550 (V28) to 710 (V40)

My first attempt at GMAT was with an unstructured on and off prep using the manhattan guides and a marathon of randomly solving questions on gmatprep, which ultimately yielded a score of V28. For my next attempt, my biggest takeaway was that I needed a structured course provider to add some method to this madnesss. I started prepping first for Quant with one of the other test prep companies, but their verbal course was not striking a chord with me. So, I started looking for other test prep companies specializing in their verbal course offerings and came across e-gmat on gmatclub. I saw their reviews on gmatclub and as some folks might experience, I was immediately skeptical by seeing the sheer number of positive reviews. “How can a company have such a fanfare?? there is definitely a lot of marketing going on here”, was my thinking. I thought that all the reviewers were being compensated in some way. Now that I'm writing my own review, I feel so silly of having such thoughts earlier.

I had tried to find other alternatives, but none seemed to match the e-gmat question explanations and their content available freely on gmatclub and youtube. Watching the webinars hosted by Rajat over youtube, I kept thinking that these guys definitely have broken down the GMAT prep to a science, so I convinced myself to sign up for their free trial and have an experience. Although the free trial gives access only to a few chapters, the following quickly became apparent to me:

1. Most of their content is in video format – I used to hate video lessons due to the time commitment. But considering that most of us are visual learners, the video format actually turned out to be very helpful for me as I could quickly recollect a lot of the animations and illustrations while trying to recall concepts.
2. There are a lot of chapters – This meant that they have broken done the entire GMAT content to various subject areas, down to bite-sized lessons. This also meant that I could be flexible with my daily study commitments.
3. Content is extremely simplified – A wide audience ranging from native speakers to folks having English as their tertiary language can follow-along and learn effectively.

During the free trial, I noted all my concerns and sent an email to the e-gmat support team asking for a consultation meeting. Sundeep reached out to me and was very kind to address all my concerns. I then took a lap of faith and signed up for their ‘Verbal Online’ course.

For my experience through the course, I will summarize my thoughts based on each of the content areas and the e-gmat value offerings.
1. Induction – The lessons here are frankly under-rated. Apart from introducing the subtleties of the GMAT, there are some extremely important concepts introduced here, such as the ‘Takt Time’. This concept had a major influence on my skipping strategy for test-day.
2. Master Comprehension – This is the first section in the Verbal area of the course and is supposed to be taken prior to any of the SC, CR or RC sections. This section addresses a pain-point for majority of non-native test-takers, the ability to quickly and accurately comprehend written content. The strategies focus on how to breakdown any passage or sentences in order to fully grasp the intended meaning and information.
3. SC Section – Truly their strength. This section represents the most unfamiliar content for non-natives, but the e-gmat team have done a remarkable job of breaking down the subject area to a level that is extremely easy to grasp, remember and apply.
4. CR Section – They advocate the process of ‘Pre-Thinking’ for approaching all CR questions. This concept was totally new to me and frankly didn’t work for me in the beginning. But as you follow-along with the CR chapters and consciously apply the pre-thinking approach, it starts to become a sub-conscious activity. This approach definitely requires faith, but does pay huge dividends.
5. RC Section – Content is fairly simple and well-organized, the lessons are geared towards acclimating the students to the question types, common error types, and the strategic reading process to effectively comprehend the information within a short time.
6. IR Section – Lessons provide a good introduction to the 4 question types and highlight an effective way to approach each question type.
7. Support (Subject Areas) – Each of the lessons has a forum section included in the same page where a lot of previous students have posted queries and the e-gmat experts have answered them. A lot of the doubts during my study were already found to have been addressed here.
8. Sholaranium (Tests) – It is their platform for generating various types of practice quizzes. The options for selecting the specific types of questions allowed me to perform targeted practice of my weak sections. For anyone starting to use this tool, I need to point out that all quiz types use a common questions pool, so I would recommend planning the quizzes in order to avoid exhausting the number of available questions. The quality of questions is very identical to what I experienced in the official tests.
9. Sholaranium (Insights) – Apart from the practice tests, the performance is used to generate valuable data analytics. As a matter of fact, the areas identified by scholaranium as my weaknesses were a bit unexpected, but the insights turned out to be accurate when I reviewed my performance across the official practice tests. I used this data to plan my skipping strategy, quickly guessing on question types that I was most likely to answer incorrectly.
10. Discounted Official Practice Tests – Official mba.com practice tests can be purchased at a discounted price via e-gmat. Another value offering of subscribing to an e-gmat course.
11. Support (Testing Strategies) – Another under-rated offering of e-gmat. Once I had completed all the subject areas, I noted that I had become very good at answering the questions correctly in practice tests, but under timed test-taking conditions my accuracy was being severely impacted. My performance in the official practice tests was also varying from V35 – V41 for the same reason. So, I reached out to the e-gmat support team for some guidance and DJ responded and offered his mentorship to help me maximize my performance. DJ and other members of the strategy team have done a remarkable job of mentoring a lot of students, a bunch of success stories can be found on the e-gmat youtube channel that highlight the impact of the strategy team.
12. Sigma-X Mocks – DJ from the e-gmat strategy team had me attempt the first Sigma-X mock and analyzed my performance to point out some insights that pretty much were replicated in the official GMAT ESR. Although I cannot vouch for the sigma-x test algorithm or the questions pool (since no test company can accurately replicate the algorithm or the official questions), for me the biggest value was in the insights. Although DJ had analyzed the insights and pointed out my gaps, I couldn't change my testing behavior much as my official test was just days after this mock, so the gaps from my mock pretty much repeated in the official test. The key takeaway was that the Sigma-X mocks can reliably be used to identify gaps in test-taking behavior that can make or break your score on test-day, and it would be much wiser to leverage this feature ahead of your test day.

As I write this review/debrief, I am working on the insights and gaps pointed out by DJ and am preparing to give another attempt in order to further boost my score.

During my GMAT prep, whenever I was going through a phase of self-doubt I used to read the reviews on gmatclub and watch the debriefs on e-gmat youtube channel, which served as a constant source of motivation and boosted my spirit thinking that if they can achieve it, so can I.

Closing out, I want to give a huge shout out to the entire e-gmat team for not just making a great product, but also for actively working hard to support their students through thick and thin of their GMAT journey.

I hope that my progress from a V28 to a V40 provides you with a similar experience and instills a belief in your ability to achieve the score that you desire, and that me delving into such depth of my GMAT journey persuades you to make a quality decision of trusting the e-gmat team as a reliable partner in your endeavor. Know that there is a big team of subject-matter experts, strategy-experts, etc. who are dedicated to this subject and are completely vested in your success.

Wishing you all the best in your prep, good luck.