My Personal Experience of the EGMAT Prep Course

I did not research very extensively on which prep course to take for GMAT but rather went ahead with the course that 2 of my friends were preparing from – E-GMAT. I was skeptical about whether or not I should be paying a high amount for the study material mainly because I believed that I needed help with only some of the sections of GMAT. My quant was good to begin with and I was of the opinion that I couldn’t improve some areas of the verbal (RC and CR) much in a short duration of time by using some sort of study material because I thought that these sections mainly hinged on factors that could only be changed by engaging in long term activities and habits such as reading different types of texts. So I was apprehensive about paying the amount just for the SC section’s study material.
What convinced me was the sigma-x mocks and the EGMAT’s scholaranium since my friends told me that the difficulty level of the questions of the scholaranium is very close to that of the questions you see in the actual exam and the sigma-x mocks had an adaptive grading algorithm that is also very close to that of the actual exam. I also realized that just finding such exams that are similar to the actual paper and give a good reflection of the score that you can achieve was a big deal and hence these sigma-x mocks alone were very valuable.
The platform also has other useful features. It has a section where you can create your modifiable study plan, good extensive study material, a very good and apt question bank, options for creating quizzes in which you can even customize the difficulty levels, the number, and the topics of the questions that you want to have, a good test series, detailed customizable analysis of your progress, active forums for asking your queries and also a very prompt customer support service.
Following is a description of how I utilized the platform for various sections :
1) Verbal (SC) – This was the section I spent the most of my time on. I went through all of their study material, which is very extensive, and I also made some notes so that I do not have to go through the videos again. Then I followed the approach that they had defined for the questions and I performed well in it. I got all the questions correct in SC in my final exam and this most likely has to do with me spending my largest proportion of time on it.

2) Verbal (CR) – I did not go through the study material of this section extensively but I did see their pre-thinking approached. I went through the quizzes that were spread throughout the study material. I used to get most of the questions wrong at first, but since their questions are very good and have detailed explanations attached with them, I soon got the hang of this section and the pre thinking approach. But I mainly learned it through practicing the questions from their scholaranium and OG. I got just 1 question wrong in this section in the final exam.

3) Verbal (RC) – I did not go through the study material for this section but again went through the quizzes that were spread throughout the study material. My accuracy slowly improved as I practiced the questions but this was till the end the toughest section for me. I have a slow reading speed and that is mainly what was my weak point. I got 4 questions wrong in this section in the final exam.

4) Quant – I have good quantitative aptitude and hence did not have to go through their study material. But I did take some quizzes from their scholaranium. I then analyzed my section wise accuracy using their platform, and gave some more quizzes for my weaker sections. I got only one question wrong in my final exam for quant.

5) IR – I went through all of their quizzes from the study material. The difficulty level of the questions was higher than the actual paper but the question types and the explanations were good.

Apart from this, whenever I did not understand the explanation properly or was not convinced by it (did not happen many times tho), I went through their forums for that particular question and 90% of the time had my doubt already posted by some other student in the past. The experts had also already answered that doubt. This usually helped solve the doubt. In case it did not, I wouldn’t scratch my head too much over it and just move on to the other questions but again, there were not many instances of this.
Also, whenever I mailed the E-GMAT team regarding any issue or when I was stuck, I got a very prompt reply. Their Last Mile Program also helped me where they assigned a mentor – Atreya Roy to me for making a customized plan for me. Although I did not follow his directions a 100% (because of my other personal commitments and shortage of time), he DEFINITELY gave me a lot of important insights. He nudged me into giving the exam sooner than I had planned and also helped me identify my weak areas and accordingly devise a study strategy for my final week. He was very helpful with the process and also helped me have more self-confidence and take less stress for the final examination. He also offered to help with any type of questions that I was having difficulty with. This made me feel like I had a private tutor/expert with me that I could go to for help if I needed.
In conclusion, although I did not research extensively on other prep courses and also did not use a lot of material and features of the platform (mainly because I did not spend enough time in exploring the features), I can say with confidence that the platform has everything that you would need for your preparation for the final exam and the quality of everything is also top notch.
Finally, if you’re thinking of taking GMAT, I would advise you to do the prep with a positive mindset and not take stress or set unrealistic timelines for yourself. Rather, just try to enjoy the process and give lots of time to any section that you think is not saturated for you yet. I was able to improve my score by a 100 points with just 120 hours of preparation because I took proper rest, enjoyed myself and did not pressurize myself too much with the preparation. The quality of time you spend on studying is more important that the quantity. Don’t just keep on doing questions for the sake of it and try to learn as much as you can from a whatever you can – be it the study material or the explanations and analysis of your attempted questions. All the best!