I selected e-GMATfor mainly two reasons. I was impressed by the way Mr. Sadana took the class in strat session 1 and I liked their audio video approach rather than reading from a book after a 10 hr workday (6 day week).
The reason I was able to make a good pace in e-GMAT was I neither read any other book nor I had any apprehensions of any other process. So I didn't need to unlearn anything. So it was easy for me to adopt their process since that is the only way known to me
Sentence Correction: Three step sentence correction approach: In the first SC session, Ms. Payal asks everyone in the class about the most important aspect in SC, and 8 out of 10 said – Grammar and I am sure that most of the guys reading this post thinks the same.
But with her logic that grammar is only a tool which is used to convey the meaning (purpose), made us understand that understanding the meaning of a sentence is more vital than knowing bunch of grammatical rules. I can say that this changed my approach towards SC questions. None of us here are grammarians and most of us don’t know all the rules of grammar. Even if you know all the rules of grammar, there can be two answer choices which are grammatically correct but only one will convey the intended meaning.
There is more than one instance where I was able to pick the correct choice concentrating on the meaning of the sentence when I was confused between two or three answer choices.
Critical reasoning: Pre – thinking has greatly improved my accuracy and test time in CR passages. Many of you who are familiar with the process may think it will take a lot of time or it is very difficult to pre think. But take it from me, once we internalize the process (it will take time to get used to it and sometimes, we forget to pre think but keep on trying and after some time you will start to pre think even with out realizing), it’s basically not selecting from the given choices because you already know the answer--you just need to search for the answer or something similar to that. Believe it or not guys, I was able to finish my verbal 15 mins before the scheduled time and I pre thought.

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I signed up for Magoosh since the price was right (relative to some books, which can end up being quite pricey). I ended up using it almost exclusively for the Quant section since I studied English in undergrad.

The quant practice is great, and I believe it helped me a lot more than the books for a couple reasons. First, you can set the questions to either adapt to your progress or to stay constant. I mostly stuck on either Hard or Very Hard since I didn't want to risk dropping down to some Medium questions, but others may find that adaptive practice is useful for them. Also, you can either review questions after each answer or do the questions in bunches (sorted by time, or by number of problems you want to do). Pretty useful.

I think the Quant questions have real quality. They were very similar to the ones I got on the actual GMAT in regards to how they were worded. That's good, compared to say the Manhattan GMAT, which has great practice tests but the quant wording is a bit over the top (makes you try harder, I guess, but not as close to the real thing as, for example, Magoosh).

There are also video explanations for each problem (which is nice, but after the first few dozen problems I would just glance over the written solutions and 'get' it). And then each problem links to a "related lesson" video, which is mostly how I went through the lesson concepts.

I didn't watch too many Verbal videos or use it much for practice. I will say, though, that their general strategy videos for each question type are useful (for example, how to approach sentence correction really helped).

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For $99, the Magoosh website is by far the best value out there. The instructors are very clear, the videos are great, and the website is designed very nicely. My only real issue with Magoosh is that sometimes it felt a bit unprofessional due to spelling and/or punctuation errors. This was rare, but very obvious when I found them. Overall though, I found the service to be very helpful for my needs in studying. Some people may prefer to spend more money on a classroom program and that would make sense to me, but as far as online-only classes go, Magoosh is king. Thanks Magoosh!

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Appearing for the fourth time wasn't easy. After the previous unsuccessful attempts, it was devastating, took a lot of courage and a lot of support from my husband and family. They believed in me and had the confidence that I could kill the beast (that's what the GMAT was for me).

I have done a Post-Graduation in Finance from India; worked with CRISIL (India's premier credit rating agency) and settled in USA after marriage. I was among the 3 candidates from 250 to be chosen for the job in CRISIL. Writing this not to boast but just to let know that an exam is not a replica of a person’s capabilities and how to handle rejection and stand up after breaking down completely.

The GMAT taught me that, never imagined would have to give a fourth attempt, when have excelled at everything else in life.

I know 610 isn’t as good as 700 but for me it is an achievement, the much needed success to get back the belief in myself.

I am writing this post for people who are strugglers like I am and are thinking what to do next, or what is it that they are not doing right. Why me? Trust me, I asked these questions to myself every time and finally I was able to answer them.

Let me start with my fourth attempt:

I appeared on 11th July, 2013. On the exam day, I was a nervous wreck and was scared to death. Just didn’t want history to repeat itself and there it was a blessed 610 - 40 in Quant and 34 in Verbal. Finally, the hard work paid off.

