GMAT is the go-to standardized test for business school aspirants. Each year thousands of prospective business school students take the test and study in their school of choice. As with any other test, it is paramount that you have a solid grasp of all the concepts tested on the exam. You can do this by studying from a prep book as most people do, or you can go on a step ahead and enroll in an online course.

Online courses offer greater personalization and tend to be the better choice for those struggling with their prep. You can learn at your own pace and use many of the provided tools to strengthen critical areas lacking in your preparation. However, not all online courses are made alike, and it is essential to choose one that will offer you the best help without cutting shortcuts.

Today, I will go over Target Test Prep. Target is a test prep company that specializes in GMAT prep. Their GMAT online course is regarded as one of the best in the industry. Let’s see what the course has to offer and some of the things it lacks.

Target TestPrep at a glance

Target offers a customizable GMAT prep experience that is both comprehensive and easy to digest. They have broken down the whole course into 20 chapters that include some 500 lessons. The course contents are very palatable, and you won’t feel overwhelmed thanks to the neat structure. You have the freedom to skip about the different lessons. If you think that you lack geometry understanding, you can skip to the course’s geometry portion at will.

Since the course is meant to be a comprehensive solution to GMAT prep, you will find 800 instructor-led video lessons covering the entirety of GMAT topics. The video lessons are high quality and specific to a single topic or sub-topic. You don’t have to go through all 800 video lessons, but you will not be left wanting for more depending on your requirements.

There are more than 3000 realistic practice questions strewn about the entire course. The questions are modeled after real GMAT questions, which in my opinion, is the most crucial aspect of a test prep course. You don’t want to practice low-quality practice questions to find out that they are nothing like the real thing.

PROS

Exceptional Quant Prep

Target test prep started as a quant-only GMAT test prep course. They recently added a verbal section to their course, and so their expertise resides in the math section of the test. All of the instructors on Target’s team have either a math or science background, which shows when you go through the lessons.

The quant lessons are incredibly detailed and well put together. No matter if you are a complete novice or an intermediate, the video lessons offer everything you need to ace the test. If you want to start from scratch with the basic stuff, then you can do just that. However, this course’s beauty is that you are not bound by an immutable structure where you can only watch the videos in succession. Instead, you can hop around as you wish and concentrate on the lessons that you deem essential.

An instructor presents all lessons with the use of diagrams and charts where necessary. There are a total of 800 video lessons that cover every aspect of the quant portion.

2500 High-Quality GMAT Practice Questions

The most significant aspect of any test prep course or book is how good are the practice questions. This one quality alone can either make or break a course. Ideally, you would want the practice questions to be identical to real GMAT questions. However, that is only possible if you buy GMAC’s official GMAT guides. The second best thing is if the practice questions closely resemble the real thing, precisely the case.

The 2500 quant practice questions are carefully crafted to mimic real GMAT questions. This ensures that you don’t get any surprises on test day. Many students who use lesser-known and cheaper prep material complain that the problems they studied were nothing like what they experienced on test day.

This can be incredibly demoralizing and a perfect recipe for a low score. Fortunately, you can rest easy knowing that you will receive the best quality questions with Target.

Highly Affordable Compared to Competition

Being in the test-prep field myself, I have reviewed multiple test prep courses over the years. One thing that is often hard to find is a high-quality course that does not break the bank. Take some of the industry top dogs like Kaplan, Manhattan, and The Economist. Their GMAT courses can run you anywhere from 600 to 1000 dollars. How many students can realistically pay this sort of money? Especially the students from developing countries.

Hence, it is undoubtedly a pro in my book that Target’s GMAT course is significantly cheaper than others on the market. You can pay on a month to month basis for only $99 per month. Even the 6-month plan billed upfront costs 400 dollars, which is again significantly cheaper than many on the market.

Detailed Progress Analytics

One of Target’s test prep’s key features is that it tracks your progress and shows you much analytics related to your prep. The software team has put a lot of time into this. As you move through the course and solve practice questions, the software will keep track of all your mistakes. Your strengths and weaknesses will be displayed to you under the review section. Moreover, it will also keep track of the most common errors you make and log them for review later.

CONS

Weak Verbal Section

Even though Target added a verbal section to their GMAT prep recently, it is still far from a comprehensive verbal course. In my opinion, their reason to include verbal prep in their course has to do more with marketing necessity than actually offering verbal prep. After all, it does seem nice from a marketing standpoint to claim that a prep test is all-encompassing.

The truth of the matter is that this is still mostly a quant-oriented course. However, I am not saying that you won’t learn about the verbal section, but the lessons are not as detailed, and most of all, there are only 500 practice questions. Five hundred practice questions are not nearly enough if you are serious about acing your GMAT. For this reason, you may need to look elsewhere if you want an all-encompassing prep course. One that treats both sections of the test equally.

Lack of full-length Practice Tests

Unlike many other test prep companies, Target does not offer any, not even one, full-length GMAT practice test. This is very odd considering how important it is for students to be familiar with an actual test’s format and contents. Test-takers need to be comfortable with the test duration and the number of questions before the big day. Moreover, no practice goes to waste when it comes to standardized tests, and full-length practice tests can provide additional practice. Considering this, I count this as a con since students will have to buy extra material for full-length tests.