TLDR: Harry Duthie is an absolute legend who helped me achieve a 750 after I couldn't break 690 using TTP and a test prep course. GMAT Ninja isn't cheap, but the attention and skill of these folks makes it 100% worth it. If I could do it all over again, I would have engaged Harry much earlier in the study process.

My GMAT study journey began with Target Test Prep after scoring a 650 on my first cold mock. While TTP is an incredible content review, I found myself quickly overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of content & questions, and feeling entirely on my own when stuck on questions / concepts. This led me to enrolling in a group course (Test Crackers). While the course helped with test strategy and had office hours, the incredible amount of time spent in classes and doing problem sets left me feeling burnout and was often untargeted. Also, by the end of the course it became clear to me that most group classes are focused on getting people to the 600s, but test company courses’ overreliance on sometimes gimmicky strategies and focus on teaching towards the average won't reliably yield a 700+ score.

After spending 100+ hours on TTP and Test Crackers, I took my second official mock and received a 710 (V42, Q45). Seemed fantastic until I took my third mock official mock and received a 640 (V41, Q36). With only two weeks before my first scheduled official exam I reached out to GMAT Ninja.

Within the first reply it was clear to me I was going to be working with experts who truly cared about maximizing the performance of their students. Charles took the time to go through my mocks (free of charge) and identified timing issues & concept gaps and gave me an extremely honest and accurate assessment of the time and work it'd require to achieve my goal score.

I went on to work with Harry who is an absolute gem of a person. He took the time during our first session to holistically understand what was holding me back (i.e. time management and content gaps). We went on to work together for ~10 sessions during which we'd review concepts, work through problem areas together, and discuss timing strategy. GMAT Ninja even has proprietary question sets to help target weak spots without have to burn through OG questions.

What really stood out to me about Harry is that he clearly took significant time and thought before sessions to look through my error log from the homework and identify what concepts were holding me back. Therefore, our sessions together were always extremely targeted and efficient. Absolutely no gimmicks - he helps you fully understand the concepts and gives you tailored approaches to question types that trip you up. Harry is also incredibly honest - he will tell you when you need more work and will tell you when you're ready. By the end of our time working together Harry made it clear that he knew I was ready and that more tutoring wasn't going to benefit me despite my desire to keep going (he was right - I got a 750).

Read More

TTP helped me get my dream GMAT score!
The course is well laid out and as long as you follow it step by step, you'll have all the tools you need to get a high score.
The course contains a huge number of practice problems and review quizzes. Every quant and verbal concept tested in the GMAT is represented in the TTP course.
In the study material, the more difficult questions usually have a short video explanation, but the written answer explanations are also quite clear. This is true for both the verbal and quant sections and having good answer explanations for the verbal section is really useful.
You also have access to some neat analytics that helps identify weak areas, which is great to have in the weeks leading up to the real GMAT. The ‘Strategy’ section is a great help since the GMAT is not just about preparation, but also about execution.
The TTP course is heavy in material, more so than other courses I’ve seen, but if you dedicate the time, you are almost certain to get a high score!

Read More

I narrowed down on e-GMAT for my GMAT prep based on their fantastic reviews on GMAT club and having spoken to a few friends of mine who recommended it. I found the course very well structured. There is a well laid out path to get to a very good ability level in each section. I would say the course material (such as concept videos and quizzes) overall is very good, although it does take quite a bit of time to get through the whole course (that being said, there are ways to actually personalise the course material at various points based on your current abilities, which I thought was quite helpful).

The course feature that I was most impressed with is the Scholaranium. This is an extremely well designed platform which provides numerous questions within each section, along with amazing data analytics which, when used in the right way, can really help you improve your performance. The quality of the questions is really good. In my personal opinion, I felt that the difficulty level of many questions in the scholaranium is at par or sometimes even above the difficulty level on the actual exam. So I would suggest do not get disheartened if you don’t see yourself scoring very well on each test/quiz. Just trust the process and put in the effort consistently. The data analytics provided within the scholaranium platform is top notch! It goes into a great level of detail, so you can actually identify which specific area you are really faltering in and then work on that area. For me personally, these features really helped improve my abilities.

