GMAT is the most important standardized test for business school aspirants. If you are looking to join one of the top business schools in the US, you will have to put in the time and effort to score 700+ on your GMAT. Fortunately, there are so many great resources out there for test-takers today that an excellent score is not out of the realm of possibility. One such resource is Magoosh GMAT online prep.
Magoosh is one of the biggest names in the test prep industry. They are especially popular for their GRE and GMAT online courses. Today, I will be going over their GMAT Prep online course to see if it is worth it.
In this Article
Magoosh GMAT at a Glance
Magoosh GMAT prep is a personalized study solution that delivers its course through a neat and intuitive UI. The course offers a comprehensive review of all the topics tested on GMAT. They offer a completely customizable learning experience where you have the freedom to skip around the video lessons as you deem fit. There are more than 340 video lessons that cover the entirety of GMAT topics.
The video lessons are delivered through PowerPoint-style presentations. Unlike Kaplan or Economist, you don’t see the instructor in the video lessons; instead, you can only hear the voiceover. This may seem a little mundane to some people, but it is how Magoosh delivers their course.
If you purchase their Premium plan, which is the most popular one, you get access to all the sections of GMAT – Math, Verbal, IR, and AWA. You will also find 1,300 practice questions throughout the course and two full-length GMAT practice tests.
Moreover, the Premium plan also includes 2 diagnostic tests and a plethora of additional features such as:
- One year of access
- 50+ total score guarantee
- Ask an expert
- Score predictor
- Pause your plan
- NEW Online whiteboard
One of the most impressive of these features is the 50+ score guarantee. Magoosh is so confident in their course that if you don’t improve your previous GMAT score by 50+, they will refund you all the money. No questions asked.
There are 2 more plans besides Premium – “Self-study” and “Tutoring + Premium”. The former is a math-only course and has fewer features, whereas the latter is packed with all the features of “Premium” plus 6 hours of online tutoring.
PROS:
User Friendly UI
An online course cannot be that effective if it is not delivered in a user-friendly way. You do not want a mismanaged and cluttered UI when you are looking for specific lessons or tools. Fortunately, Magoosh offers a clean and intuitive experience in which everything is labeled appropriately.
You will find separate tabs for each of the features offered by the course. The dashboard is the first screen you will see when you log in. It contains a quick overview of your progress in the form of pie charts.
When you want to go to the video lessons, you can do so easily by clicking the relevant tab at the top. The UI is incredibly responsive and doesn’t require a lot of bandwidth to run smoothly.
Detailed Video Lessons
Magoosh offers some 340 video lessons in its GMAT prep course. The videos are detailed and explore every nook and cranny of GMAT topics. You will find that the video lessons are ordered according to their respective subjects such as Geometry, Fractions, Functions, etc.
The instructor breaks down the particular topic by giving examples, diagrams, and tables where necessary.
Moreover, the instructor will go over a few practice questions at the end of each topic to demonstrate how it all comes together. I think that beginners would have no issues when it comes to learning quant topics from scratch. The good thing about the video lessons is that they start at the very basics and gradually build towards the more difficult topics. This ensures that you can easily follow the lessons without feeling overwhelmed, no matter what skill level you possess.
The slight issue I have with the video lessons comes down to their delivery and not the content. However, I will discuss this later in the article.
Authentic Practice Questions
Magoosh offers more than 1300 practice questions in their GMAT course. Practice questions are crucial for any prep resource, be it a book or an online course. Ideally, you would want the practice questions to replicate the actual GMAT questions. If you spend your prep time practicing low-quality practice questions, then the test day is going to be a surprise for you. The idea is to familiarize yourself with the type of questions you will encounter on a real GMAT test.
Thankfully, Magoosh’s practice questions are some of the highest quality I have ever seen. Sure they are not identical to official GMAT questions, but they come very close. Moreover, you don’t necessarily have to take the video lessons to get to the practice questions. You can attack them directly if you wish to. One of my favorite features is “Custom Practice.” If you feel like you need to concentrate on a specific question type or difficulty, you can select the relevant parameters for your custom practice session.
Detailed Video Answer Explanations
I have yet to see this feature in any other GMAT course. Magoosh has over 1300 different videos for each of the practice questions. These videos go into detail by dissecting the problems and explaining everything you would need to know.
These videos are also delivered in the same way as the video lessons. An instructor will breakdown a specific question using slides and explain the answer step-by-step. Moreover, you can also flag a particular question if you want to get back to it later. Each answer explanation is supplemented by cool notes that pop up around the video.
Money-back Guarantee
A company must have the utmost confidence in their product if they are willing to offer you a 100 percent refund. That is exactly what Magoosh offers. If you fail to improve at least 50 points on your GMAT score than your previous score, then Magoosh will refund you all the money you spent on a plan. However, there are some conditions to this offering that you can read about here. Overall though, I’d say that this indeed restores your confidence in their course. However, do keep in mind that this offering does not apply to the “self-study” plan.
CONS:
Only two full-length Practice Tests
If you look around in the test prep market, you will find that the most prominent companies offer at least five full-length practice tests. Kaplan, Manhattan, The Economist, for example, offer a minimum of 5 practice tests. Magoosh, however, falls short here with only two practice tests. This isn’t very reassuring considering how necessary full-length tests are. Students who are serious about their GMAT prep would have to purchase additional tests, which will cost them extra. Hence, I have to count this as a con.
Monotonous Lesson Delivery
Let’s be very clear here. I am not saying anything negative about the content of the video lessons. I think that the video lessons are very detailed and do an excellent job explaining the different problems. However, I do have a problem with the sluggish PowerPoint style of going through individual slides. I recently did a Manhattan Interact review, and I was blown away by the video lessons’ quality. Unlike, Magoosh, Manhattan’s video lessons are highly interactive and offer HD quality video. A cutout of an instructor takes you through the various steps, and you get to interact with him by selecting answer choices. Magoosh doesn’t even come close to this, and their video lessons have an old-school feeling to them that doesn’t excite me.