GMAT Club
December 23, 2014
nsaikrishna

Joined: Nov 24, 2014

Posts: 0

Kudos: 0

Improvement N/A

Course Magoosh Premium

Location Online

First of all, I would say that the Magoosh Gmat Course is fantastic.

The video lessons
1. are easy to understand
2. are correctly paced
3. use simple examples
4. provide practice questions
5. gives us a lot of insight into the subject

The exercises
1. are slightly more difficult than the actual test
2. help you practice as much as you want to
3. have video explanations that exactly tell us where we went wrong
4. direct us to the corresponding lessons that we might need to retake for better understanding

How to use the 3 month study plan:

Before taking the magoosh lessons, I took up one of the two practice tests given by GMAC. I scored 580.

I had less than 3 weeks left for the GMAT and I went through the 1 month study plan, which said do 5 lessons a day etc. I felt it was not organized well enough for me. So, I took the quantitative focused 3 month study plan. I made a complete list of all exercises available in magoosh. Then I referred to the study plan and marked each of the lessons with week, day and order within the day. I was happy to see that the first iteration of the entire set of lessons was completed in 6 weeks. The total length of the videos were approximately 23 hours (you may want to add a few hours for practice problems within videos and after every section). I targeted to complete lessons worth one week everyday. I actually ended up taking 8 days to complete the entire set of lessons.

On the 9th day, after revising my notes I gave the next practice test from GMAC and I scored 590. Yes, only a 10 point increase, but the reality was when I scored 580, I did not know the answers to many of the questions, but this time, it was my time management that led to a poor score.

After this, I did not take any other complete test. I had one week left and I decided to not postpone my test date. In the one week, the first day, I took 5 questions per session in quiz mode for each topic. Whether I got it correct or wrong, I viewed the explanation videos. I also kept a tab on how my pace was compared to others. I completed the entire set of subjects in 3 days. After that I followed the same strategy, but only for my weaker/slower areas (Statistics, Counting, Probability).

I followed a similar approach for verbal, but did not view all lessons. I just browsed through a few lessons and mainly the strategy lessons but I kept practicing and viewing video answers.

On test day I spent an hour in the morning going through my notes. I did 10 minutes of cardio and spent a relaxing 20 minutes in the steam room.

In the test, I struggled a bit for time, but not majorly. I ended up with a score of 680, which happens to be a 100 points improvement from nearly 3 weeks back.

I definitely recommend Magoosh for your GMAT prep. However, before purchasing and even before starting your trial, please spend a week working out problems from gmatclub for atleast 1 hour everyday. If you are successful with that, then go for the trial for the next 7 days and try to spend atleast 2 hours everyday. Try watching some videos and take up some problems from that section, to see how your learning helps. I am sure you will be happy with your practice. If you are, then buy the premium version. Be sure to make a plan before you start watching videos.

Login to create/modify/remove your own comments