Overall, I am happy that I gave e-GMAT a shot and would happily suggest it to anyone who is starting their GMAT prep journey. The Verbal modules in particular are very good. Quant is also very good, although I used both e-GMAT and Target Test Prep (which has flexible one month plans) for my quant prep, so thanks to both of them! In the end, all I would say is that don’t just assume this course is a magic wand that will given you your target score (i.e. don’t assume just by completing the course material you can attain your target). A lot of it has to do with how diligent you are in tracking your progress, doing detailed (strategic) reviews of your errors and finding out where you went wrong, maintaining a detailed error log (I cannot stress the importance of this point just enough!), mastering time management and so on. The course will help you with almost all these aspects in one way or the other, but it is up to you how you make the best use of it.

Finally, thanks to the entire team behind e-GMAT (especially all the subject experts) for helping me get to my target score.

Read More

I am glad that I took the e-GMAT course for my preparation since the beginning.
1. Course structure:
The best thing that I personally liked about the course is the structure that is followed. It really helps in not only grasping the concepts but also retaining them. Verbal section was specially the game changer.

2. Course content:
The course has sound content and it covers it in an interconnected manner, enabling better understanding of the concepts as a whole.

3. Mentorship:
This has been the game changer for me after my first attempt. The team was very responsive and supportive till the day of exam. A special mention to my coach Rashmi who really helped me identify & rectify errors, specially in verbal section.

4. Scholaranium:
I think this is has been the heart of the course for me. With diverse range of question (from easy to difficult), there is enough volume of questions to lay your hand on. The best part is the analysis provided on a topic/quiz level, specially the so-called 'takt time' really helped in realising the speed as well as accuracy & necessary focus areas to improve upon.

Read More

My Gmat journey started in 2021 when I decided to pursue an MBA course. Started my prep work by myself the first time and worked hard for 6 months but could recieve a score of only 660. I decided to work on my gaps and gave the test again in 2 months but unfortunately, got the exact same sub-sectional scores in both Quant and Verbal and only a 10 point improvement.

The gap in my self preparation was a lack of structure. I used to focus on the weak areas, improve that and lose track of the components that I had already built ability in. Meanwhile, I focussed little if anything at all on Quant, focussing all my energy on Verbal.

Thats why when I was explained the structured approach of e-GMAT on a call with one of the representatives, I decided that is what I needed- A structured, logically formulated course in which I just need to practice diligence and do as Im told.

Thus, my 3rd attempt at the GMAT journey began in April and because of the previous effort I had put in improving my Verbal skills, the first 2 months of the course seemed quite a breeze in comparison to the Quant section.

Quant learning was made easy by the very systematic concept files and application files in each chapter of the section. The learnings were then reinforced in the practice files and skills files. The cementing quizes would then test my ability in each section and highlight the weak points giving various indicators of the existing gaps that needed work.

All of this effort was made super easy by my mentor Rida Shafeek who guided me through every step and gave me the confidence that I lacked in myself. I was also given special attention by Shweta - quant expert who took the efforts to teach my the importance of maintaining and analysing an error log and therefore the magic of strategic review. I felt considerably more confident in the quant section upon putting in all the effort.

In the end, during the final month of the prep, I signed up for the Last Mile Program where I was given more attention by Rida and was taken through every step of the way in my test readiness process. The 5 diagnostic tests were a roller coaster ride for me since I did not manage to score consistently well on all the tests. But I was given assurance repeatedly by Rida that all other indicators in my preparation led to mean that I had the ability to achieve the score I wanted.

The result, I came out of the exam hall with a considerable increase in my score - 660 - 670 to finally a 700.

