e-GMAT Review

I would highly rate e-GMAT's Online 360 product.

I subscribed to e-GMAT's Verbal course in September 2020. I did so because the material I was using for Verbal prior to this purchase was not helping me much. After researching on the available products for Verbal, I narrowed down to e-GMAT's product. It was around this time that I also wanted to give my first GMAT exam. I only practised the SC course on the e-GMAT platform prior to my first attempt because of paucity of time. I scored a 650 (Q47, V33) on my first attempt with the following percentiles in Verbal: SC - 81st %ile, RC - 66th %ile and CR - 33rd %ile.

At this moment I realised the need to focus on Verbal. Before doing so I wrote to the strategy team at e-GMAT, explaining to them my situation and detailing the need for inputs for my preparation. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a swift response from the team. They put me in touch with one of their strategy experts - Dhananjay Lowe (DJ).

While I was skeptical about how my conversation with DJ would transpire, he put me at ease from the get go. Side note: If you are a lover of puns, there is no better person worth the company. After our initial conversation by mail, DJ provided me with a 6-minute analysis of my ESR. I was pleasantly surprised by this gesture for I assumed that I would get a generic response. After going through the video, DJ suggested a 5-day plan to get me back into my study routine. Since I was comparatively good with SC, the first task was to consolidate my performance in SC by taking a few Cementing quizzes on e-GMAT's Scholaranium platform. These quizzes helped me apply the correct process of understanding the meaning of the sentence to solve SC questions. This aspect is important because while it is possible to solve SC questions without understanding the sentence's meaning on easy/ medium-level questions, it becomes impossible to solve those hard-level questions without understanding what the author intends to communicate.

This brings me to the USP of e-GMAT: One of the key areas that e-GMAT focuses on is "Approaches" to solve Verbal problems. For instance, in SC, e-GMAT uses the 'Meaning-based' approach and in CR, it uses the 'Pre-thinking' approach. These approaches remain the same irrespective of the difficulty-level of problems. This is where the charm of these approaches kicks in because irrespective of how hard a question is, the process to answering the question remains the same.

Accordingly, I completed the CR course and its associated modules. Each of these modules has a pre-assessment quiz and a post-assessment quiz to gauge one's ability. These quizzes helped me because they threw light on aspects that I was consistently faltering at. Moreover, each of the attempted questions has a detailed analysis of how to 'approach' the question, and in turn, answer it. This guided interface was invaluable to my preparation. After completion, I took the cementing quizzes to gauge my ability-level for CR before moving on to RC and following a similar process. It is worthwhile to mention that while all of this was happening, DJ and I would send check-in mails to each other. By the end of it, we had exchanged more than 200 email conversations - mind you, this is without being enrolled in any additional program for which I had to pay additional charges.

While preparing for SC and CR, DJ also suggested that I maintain an Error Log. Until then, I hadn't prepared one for Verbal. This suggestion was pivotal to my preparation because it became handy for me to keep revisiting my Error Log. It helped me refresh my concepts and pointed me to common pitfalls that I must consciously avoid. This was possible because of the two-types of Revision that e-GMAT suggests for incorrect questions in the Cementing phase - Revision A and B. e-GMAT suggests how to strategically review each of the questions that one has attempted to ensure that one gathers maximum learning from the questions. This approach works two-fold: First, it avoids the need to constantly solve questions (just to boost one's ego); and second, it helps one to reflect, consolidate learning and then move on.

Once I completed my Verbal preparation after 3 months into this process, I took the Sigma-X mock. To my dismay, I scored a 510 (Unsure of the split, perhaps Q31 and V31). As you can imagine, I was deflated. At the same time, I knew this score was an outlier because I hadn't touched Quant in those 3 months. My bigger concern was my Verbal score which was reduced by two points (from my first Official GMAT exam). I then wrote a panic email to DJ. He replied saying, "Quant is not something we should bother about because we've only been focussing on Verbal. But, yes. Verbal score is a concern. I would've expected you to be in the higher 30s range." Nevertheless, he suggested that I follow the process and revise my Error Log for Verbal. In the meantime he enquired if I wanted to purchase the Quant package. I accepted because I trusted DJ with his inputs and the assistance he was offering.

