Dear Ilia,

I am sorry that you have not done well on the test. However, the claims in your review are not based on facts. You mentioned that you completed the course, did everything that was offered, and spent over 200 hours on the course. None of these claims is true based on the data that we unearthed. Our course contains three components - learning, in place quizzes accompanying the learning content, and full length assessments in
Scholaranium. Overall, you have completed about 30% of all the content, cumulatively. I have mentioned the same to you in an email but I did not get a response. Hence, I had to paste my response here. Please read below for hard facts:

1. Learning Content: You have done about 50% of all the learning content. You have completed 76% of the Sentence Correction course, 66% of the Critical Reasoning course, and a mere 30% of the Reading Comprehension course.

2. Quizzes accompanying the learning content: Out of the 58 quizzes in the Verbal course, you have merely attempted 18. Out of these 18, you have scored less than 80% in 13. Hence, you have only performed satisfactorily on 8% (eight percent) of the concept quizzes.

3. Full length assessments in Scholaranium: You have completed less than 10% of the full length assessments.

The above is hard data that clearly shows that you were not as diligent as you should have been while studying the course. Also, it shows that you have not spent the 200 hours that you claim on the portal. In fact, based on the data above, I am quite confident that you have not even spent 100 hours since you have just logged in "66 times" since you completed your purchase.


Ilia, do you still think that your feedback is based on “objective facts”? Do you still see that there can be “no gaps” in your preparation despite the data above? Please understand that merely purchasing the course does not lead to improvement, you do need to study the course diligently.

Do you think you have been diligent? I don’t mind a negative review based on facts. However, I don’t see a reason for the same here since you have not completed the course. Every claim that you mentioned does not stand up to the facts.

Students who study our course diligently improve tremendously. We would not be in a position (1000+ reviews) in which we are had that not been the case. Please see a few such success stories below:

http://gmatclub.com/forum/450-670-in-3-months-impact-of-last-3-weeks-219803.html
http://gmatclub.com/forum/debrief-550-to-710-2-years-6-times-163623.html
http://gmatclub.com/forum/keep-the-fire-alive-trek-to-760-from-610-first-mock-208020.html

I love how fiercely you defend your course and I love even more the facts you use to do it.
Well, if you want to get into a CR battle...

I have no idea on how you count the hours I spent studying, but I guess your formula must have some major mistakes. Just because I didn't complete all the content, it doesn't mean that I studied 200-X hours, so I have no idea on how you made these calculations. Obviously these numbers benefit your position though ;)
Also you should have take into account that a student doesn't only "study" when he\she is looking at your specific website. I spent many hours double-checking your course information on forums and OG questions to get another perspective of the content.
Your claims about the nº of hours I studied are simply ridiculous.

-As you can probably see in your data, and you could have mentioned this interesting fact, is that I started by completing your quizzes and then gave up on them. More on that, I completed all of the SC course and I didn't do the quizzes because those are of very poor quality.
Same goes to other eGmat questions, I didn't do them because I don't trust the quality of their writing.
I prefer to spend my time attempting OG questions. Those are 100% indisputably correct.

On what goes to CR and RC I have no idea on how your magic formula gave you those percentages, but rest assured that I have seen all of the content of CR and some 80% of RC. I didn't complete the RC because I wasn't convinced by your philosophy to approach it. Honestly it doesn't say anything that the other prep companies don't day.

Your comment only proves that all these criteria you (and many other prep companies) use to defend your course against critics is like on of those "warranties" on a travel bag. "30 years money-back guarantee!*" (*except: drops, theft, misuse, improper cleaning, change of pressure, etc etc etc). So no way these can be met by anyone and you always get some facts to attack any criticism.

Lastly, about the position of eGmat on the rankings. Let me tell you that all the companies have the same 4.6-4.8 ranking, a fact that I find to be very strange. Everyone loved their prep? Or only those who got high scores speak up? What about all those who don't get their scores? I don't see their opinions here.. No wonder that you get all defensive and use all the data you can put your hands on when someone finally comes here to give a different perspective of your preparation.

Extra: I learned more about SC from the 2h30min free video by Veritas than in 100h of SC by eGmat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8YVymgVTcg check it out, you'll find it interesting.

Extremely unprofessional comment. I am someone who purchased egmat just today and your claims don't make me want to give up at all. In fact, I had a skype call with one of the team members for 2 hrs today answering all of my questions!! Time is valuable and time is money and Manas gave me his time before I even purchased anything!!! That just shows how much they care. Haters are going to hate and from the numbers that egmat provided in their response here, I can say you're just making up stuff. By the way, I've watched a free video on SC verbed and verbing I believe and I got it in a matter of minutes. Super efficient and well done course. Keep the great work egmat!

P.S. You seem like you got some personal issues with egmat, grow up and solve them in email exchange instead of blasting it off here. Very unprofessional and rude of you.

Yeah yeah sure, I will be expecting more random happy customers to show up here to say how happy they are with the course and how my comment is wrong lol. Good thing this is a business school forum and people here know what comment trolls are and how the industry works :)

Just one more piece of evidence that this course is a joke.

Toooooo funny dude!!! I have zero association with egmat. I found out about them recently. Google my name, I co founded an environmental company. How's that related to egmat?! LOL! Such a loser. You're wasting my time. Bye.

Bye!