I was so happy to see a 34 in verbal as it was the section that gave me the wonderful 400s everytime. I thought I was good at English but the GMAT changed my perspective. Never was I able to get above 20. For the 34, I would really like to thank e-GMAT verbal prep and the downloads on GMAT Club. I took it 20 days before my exam, after I contacted Rajat, asked him what would be the best option and when my husband finally made the decision for me as I wasn't ready for taking up a new course just 20 days prior. But e-GMAT really helped me gain a lot of confidence in my weakest section.

For Details:

The course that they have is structured very well. It really makes you see details that you have not seen. It is truely said that what you see is what you remember better then what you read. e-GMAT follows this. I finished all the videos of SC, RC and CR within 13 days. They also have practice files (which were really helpful).

For SC: The SC videos are just too good. I was always good at SC but the e-GMAT videos helped me to understand the intricacies and gave a few shortcuts that really helped during the exam. For the first time I was able to look at the question, know what was wrong and mark the answer straight away. This saved a lot of time. It basically showed me how to find the mistakes and how to correct them without even looking at the choices. Something I was not able to do in my previous attempts.

For CR: I hated the inference and the assumption questions. Thank God I didn't get any on the exam day but e-GMAT made these very simple. I used to always get confused between two answers and invariably mark the wrong ones. I know many people face this, but the course I took thought me how to not choose the wrong answer and how one word in the choice can make it incorrect. e-Gmat has a process called pre thinking, I wasn't able to master it due to shortage of time but in some questions during the actual exam it really helped me to mark the answers as I could pre think them.

For RC: This was my biggest problem. But again the videos of e-Gmat helped me a lot. They taught me how to take notes, what kind of answers can be for the questions asked and again how to pay attention to each and every word in the choices. For example: if there is a passage on: cure of some diseases and in one of the answer choices they say cure of all diseases you eliminate that choice. It is very obvious that you would do that, but GMAT has a tendency to frame answer choices in a way that make you mark the wrong one. I did that and I am sure many would be able to relate to this.

Apart from the e-GMAT videos I also downloaded all the 700+ files from the GMAT Club free download areas. These also helped a lot in my practice, and helped me get better.

My three attempts; what went wrong:

My first attempt was on May 29, 2012. I was confident and thought I could get a 600 easily, but I ended up with a 480. I did not take any classes, just downloaded materials from websites and studied from Kaplan (which was not helpful at all). The first time material wasn’t right and I took it rather lightly.

The University I was applying to said it would give me a chance to appear again. On July 2, 2012 I retook the test and scored a mere 400. I was devastated and lost on the admissions. I decided that I was not going to try again, but being on an H4 visa and having no plans to go back to India did not leave me a choice but to reappear. Analyzing on why I scored 80 points lower, I realized that I was scared, under time pressure, and focused too much on marking the right answer rather than focusing on the questions and answer choices.

Third attempt: This time I went as far as going back to India taking classes and appearing there. But the classes I took concentrated more on quant then on verbal (which was my weakness, quant was never that much of a problem), they gave me a lot of tests which I started appearing for one week before the exam. My performance on the tests was average I scored a 600-640. Thinking that this time I would get a 600 I went for the GMAT on January 17, 2013. I was very nervous during the exam and was really scared for verbal...I ended up with a 490. I was in tears and lost all my confidence. I didn't know what had happened.

After coming back from India, now I had taken it on to myself. I had lost all my self respect. I told my husband that this time I am going to fight it and get over with it.

In my previous attempts I was scared, under pressure, lacked on confidence and was so focused on marking the right answers that it resulted in a bad performance. Also, the material for the first two attempts were not up to the mark. Studying smartly is very important.

When I went for the fourth attempt, although I was scared, I was confident and this time I took each question as it came being more focused and well versed with the basics and the intricacies, with smarter and better practice.

In the end I would just like to add that GMAT has thought me to be courageous, patient, handle rejection as well as pressure and strengthened my never-give-up attitude. Beating the GMAT is not very simple but it's not very difficult either--it just has to be done the right way. Also, I would like to thank e-GMAT and my family for standing by me through this one.

