advantage of having short videos).

I must say, I spent a lot of time studying, usually about 4 hours per day for about 8 weeks, over 200 hours total. This was in part because I was using two study plans at once. It was a lot of work but it was what I needed to excel. Magoosh was great because, again, the material is super digestible, so I rarely felt lost (which was one of my concerns when deciding whether to do an online course--what if I have question or get lost, who will answer my concerns?) Even if I did get lost or fail to understand something, the Magoosh response team is AMAZING. They reply straight away, usually within a few hours of submitting a question and they answer in a way that really makes sense. Most of the time when I had a question, even if it was a complex inquiry, someone from the Magoosh team would respond in a way where I didn't need to do a lot of back and forth follow up to understand the response provided.

If you are like me, someone who does not have thousands to spend on GMAT prep, but who is motivated to achieve a 700+ score, I would definitely recommend the Magoosh offering. It is HIGHLY ECONOMICAL (1 year access for $99!!!) and user friendly. Simply put, it is well worth the investment.

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I am Pavan. Before subscribing for e-GMAT I took class room coaching from Manhattan Review which is not up to the mark. The difference between the way e-GMAT teaches and class room coaching institutes is very huge. Class room coaching institutes teach only tricks but not concepts. e-GMAT strikes right at the head of the nail with necessary concepts.

e-GMAT will definetly help students who are very poor in English...the approach is long lasting.

Pro's
1.Good website
2.Good content
3.Good teaching

Con's
1.Very few number of practice excercises.
2.Same examples in all online classes (topic wise)
3.Should include more practice examples.

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EGMAT is the best verbal course I have come across for non-native speakers. Although I scored a mere 34 in Verbal, I came pretty close to my target of 37. I started in the 20s in all MOCK test and it was only after going through the course that I landed up in the 30s.

These guys are dedicated in terms of course design and structure. Strategy sessions by Rajat were really helpful for me to finally zero in on EGMAT. Although I could have done better had I followed the curriculum to the T, I am happy with the current score since I have landed in the 80% range of most of my target schools.

Anyone looking for improvement in verbal be it SC, CR or RC, if you follow the EGMAT approach dedicatedly, I am sure your accuracy will jump up from your current level. I had a 30% accuracy in SC and after EGMAT it came to 70%. If you have any more questions about the course please feel free to drop me a PM and I will give you whatever feedback I can. Thanks EGMAT Team!