Read More

Your GMAT success depends on how skilled you are at applying your conceptual knowledge under stringent time constraints. If you wish to ace a test such as GMAT, you must learn the fundamentals by heart.
e-GMAT has created an excellent portal where you can learn these fundamentals in detail using concept files and application files, test your learnings through practice files and scholaranium, and analyze your progress through intelligent data analytics.
The structured and detailed SC course helped me improve my writing to such an extent that none of my superiors ever called me to ask what I was trying to say in the documents or an email.
The CR course emphasizes the concept of pre-thinking. Knowing what you are looking for before you start searching. It helped me boost my ability to crack difficult questions in the minimal possible time.
The emphasis on identifying and correctly interpreting ‘keywords’ helped me improve my comprehension speed significantly.
The diagnostic test feature of the e-GMAT quant course helped me save time significantly as I am pretty good with maths.
Apart from course content and structure, the support I received from my Mentor, Rashmi, was like icing on the cake. She helped me identify the critical areas of improvement and provided me with the right resources to achieve the goal. I am glad that I got a chance to work with her.
In conclusion, I can say that you can trust e-GMAT for your GMAT journey. Their course is designed to teach you the fundamentals that will not only help you ace the GMAT but also will come in handy in life later.

Read More

Update: I have determined that GMATWhiz plagiarized RC text from multiple online sources! Read this for more: https://gmatclub.com/forum/plagarism-or-inspiration-387692.html

TL;DR: Limited material for quant, the worst possible material for verbal, slapped onto a user-antagonistic platform. Question bank consists of bad original questions and poor derivatives of official questions which leads to a misprediction of your strengths and weaknesses. I’ve wasted more money, time, and effort undoing the damage. Look elsewhere.


My background is in machine learning research, particularly in natural language processing/generation in English. Your mileage may vary. I will reproduce relevant portions of questions in my review, covered under fair use law.


GMATWhiz is a relatively new course prep provider, and it shows. The platform lacks the polish of other competitors – the user interface looks slick, but the user experience can’t be much worse. I shouldn’t have to pay to struggle with a buggy platform while trying to study for an important exam. With that in mind, let’s go through the good, bad, and ugly for verbal, quant, and the platform.


Verbal: I can’t find anything good to say about verbal. I started on the platform with a mock verbal score of 37 and it plummeted to a 34 and 32 after finishing the course. Can’t make this up even if I tried. The coursework for RC reuses the same few passages to the point of tedium, and there’s little learning that can be done when the passage has been over-analyzed. The coursework for CR in general just dumps a (non-exhaustive) list of definitions and synonyms on you, _surely_ you can figure out the rest yourself.


The GMATWhiz’s approach for SC is probably the worst that I’ve seen. They advocate a painfully drawn-out method to evaluate the meaning of a sentence, promising that with time and practice, the pain will be alleviated. I argue that an ineffective approach is just that, ineffective. Learning how to make an ineffective approach faster (and god know I’ve tried) doesn’t magically make it better. It wasn’t until I’ve consulted a tutor that I understood the full extent of the damage that their SC approach has done. I had to spend considerably more time, money (more than 5x their course fees) and effort to undo it. The questions provided aren’t much better either. There is a huge variance in quality and most questions are nothing like what you will encounter in the actual exam. This also leads to the completely undesirable (albeit interesting) misprediction of your strengths and weaknesses. The SC questions are so bad that I’ve caught typos in option A (which is supposed to be a verbatim copy of the underlined portion). There are questions with no appropriate answers according to official GMAT instructions. For example, reproduced verbatim, underlined portion in [ square brackets ]:


Q: [Tetrapods, the first four-legged land animals, are regarded as the first organisms that had fingers and toes which now, researchers can prove wrong] as they have found rudiments of fingers in the fins in fossil Panderichthys, a "transitional animal," between fish and tetrapod.


A) Tetrapods, the first four-legged land animals, are regarded as the first organisms that had fingers and toes which now, researchers can prove wrong.

B) Now researchers can prove wrong that Tetrapods which are the first four-legged land animals regarded as the first organisms that had fingers and toes.