Thus started my Quant preparation. It was an arduous task completing all the modules. But, in hindsight, going through the grind is what brought solidity to my Quant preparation. The most important aspect to tackling Quant is having a 'structure' to the preparation and e-GMAT provided me with that 'structure'. The modules in e-GMAT platform ensured that even the smallest of chinks in my Quant armour was identified and strengthened.

If you're still reading this review, now is a good time to steer away a bit and help you exercise your brain: Let's say I ask you the formula for calculating Simple Interest, if you answer I = (PRT/100), where P = Principal, R = Annual rate of interest, and T = Time in years, then good on you. What if I asked you the formula for Compound Interest? If you jump up the seat and say, = P(1+(R/n*100))^nT, where n = Compounding period, then well, you are incorrect because the expression, P(1+(R/n*100))^nT gives you the Total Amount (A). Hence, the interest I = A - P. These were the nuances that I previously did not understand that e-GMAT helped me comprehend with much clarity. Each of the e-GMAT modules is well designed to give this conceptual clarity for all topics. In addition, the Quant course also ensures that we apply 'Process skills' to solve problems. These skills are important because, at times, it's not our inability to apply concepts, but our incapability to retain certain question imposed constraints, such as not considering all cases, not correctly translating the question prompt, etc. that prevent us from getting to the correct answer. Each question on the portal and its associated explanation illustrates the usage of concepts and process skills. When these two aspects - Concepts and Process skills - became second-nature to me, I gained the confidence to tackle Quant without much difficulty.

Around this time DJ helped me upgrade from Scholaranium 1.0 platform to a Scholaranium 2.0 (Schol. 2.0) platform. On having used Scholaranium. 1.0 platform previously, I was privy to both these platforms and their differences. For one, the Schol 2.0 platform is AI driven. It shows you a detailed analysis of your performance in each quiz, mapping how well you performed in each question as compared to your peers, the time taken by you compared to the median time taken by others, presence of any luck-factor while you solved questions/ questions in which you paced fast without giving enough time, etc. These features helped me readily analyse my performance and start off with the next steps.

Once I completed both Quant and Verbal courses on the e-GMAT platform, DJ suggested that I give the Test Readiness (TR) quizzes. He laid out a comprehensive plan for me on the number of topic-wise questions that I should attempt in each quiz, and the accuracy that I must target. He also told me to write to him after each quiz to ensure that I'm track to doing the right set of things - revising concepts, reviewing Error Logs, etc. These TR quizzes helped me gradually transition from answering quizzes that contained 10 questions to answering full length quizzes (31 questions for Quant and 35 questions for Verbal). Performing well in each of the quizzes became important and DJ ensured that I didn't lose steam in the process. Through these quizzes, he helped me fix glaring 'timing issues' and identified areas that required extra attention.

Once I satisfactorily completed the TR quizzes for both Quant and Verbal, I took my second Sigma X mock after 5 months (since my first Sigma X mock) and scored a 690 (Q49, V38). DJ then enrolled me into his Mentoring program for more nuanced inputs. We then had a conversation about my performance on my mock. For instance, in Verbal, DJ helped me identify that I was faltering in RC, while in Quant, he helped me identify that I was faltering in Algebra and Geometry. He then suggested the next steps to fix these issues to ensure improvement my performance on my next mock. After implementing these suggestions, a week later, in my GMATPrep Official Mock, I scored a 730 (Q50, V38). Two days later I gave my Official GMAT and scored a 730 (Q49, V41).

The past year or so has been challenging. However, in hindsight, it has been worth it. A major reason for my performance has to do with e-GMAT Test prep products and the tireless back-end team that always responds to queries. Special thanks to DJ - the mentor who helped me all the way through, Stacey and Shraddha - the SC experts who answer all queries with crisp and concise explanations on the e-GMAT forum and not to forget Harshvardhan - the CR and RC expert who tirelessly gives exhaustive responses on the e-GMAT forum. A big fan of these folks! While these are the people that I have named, there are countless experts that have played an instrumental role in my preparation behind the scenes! Heartfelt gratitude. :)