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I would like to share my experience so far with the study curriculum of e-GMAT. I believe my review will be most helpful for non- natives. I am from India a B. Tech and MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai (MBA aspirants from India would know). I have around 4.5 years of post graduate work experience and generally work 60-70 hours a week. I am a FRM holder and CFA Level 3 candidate and have academically done well throughout. I am a credit analyst and frequently required to write reports and do number crunching. Thus, I was a bit overconfident and never thought taming GMAT would be difficult. GMAT humbled me, showed me I was wrong.
1st Attempt (January 7, 2013) (570, Q47, V22): Disaster - I was applying for Autumn 2013 intake for two specific courses, however, as the average work experience of the class was around 7 years I was asked to apply after a minimum of 5 years work experience plus for Autumn 2014 intake. Though I knew this was not my final attempt, since I had already registered for the exam I tried to give it a shot. The resource material used was Manhattan entire strategy guides, and OG. Quant PS was quite easy for FDP, Geometry, word problems and algebra. DS was a bit tricky for number properties.
Sentence correction: Too different from how we are taught English in our schools. We can frame our own sentences which we know are correct and carry with flow. However, when subjected to sentences with different structure finding the correct answer was tricky. I read the Manhattan SC book twice and tried to memorize all the idioms. Though I understood the rules, their application was far far away. Whenever subjected to a complex sentence I would read the entire sentence and was unable to find anything wrong with it. I would read the answer choices, look for splits, madly try to look for parallelism and many other mistakes. Accuracy suffered and timing was poor.
Critical Reasoning: I was okay with the CR from the beginning. The guides helped identifying the types of problems etc. Timing was decent except the only few where I was stuck between 2 choices and had to re-read the question and the choices.
Reading Comprehension: Tough! Solving the problems in time was impossible. I took around 15 mins to solve 4 questions. The guide said make notes, read the 1st para/sentence twice. I followed everything but, still, accuracy was poor and time consumed was highest.
Interactive reasoning: The guide had just a glimpse of what the problems will be like. Not too many problems to solve. I did not know even just before taking the exam that for each individual question you have to answer the sub questions correctly or else you will not be awarded a point for that question.
Exam experience: I did not touch quants or solve any problems for at least 1 to 1.5 months before the exam. I only wanted to focus on verbal and my timing. The argument essay was okay. IR managing time was tricky. Quants though wasted time on few DS questions but still solved all the questions with 3 mins to spare. Took my break. Verbal I had heard the first 10-15 questions are very important, they will decide your overall score. I spent the initial 45- 50 mins with the first 20 questions and from there the disaster was waiting to happen. I submitted the answers to the last few questions even without seeing them.
I was shattered, even with this low level preparation I had expected a score of 640 plus so that I could improve to a 700 plus score in my final attempt. Then at the end of FY13 I started looking for study options. I had long working hours, so classroom programs were not for me. While exploring across GMAT Club I came across the e-GMAT program. I attended one of the free session on SC and strategy and I liked the course at once. I registered for the Verbal live prep program.
Here is the difference that e-GMAT brought to my study program.
Sentence Correction: It is a remarkably well-designed course. I moved finding splits and what sounded correct to finding the errors and looking for meaning. My problem-solving approach has changed in all aspects, now breaking the sentences into clauses and the subsequently looking for errors such as subject verb disagreement, verb, pronouns, structure, modifiers and idioms errors. The structure was set and timing has improved with practice. The applications files and online classes were eye openers, how the concepts were applied to each and every question. I realized at times the split was irrelevant and the sentence had other errors that made it incorrect. While in my prior approach, I used to select the answer choices based on the split. The concept files are amazing and helped in my daily work as well.
Critical Reasoning: The course has been great in improving my accuracy. It gave me tools which can be applied with precision. The new concepts were ABC test for finding the conclusion in case of confusion. I learned a better application of negation test, variance analysis which helped me in assumptions and evaluate type questions. And pre-thinking has become a part of solving the problem. Though I just have one pre- thought answer to question before seeing the options, the process made choosing the final answer easier.
Reading Comprehension: I have tried to internalize the RC passages using the RC strategies. Humanities passages don’t haunt me anymore. Still I need to improve on my timing and accuracy.
Interactive Reasoning: I haven’t seen so much material on IR on any forum. All type of probable questions from graphs, 2 part quants, table, verbal, MSR etc. Though the question on standalone basis are not tough but been familiar with the structure has its own rewards.
Presently, I am almost a month out from taking the GMAT exam, still I believe that e-GMAT course has already made a big difference in my performance in my verbal scores. On my Manhattan mock tests I am able to complete the verbal and IR portion on time. Accuracy has improved and my raw score is hovering around 34- 35. I am trying to improve the same in the range of 37- 40 in my final month.
Wish me luck for my GMAT exam next month. The best part of the course is that it teaches you a new way to look at the problems and helps you to internalize the process and apply it across all questions. I hope my review will be helpful to non natives.

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I have opted for the verbal online course of e-gmat.This course is very beneficial for the beginner as well as for others. Initially I was afraid of Engilish grammer but after seeing the e-gmat course I now very comfortable to give gmat exam in Nov.

e-gmat step wise approach is very unique and provide a strong base to understand SC,CR and RC questions. In SC question, once one read the e-gmat process one can easily find out 2 to 3 mistakes and can eliminate 2 to 3 options very easily in one glance and then its saves time to solve problem.
Before taking egmat i can only get 15 to 20 questions right but now I reached up to 30 to 32 in test trials.

Its instructors are very co-operative and online live programs are also very helpful.

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