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I signed up for Magoosh since the price was right (relative to some books, which can end up being quite pricey). I ended up using it almost exclusively for the Quant section since I studied English in undergrad.
The quant practice is great, and I believe it helped me a lot more than the books for a couple reasons. First, you can set the questions to either adapt to your progress or to stay constant. I mostly stuck on either Hard or Very Hard since I didn't want to risk dropping down to some Medium questions, but others may find that adaptive practice is useful for them. Also, you can either review questions after each answer or do the questions in bunches (sorted by time, or by number of problems you want to do). Pretty useful.
I think the Quant questions have real quality. They were very similar to the ones I got on the actual GMAT in regards to how they were worded. That's good, compared to say the Manhattan GMAT, which has great practice tests but the quant wording is a bit over the top (makes you try harder, I guess, but not as close to the real thing as, for example, Magoosh).
There are also video explanations for each problem (which is nice, but after the first few dozen problems I would just glance over the written solutions and 'get' it). And then each problem links to a "related lesson" video, which is mostly how I went through the lesson concepts.
I didn't watch too many Verbal videos or use it much for practice. I will say, though, that their general strategy videos for each question type are useful (for example, how to approach sentence correction really helped).
For $99, the Magoosh website is by far the best value out there. The instructors are very clear, the videos are great, and the website is designed very nicely. My only real issue with Magoosh is that sometimes it felt a bit unprofessional due to spelling and/or punctuation errors. This was rare, but very obvious when I found them. Overall though, I found the service to be very helpful for my needs in studying. Some people may prefer to spend more money on a classroom program and that would make sense to me, but as far as online-only classes go, Magoosh is king. Thanks Magoosh!
I took the GMAT for the first time two months ago, after studying for 2 months with local teachers and scored 640 (Q41, V38). I knew I needed to focus in improving my Quantitative section and started researching for online tools, since I thought I was lacking exam-like practice.
I used Magoosh mainly for its Quantitative section (did some Integrated Reasoning practice and checked the AWA videos as well).
I think one of its most important strengths is its Quantitative prractice section. The questions are just like what you will face during the test. This helped me become disciplined in the use of time (this was a problem during my first GMAT attempt).
The videos are excellent and really helped me understand the errors I had made and to become familiar with concepts. I think another advantage of the course is that the lessons focus in what is tested.
After using Magoosh for 1 month I took the exam again and scored 740 (Q48, V44). I think these were the best $100 I have spent.
Joined: Dec 11, 2012
Posts: 47
Kudos: 61
Self-reported Score:
640 Q49 V24
720 Q49 V40
REVIEWER IDENTITY VERIFIED by score report [?]
Great set of video explanations and lessons for each topic both in verbal and quant. The explanations are clear and to the point. I was able to do timed sets with adaptive difficulty similar to the real GMAT. For advance test takers, they have a number of high level questions, which will challenge your understanding. Each question is complemented with its explanations and related subject video to bridge the gap in the knowledge. Total they have over 600 questions of varying difficulty complemented with video and written explanations. Their support team is very helpful and the instructors reply to your query within 24 hours only.
Really gained a lot from it and highly recommend Magoosh.
This course was pretty good for quants. I felt they had some really good tips and tricks that I definitely did not know before the course. However, the verbal was really nothing like the GMAT itself, so if I were you, I would only focus on the quants because the verbal is weak. I did not score too well on the verbal, it could have been that I was just not prepared enough, but I feel like if the verbal was closer to what the real gmat was then I would have been more prepared. You get alot of good tips with it, but it is more about how much you absorb and how efficient you are with your preparation time.
I was very unsure of what online course to sign up with for my first stab at the GMAT. Working full time and with less than 4 weeks to go, I signed up with Magoosh after trying a few of the free lessons. I was very pleasantly surprised at how organized each and every lesson was. The User Interface on the site was excellent and there were plenty of practice problems with thorough explanations that helped me learn and fix my mistakes my difficulty level of the question.
Their iphone app was helpful for me to listen to while i was commuting to work - obviously this worked better for verbal study than for the quant study where you need to focus on the content on screen.
Using just Magoosh to learn the concepts from scratch, practicing Magoosh problems and the OG13, and finally using some Manhattan GMAT practice tests, I scored a 680 on my first official GMAT. I took the test again later with some tweaks in my study methodology and hit my 700. I'll be starting at Kellogg in the fall.
Thanks Magoosh for creating a great system to beat the gmat!
I had given GMAT 4 times, scoring 650, and my preparation was at a phase in which I have exhausted pretty much all the official & other reliable materials available in the market. I have tried a couple of video websites such as e-gmat, gmatpill and grockit which were of no use either. Then, I came across Magoosh and decided to try it for 7 days since I had nothing to lose in this deal (Magoosh offers 7 day no questions return policy).