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I took my GMAT for the first time in Oct '12 and again in March '13. I am planning to take it for the third time in Oct '13. When I took my GMAT for the first time, my verbal came out to be my weakest area. After reading various reviews on trusted GMAT sites, e-GMAT came out to be the obvious choice. I went for the Verbal Live Prep. I completed 70-80% of the course and appeared for the GMAT. I saw a 5 point increase in my score from 20 to 25. I am now preparing to complete the entire course and I am sure I will improve my score by 8-10 points further!
The structure of the course is very well planned and with diligent preparation. A multi-fold increase in your score is guaranteed. Go for it!

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First time I sat for the GMAT I scored 590 (35-35 split). While I did use a variety of sources during my prep, I credit Magoosh with the increase in quant. I felt pretty confident with the verbal all the time, so I didn't spend too much time on it; but it was clear for me that I was not even near the score I wanted in Math. I liked Magoosh not only because of the amount of tricks offered to help you conquer the timing constraints, but also for the variety of ways to attack the questions bank: You can select your questions based on the degree of difficulty, the area tested, you can go back and retry the incorrect ones, you can write notes, you can flag for review, etc. I ended up scoring a 710 on my second GMAT (47 quant, 41 verbal), more than I actually scored in the mock tests.

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After being a member on gmatclub for a while, I started looking for a course that was comparable in price and quality. I had seen a number of great posts from e-gmat and after doing the course math it was almost a no brainer to go ahead and purchase their verbal online course.

I was particularly interested in the SC and CR sections of their course. As a non-native I used to make a number of silly SC mistakes that woud drive me nuts. In a short amount of time, I was able to go through a number of the SC videos in the course and those were just as great as the gmatclub posts from the e-gmat gurus. There are a variaty of SC concepts, some of which I thought I had an above average understanding and a chance of getting answers correctly. Well, after seeing the videos I definitely could see why I used to make a number of careless mistakes. The concepts and explanations in the course, although I felt at times were meant for 1st graders, definitely solidified my understanding and boosted my confidence.

The great part about the course was that it also allowed me to use grockit for practice. This is where I was able to benchmark knowledge gained from the e-gmat tutorials vs. timed accuracy. Jokes aside, but I'm willing to admit that after some serious and focused practice I was like a hound dog sniffing through the sentences and was quickly and easily able to spot patterns and mistakes (I was scared :) ).

I was only able to go through limited RC, CR and IR because I got preoccupied with work but some of the videos I saw were great, as well. Definitely, the major and even a number of miscellaneous concepts are covered in the course and have I had more spare time on my shoulders I would have loved to go through all the material in the course.

My only negative memories are with some of the web site navigation. I found it a bit confusing at first with the way the Dashboard was represented. Anyways, once you get the hang of it, it is not of any negative impact for the skills you gain for what you paid.

Overall, it's a great bang for the buck and the people from e-gmat have definitely put a great amount of effort for the great concepts, material and explanations provided in the course.

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I took the GMAT for the first time two months ago, after studying for 2 months with local teachers and scored 640 (Q41, V38). I knew I needed to focus in improving my Quantitative section and started researching for online tools, since I thought I was lacking exam-like practice.

I used Magoosh mainly for its Quantitative section (did some Integrated Reasoning practice and checked the AWA videos as well).

I think one of its most important strengths is its Quantitative prractice section. The questions are just like what you will face during the test. This helped me become disciplined in the use of time (this was a problem during my first GMAT attempt).

The videos are excellent and really helped me understand the errors I had made and to become familiar with concepts. I think another advantage of the course is that the lessons focus in what is tested.

After using Magoosh for 1 month I took the exam again and scored 740 (Q48, V44). I think these were the best $100 I have spent.

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Great set of video explanations and lessons for each topic both in verbal and quant. The explanations are clear and to the point. I was able to do timed sets with adaptive difficulty similar to the real GMAT. For advance test takers, they have a number of high level questions, which will challenge your understanding. Each question is complemented with its explanations and related subject video to bridge the gap in the knowledge. Total they have over 600 questions of varying difficulty complemented with video and written explanations. Their support team is very helpful and the instructors reply to your query within 24 hours only.

Really gained a lot from it and highly recommend Magoosh.

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I had a great experience using MGMAT's online 9 week course. Even though my class was virtual, I still felt that there was a sense of community in the classroom and that my teachers were invested in my success. I found the problems in class and the discussions to be very helpful, and the homework to be a good use of my time. The online practice tests and the analysis provided were the most useful tools in my preparation. I was able to track my progress and see what types of problems I consistently got right and wrong. On test day, I felt nervous but confident and saw how my hard work had paid off!

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