15 Years out of School - 38 to 46 Quant

I'm a mid-career professional looking to transition to business school. I was very worried about the GMAT since I've been out of school for so long; even though my job (and my college major) were quantitative, my diagnostic score was very low, and I simply couldn't remember the basics. I almost didn't pursue it after reading so many awful stories of people who studied 4+ hours daily on weeknights and 6+ hours on weekends for months. I didn't think a schedule like that would work for me with my career and it seemed like that was the only way to truly prep and get a score over 700.

Initially, I tried the true self-study route and went with Magoosh, which was great, but far too unstructured for me - I found out quickly that I don't work well without analytical feedback and tracking, so I switched over to TTP and set myself up on the Expert track. As anyone who has experienced it can tell you, there is a TON of material, but I felt I needed the entire course to just refresh my skills. It took me about 9 months to complete 90% of the material (I skipped around through the last chapter / practice test phase as time ran out, but was diligent about completing the content in general). However, I only spent maybe an hour on most weekdays working on it, and 2-3 on each weekend day. You could probably get through it a LOT faster if you're wiling to devote more time each week (or if you go on the Advanced track instead, which I didn't try).

The key to TTP that worked for me is that the sheer volume of practice questions forces you to get comfortable with the problem types and material. By no means would I say I ever got confident on Data Sufficiency, for example, but I had enough practice narrowing down and reasoning through answers that I could get just enough of the hard ones right to stay on track. On all of the practice tests and on test day itself, I still felt like the questions were all so challenging - but I clearly had absorbed the strategies and material enough to succeed. I was shocked and delighted to see scores of 700 and 720 on the practice tests, and a 720 on the actual exam.

The material is clear and there are helpful descriptions and video explanations of every single question. Additionally, the course really does focus on the somewhat strange applications of the material that actually show up on the GMAT. Even though I felt like the real test was VERY hard, I did recognize the types of questions and was able to identify and recall the course material; I appreciated the tailored nature of the course in that way. The analytics section is amazing, and the single most valuable thing I did was go back through chapters at the end and sort by the type of questions I got wrong the most - highly recommended for anyone to target your learning. All the staff was helpful and quick to respond if I ever had a question, and importantly, they do not spam you with thousands of emails after you sign up.

I truly credit the course for getting me above the 700 score goal I'd set for myself, and allowing me to believe my MBA goals could actually become a reality. Highly recommend!