Magoosh is pretty straight forward and deeply honest test prep company. It allows a student to practice all of its content (400 Verbal and almost 450+ Quant questions) in the test mode (75 minutes for each section with 37 and 41 questions in the jumbled manner). That was the best part of this content. I used to do 2 Full length tests from Magoosh in a row and that strengthened my mental muscles for this test. I no longer felt fatigue during the Verbal section and I knew if I can do 2 in a row at home, I can easily do 1 on the test day.
Magoosh's video explanation's are short and specific, which is good for someone studying for a while and does not waste time in rambling unimportant things, unlike most of the other test prep companies. I thank Magoosh for offering their content at such an affordable price and a 7-day money back guarantee if one doesn't like their product. Though, its highly unlikely that you will need to ask for this guarantee but it just shows that these guys don't want to run away with your money. They are genuinely interested in helping you for the GMAT.
Try Magoosh and you will fall in love with the voice of gentleman who takes SC and CR video explanations. As a teacher, he has the best voice I have ever heard of.
Magoosh is probably one of the cheapest GMAT couses around. I signed for a premium account for less than a hundred bucks. Over-all the course was a great deal for such an amazingly low price . The customer support is superb as well. Queries are answered within a relatively short time, usually within a few hours.
Quant:
I would say that the biggest strength of the Magoosh course would be the Quantitative videos. The videos were very informative and provides a solid background of the topics frequently tested on the GMAT. The concepts are explained in a relatively clear and concise manner. I made notes from the videos, and those notes guided me all throughout my preparations. As for question types, I would say that nothing beats the OG, although the questions from Magoosh are good at reinforcing the concepts as well.
Verbal:
The Verbal part offers good practice. The content was acceptable and they offer some good practice questions to work with. I supplemented the verbal course with other references, especially for Sentence Correction.
I would definitely suggest Magoosh for those who are a bit budget conscious but still looking for a good course to prepare for the GMAT. When use in combination with other materials especially the OG, Magoosh is definitely worth a try.
I initially signed up for Magoosh for the 50 point guarantee to break the 700s. I was using Manhattan GMAT prior to that, but needed help with my verbal.
I found the sentence correction videos to be very helpful and pretty straightforward. All the videos are fairly short (3-12 minutes) and the instructors have a nice approach to things. The critical reasoning was good, but I would recommend complementing your studies with PowerScore (I did not use PowerScore but I've heard great things about it). The only drawback that I noticed was the Reading Comprehension. The passages in the problem set were wayyy too long and would never show up on the GMAT. The Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency questions and videos I thought were both great and they had a lot of difficult problems. I really liked the adaptiveness of the problem sets too. The biggest drawback would be that they don't have practice exams!
Overall, still a good course and I would recommend it for people who are taking the GMAT for a second (or third) time but also use other materials as this alone may not be enough.
Joined: May 28, 2012
Posts: 130
Kudos: 48
Self-reported Score:
710 Q43 V45
700 Q42 V42
760 Q48 V48
Admittedly, I went into the GMAT prep process a little cocky. As a former SAT/ACT tutor who coasted to great scores on pre-college tests, I didn't feel I needed comprehensive prep, especially considering that I am strong in verbal (which held true on the real test). So I went with Magoosh due to the price and my enjoyment of the videos in the demo.
Turns out I did need comprehensive math prep, and I honestly didn’t get it from Magoosh. (Honest disclosure: I bought the premium program, but I mainly used the math so this review reflects that usage.)
There are some excellent aspects of the program. The practice questions are good and the answer screen that reviews each is phenomenal. There is a video breakdown, text breakdown and links to instructional videos relevant to that problem. It also is easy to create custom practice sections and target broad question categories.
My only issue with the practice questions is that I ran out of difficult questions fairly quickly, so as the test approached I had to look elsewhere (I used GMAT Club questions which came free with this).
The instructional videos, however, were a bit lacking. The tab to view them is called “lessons” but really it’s just a long list of videos loosely organized by overarching principles. There was really no progression to follow through the course, and my biggest gripe was that after you watched a video, there was no way to ensure you could try practice questions testing that topic. You really need to be the kind of learner who can watch videos at length and benefit.
Further the functionality of skipping forward through videos is poor. I would frequently click multiple places on the progress bar to land at exactly the same spot. They do load quickly though.
All things considered if you need a solid bank of practice questions with great reviews and a bit of direction of what to study, this is a good buy. If you need a comprehensive prep course or a lot of work in one subject, I would spend more elsewhere. I'm going to after the fact. It's a great value at $200 but you get what you pay for.