C) Tetrapods, the first four-legged land animals, are regarded as the first organisms that had fingers and toes, a belief that now researchers can prove wrong. [Correct answer according to GMATWhiz]

D) As the first organisms that had fingers and toes, Tetrapods are regarded as the first four-legged land animals which now researchers can prove wrong,

E) Regarded as the first organisms that had fingers and toes, Tetrapods, the first four-legged land animals which now researchers can prove wrong to be a wrong belief


How on earth is “prove wrong. As they have found rudiments of fingers […]” correct in this scenario? Also, according to the platform, RC is my worst section by far whereas CR and SC is a toss-up. In reality, my ESR from my attempt shows that I got full marks on both CR and RC. If you’re a victim of their verbal course, seek professional help immediately.


If this isn’t enough to discourage you, read on.


Quant:
The good: - All relevant material is covered, some extra material too. - The instructor derives some of the commonly used magic values, which can be helpful if you forget them during the exam.


The bad: GMATWhiz advocates one way to do things. If you like having more than one tool in your belt, you’re out of luck. This is extremely bad for topics such as sets and inequalities, forcing me to supplement my learning with materials from other sources.


The ugly: The quality and variety of the questions are sorely lacking. Word problems often become a verbal exercise where I spend more time trying to figure out what the question is truly trying to say. There are questions in which students are “giving exam[s]” (To who? If you assume they give to the same entity, the answer you arrive at is different from if you assume that they gave it to each other); [some person] “bought 35 more ponies and horses” (35 more ponies and 35 more horses? 35 more (ponies + horses)?). Many questions are clones of each other with some numbers tweaked, an example on mixtures will be given later. This inflates their question count, and more likely than not, your accuracy which in turn leads to poor estimate of your actual capabilities.


The unforgivable: - The platform claims to have AI-powered technology, but it just serves you more questions in the areas that you’re weak in. It’s supposed to be helpful but the follow up questions are so similar to the ones that you’ve gotten wrong that reinforcement learning simply doesn’t take place. I wasn’t challenged to apply the concept; I was forced to regurgitate. For example, I got this question wrong:


There are two bottles of milk-water solutions with different concentrations of milk in them. The first bottle contains 6 litres and the second bottle contains 12 litres of milk-water solution. If equal amount of solution is taken from each bottle. The solution taken from the first bottle is added to the second bottle and the solution taken from the second is added to the first. If on doing so, the milk-water concentration becomes the same in both the bottles, then how many litres of solution was taken from each bottle?


and was immediately served with this question as a “concept booster”:


There are two solutions of water and spirit of different concentrations. Solution 1 is of 30L and solution 2 is of 10L. If same amount of solution is taken from each of the solutions and added to other solutions, the concentration of both the solutions becomes same. Find the amount taken from each solutions? It doesn’t take a genius to realize that these two questions are just simple value swaps. Also note the poor grammar and phrasing, it’s a recurring theme. Maybe you benefit from rote learning, but I certainly don’t. Most importantly, I don’t think GMAT rewards rote learning. - The platform artificially inflates its bank of questions by providing poor copies of official questions. The deleterious effects that these questions can have on your prep cannot be understated. I quote @IanSteward [https://gmatclub.com/forum/plagarism-or-inspiration-387692.html#p3003453] from our discussion about plagiarism (which I encourage you to read for insights from other esteemed members): " - for the test taker who will study official questions (which every test taker should do), it’s just a waste of that person’s time to study inferior prep company copies of those same questions; - test takers can get a false sense of security, if they fly through the OG because they’ve seen variations on the same questions in advance. But on test day, not one question will be a copy of something you’ve studied before, and the whole psychological experience of test day will feel completely different from the experience you had during your preparation; - when companies copy GMATPrep test questions, test takers can get vastly inflated scores on their diagnostic tests, and then, because test takers might then think they’re more prepared than they really are, they can make bad decisions about when to book a real test. The official diagnostic tests are the only reliable assessment tool test takers have, and any company that compromises their usefulness is doing test takers more harm than good."