Dear iliavako,

I have summarized your comments in this review and responded to three different parts. Please read the below:

Part 1
“ilavko’s Claim in original review” After some 2months and 200+ hours of Verbal preparation “with eGmat,” guess what I had? (Q44 V27).
“Rajat’s Response” You could not have spent 200+ hours “on the course” because a) you did not finish the courses and b) you have logged in just “66 times”
“ilavko’s counter” I studied 200 hours because spent many hours double-checking your course information on forums and OG questions to get another perspective of the content.
“Rajat’s final counter”So essentially you may have spent 200 hours studying from “all resources” but you definitely did not spend 200 hours “on the course” which is consistent with my claim based on your attempt data in the course.

Here is what’s more surprising to me:
1. You claim to have started with a V29, yet you found the concept quizzes difficult in SC. In my 5 years of running this business, I have not seen a single student make that statement about the concept quizzes. Note, we have served 15,800+ students.
2. You found the questions objectionable, yet you never wrote to me about the same. I have no record of receiving an email from you.
3. You did not choose to get a refund on the course. We have a 7 days no questions asked refund policy. Note, the data shows that you did not perform well in many of your concept quizzes during the first 7 days of your subscription. I wonder why you did not ask for a refund at that time.

“Part 2”
“ilavko’s Question”How do you calculate the number of hours spent?
“Rajat’s Response”
Number of hours = (Number of concept files) X (Time per concept file) + (Number of quizzes) X (Time per quiz.)

The formula above is how anyone would do the math. It’s not designed to be “favorable to e-GMAT”. Note, this method is outlined in detail in the study plan that is provided to you with your purchase receipt so that you can plan your studies.

“Part 3”
“ilavko’s Claim” Extra: I learned more about SC from the 2h30min free video by Veritas than in 100h of SC by eGmat.
“Rajat’s Response” How can you spend 100 hours on SC course when the course itself is no more than 40 hours (that too for a V17 student) and you did not even finish the course. Also, the nature of your comment demonstrates your seriousness while doing the course.

“Part 4”
“ilavko’s Statement”
I love how fiercely you defend your course and I love even more the facts you use to do it.
Well, if you want to get into a CR battle...
“Rajat’s Response” Yes, that’s what Critical reasoning is for – arriving at a conclusion based on facts. A good argument is one in which the conclusion is based on facts + sound logic. Every review/reviewer should follow this because a logical review benefits everyone.

We spend upwards of 1500 hours every month enhancing our courses. Over the years, the success of our students has demonstrated the value that our course provides, and I am very proud of the product that I and my team have built. Can you critique it? Absolutely!! But please do it based on factual data and not on unsubstantiated claims. That’s all I ask.

The fact that you keep playing the blame-the-student card, insist on telling me your conditions of refund and some formulas that I am suppose to assume to be universally correct really shows how sketchy your company is!

Omg can you just admit that your course can be considered to be useless? You can't can you?

You are repeating the same arguments again and again. About some money back guarantee that nobody can ever use.. How am I supposed to know if your course is of any use in 7 days? Study 24h with no sleep and do my official GMAT to see how I perform or something?

I never said I find the quizzes difficult or whatever you mean by that anyways. I said I found them to be of low quality, I didn't want to spend time solving them and I switched to OG questions.

Why am I supposed to mail you if I find your questions to be of bad quality? Why should I bother? I just move on and start solving other questions, this is what people do, they don't like a product they just find another one, no one will send you mails to discuss the writing of questions...

Perhaps your magic formula should take into account that people pause the videos, watch them again and do external research while studying, so obviously the study time will extend far beyond what your formula tells. Can you tell for how long I was logged in during my 66 logins btw? No? Inconvenient data for you? How does that fit into your magic formula?

Do you assume that people watch your 40h SC course in one go? No replays? No external search?

As I said and I say it again, your conditions are like one of those life-time warranties with conditions that can't be met by anyone in the real world. And I say again that this is a B-school forum and the users here are aware of these practices and I find it very important to give my opinion on what your course actually did to my preparation (wasted a lot of precious time)

Honestly I am sick and tiered of spending time answering your claims based on blaming me for not sticking to your formulas and terms. My friend, this is the real world, not an Excel spreadsheet, things don't always work as you plan on paper. Your course failed miserably and all you can tell me are these canned arguments about not following your plan 100%.

Look, give up and move on. Make a better course and hire some quality content writers. You have typos in the course all over the place for christ's sake..

"Your comment" The fact that you keep playing the blame-the-student card, insist on telling me your conditions of refund and some formulas that I am suppose to assume to be universally correct really shows how sketchy your company is!.

Rajat's Response: I am not playing blame the student card!! Just simply stating that the course cannot help you improve if you do less than 40 percent of the course.

"Quality of Questions"
Below is a guy who scored 780 including a V50. Below is a student who score a V50 - a bit higher than you did and unlike you he found the quality of questions to be quite good.

http://gmatclub.com/forum/lessons-i-learnt-while-on-my-journey-to-a-780-q49-v50-220528.html

Note, this guy was not an e-GMAT student. He just got an offer to try our product out because he filled out a survey conducted by GMAT Club. Yet he benefited from the questions enough that he felt the need to mention the same.

BTW - the conditions of refund are simple. If you don't like the course, just let us know within the first 7 days and we will refund your purchase. You logged in about 15 times during the first 7 days which is enough to know whether you like the course or not.

What is "Blame the student"?

I would have agreed to your "Blame the student" comment had you completed 80%+ of the course "properly" (yes properly) and then not improved. You cannot just attempt 40% of the course loosely and then play blame the course card. That's not fair.