An example of such a derivative question: OG CR question: Sparrow Airlines is planning to reduce its costs by cleaning its planes’ engines once a month, rather than the industry standard of every six months. With cleaner engines, Sparrow can postpone engine overhauls, which take planes out of service for up to 18 months. Furthermore, cleaning an engine reduces its fuel consumption by roughly 1.2 percent.


OG answer: B. the cost of monthly cleaning of an airplane’s engines is not significantly greater in the long run than is the cost of an engine overhaul.


GMATWhiz question: The Great Eastern Hotel is fully covered by wall to wall carpeting which the hotel normally pressure cleans twice a year. With the intention of reducing its costs, the hotel now plans to pressure clean the carpets every two months. With frequent cleaning, the hotel can delay the complete replacement of old carpets by new ones, a process which requires the hotel to close business for a week. Moreover, frequent pressure cleaning of carpets increases their durability and longevity.


GMATWhiz answer: Whether the long run costs of more frequent pressure cleanings is not significantly greater than the cost of buying new carpets?


While the degree to which the question has been disguised is open to debate, your time can undoubtedly be invested in OG questions for significantly more benefit.


The platform:
The good: GMATWhiz offers a Q&A section that allows you to see previous questions asked by other students as well as get feedback from the platform’s mentors. They usually get back to you within 1-3 working days.


The bad:
- The site misuses tabs and toggles: tabs are for navigation; toggles are for selection. These are not supposed to be interchangeable. This makes it really difficult to find what I needed on their platform as I had to fight the user interface tooth and nail to find what I need.


- The UI straight up doesn’t work on certain screens, for example, in the mock result screen, the menu button doesn’t work at all.


- The platform doesn’t allow deep linking, so if you’re keeping an error log (which you should) and want to link back to an exact question, you’re out of luck. Have fun navigating through ALL the questions to find that one you need.


- The time tracking feature drastically overestimates the time required for each activity. 30 hours as tracked by the platform barely translates to 10 hours real time for me. Good ego boost if you’re into that kind of thing.


- The platform offers you a short quiz (usually just one question per topic) and offers to personalize your course by removing videos covering topics that it has judged you to be proficient in, never mind that one question is not a good test of understanding. If you accept the offer, the videos are removed from your course, and you’ll have to go through multiple screens to find it again (which isn’t easy nor explained anywhere). They could have just marked the videos as skipped and kept them in your course for ease of access but then you won’t have to struggle that much.


- Question options have inconsistent formatting, some options are in a darker/lighter color compared to the rest, exposing the correct answer most of the time. More ego boosting if you benefit from positive reinforcement.


Conclusion: All in all, I’m thoroughly convinced that the GMATWhiz course provides no advantage over other course offerings and in fact has damaged my ability to score. Their subpar question bank cripples their simple algorithm and in turn crippled me. I got my score in spite of GMATWhiz, not because of it.

Read More

I worked with Abha Mohan from the eGMAT team for my GMAT preparation. I had taken the exam before and was planning to retake it to see if I can further improve my verbal score. Given that I was applying in Round 1, I had a deadline and despite this, Abha came up with the best plan possible to improve my verbal skills. During our time, Abha helped me identify my weak concepts and improve them through Scholaranium. I found it especially helpful that I could build tests (easy, medium, difficult) on concepts that I needed to retain and improve. Having target metrics from eGMAT on how much I needed to score on each of these tests helped me keep track of my progress.
In addition, Abha stayed in communication throughout my prep to monitor my progress and iterate on the structured plan that she had laid out.

While I couldn't end up improving my verbal score, I'm thankful to Abha and eGMAT team for the support I received during this process. I knew I gave it my all and I couldn't have done it without their support and resources. Thank you eGMAT team!

Read More

I decided to purchase the e-GMAT Online focused course a few days before new year's day and I have to say that I am more than happy with my decision. I don't think I would have been able to reach the score of 730 without their support, especially in the verbal section in which I improved from a V31 in my first mock to a V40 in my last attempt.

Although the course material, in my humble opinion, is sufficient enough for one to reach a score of 700+, the personalized support provided by the e-GMAT experts is what helps you push your score to a 720+.

The expert assigned in my case, Rashmi, always came up with an in-depth analysis of my performance on the scholaranium platform and precisely pinpointed my weaknesses. I was also given a follow-up about what improvement steps were to be followed and how to go about them, which really helped. Also, just to let you know, their arsenal of improvement steps never runs out :)

Hope this brief review helps you to choose your perfect course. Good luck!

Read More

Hello Everyone!

Some of my learnings through my GMAT journey with eGMAT are listed below:
- [ ] For most working professionals, You’ll have to be on your toes to get the work done. Your energy levels are very important and you must preserve them during your study hours, mock attempts and beyond.
- [ ] Absorb the ‘Structured Approach’ and make it second nature. The sooner you’ll do so, the sooner you’ll achieve a better takt time, the time it takes for a correct attempt. Once you have your concepts in place, refining these process application steps is the only way you’ll reach the 36th question with some time in hand. The better you comprehend, the better you’ll sail through each sub section, be that be of Verbal or Quant.
- [ ] The art of letting go: If only we were taught how to attempt exams, many would have thrived playing on their strengths and taking minimum harms elsewhere. Though GMAT score depends on your performance on each sub-section, after surpassing a cumulative difficulty level, let data of your past attempts and your intuition(general comfort level) with a question guide you on making strategical skips. After all, it’s about finishing your section attempt with Hard questions. Don’t get attached too much to a question or you’ll never even get to read the last few questions.
- [ ] Error log importance : Quality over Quantity. Maximum learning is extracted while reviewing your mistakes. In the crucial minutes after mocks or simple tests, which leave you exhausted, do review questions in which you took too long to finalise a choice, in which you weren’t able to eliminate the choices per your reasoning skills, in which you weren’t able to comprehend the meaning, etc. Remember, if you dig deep enough, it’s always lack of a diligent and intentional shift in comprehension that results in an unsure attempt. Read the above sentence again.
- [ ] Seeing them as Life skills : critical thinking, active prediction, finding main points, sentence level comprehension, short circuiting details. I respect this exam for the skills it has helped me engender. Your level of awareness of your surroundings will be unparalleled and you just might reach to the levels of Sherlock, Dr. Gregory House and the other high functioning sociopaths who thrive on drawing inferences by observing their surroundings.
- [ ] Make it purpose of your life, but only for a continuous stretch of 4/5 months, otherwise it’ll hang over your head like Betal. Don’t make it a ghost hanging over your head leaving you tired in your everyday life. Preserve your energy, be fierce with protecting your time, be calm and observant during your learning hours, cement the learnings and reflect on them during your ordinary hours. In a short amount of time, you might even absorb these test skills to make them life skills.
- [ ] Comprehension extracts the meaning which is core to solving each and every verbal question. As you read the sentence written as is and try to make sense out of those juggle of words, you’ll know what’s wrong and what’s correct. Use some rules+common sense to sail through. GMAT is a test of reasoning ability and not of English language. Do remember this fact.
- [ ] Hats off to Payal and Rajat for putting together such a detailed course. Each question offers multiple learnings and is designed to maximise the variety of takeaways for the user. Shraddha, Kanupriya, Stacy, Arathy and most importantly Harsha have laid out such thorough and informative explanations that one is bound to excel if they follow the words closely.
- [ ] Lastly, it was through the kind and considerate mentorship of Abha that I was able to put this exam to an interim rest. From scoring a 610 on my first mock test to 740s and 750s towards the end, I was able to significantly improve my performance through her guidance. After scoring a 640 at my first official attempt and facing extreme network instability during the second, I was a bit afraid to go over this barrier score of 640. The test readiness stage orchestrated by Abha helped me maintain my mock temperament during this official attempt to a great extent and I was able to achieve a 710. I might go for another attempt to justify the ability I have built and the time I have put into this exam. However, I wish I could have ended it sooner. Don’t let this journey turn into a vicious cycle.

All the best fellow aspirant!

Regards
Mohit

Read More