Payal Tandon Reviews

I opted for e-GMAT after being stuck at 30-31 levels in V section on my mocks. I remember the time when I had completed the MGMAT SC guide from cover to cover twice and was still struggling with SC. The problem was it all made sense while reading the book and doing the exercises at the end of the chapter, however I just couldn’t apply the rules while doing the questions under the exam conditions.

I attended a couple of free sessions and found the methodology interesting. After going through some of the reviews & debriefs on the GMATClub, I decided to take a chance with e-GMAT and that turned out to be a real wise investment.

The strength of e-GMAT lies in their methodology. Their audio-visual method of teaching makes learning so much easier and the application and concept files make sure that by the time you are done with all the exercises, you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. Another advantage is that the course starts with basic concepts and gradually builds up the complexity levels. The quizzes are created accordingly and thus help in learning the application of multiple concepts simultaneously.

I really benefited from their CR and SC course. RC was never a problem for me so I never really concentrated on that part. Finally it was the workshops that really did the trick for me. That was the first time I was attempting the questions under timed conditions with a few of the fellow applicants and that created additional stress. Somehow that stress was missing from the mocks even though I had simulated the exam conditions. The experience of attending the workshops did help me in the final test.

I would recommend e-GMAT to anyone who is looking to improve his/her score in Verbal and especially the non-natives.

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I would like to share my experience so far with the study curriculum of e-GMAT. I believe my review will be most helpful for non- natives. I am from India a B. Tech and MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai (MBA aspirants from India would know). I have around 4.5 years of post graduate work experience and generally work 60-70 hours a week. I am a FRM holder and CFA Level 3 candidate and have academically done well throughout. I am a credit analyst and frequently required to write reports and do number crunching. Thus, I was a bit overconfident and never thought taming GMAT would be difficult. GMAT humbled me, showed me I was wrong.
1st Attempt (January 7, 2013) (570, Q47, V22): Disaster - I was applying for Autumn 2013 intake for two specific courses, however, as the average work experience of the class was around 7 years I was asked to apply after a minimum of 5 years work experience plus for Autumn 2014 intake. Though I knew this was not my final attempt, since I had already registered for the exam I tried to give it a shot. The resource material used was Manhattan entire strategy guides, and OG. Quant PS was quite easy for FDP, Geometry, word problems and algebra. DS was a bit tricky for number properties.
Sentence correction: Too different from how we are taught English in our schools. We can frame our own sentences which we know are correct and carry with flow. However, when subjected to sentences with different structure finding the correct answer was tricky. I read the Manhattan SC book twice and tried to memorize all the idioms. Though I understood the rules, their application was far far away. Whenever subjected to a complex sentence I would read the entire sentence and was unable to find anything wrong with it. I would read the answer choices, look for splits, madly try to look for parallelism and many other mistakes. Accuracy suffered and timing was poor.
Critical Reasoning: I was okay with the CR from the beginning. The guides helped identifying the types of problems etc. Timing was decent except the only few where I was stuck between 2 choices and had to re-read the question and the choices.
Reading Comprehension: Tough! Solving the problems in time was impossible. I took around 15 mins to solve 4 questions. The guide said make notes, read the 1st para/sentence twice. I followed everything but, still, accuracy was poor and time consumed was highest.
Interactive reasoning: The guide had just a glimpse of what the problems will be like. Not too many problems to solve. I did not know even just before taking the exam that for each individual question you have to answer the sub questions correctly or else you will not be awarded a point for that question.
Exam experience: I did not touch quants or solve any problems for at least 1 to 1.5 months before the exam. I only wanted to focus on verbal and my timing. The argument essay was okay. IR managing time was tricky. Quants though wasted time on few DS questions but still solved all the questions with 3 mins to spare. Took my break. Verbal I had heard the first 10-15 questions are very important, they will decide your overall score. I spent the initial 45- 50 mins with the first 20 questions and from there the disaster was waiting to happen. I submitted the answers to the last few questions even without seeing them.
I was shattered, even with this low level preparation I had expected a score of 640 plus so that I could improve to a 700 plus score in my final attempt. Then at the end of FY13 I started looking for study options. I had long working hours, so classroom programs were not for me. While exploring across GMAT Club I came across the e-GMAT program. I attended one of the free session on SC and strategy and I liked the course at once. I registered for the Verbal live prep program.
Here is the difference that e-GMAT brought to my study program.
Sentence Correction: It is a remarkably well-designed course. I moved finding splits and what sounded correct to finding the errors and looking for meaning. My problem-solving approach has changed in all aspects, now breaking the sentences into clauses and the subsequently looking for errors such as subject verb disagreement, verb, pronouns, structure, modifiers and idioms errors. The structure was set and timing has improved with practice. The applications files and online classes were eye openers, how the concepts were applied to each and every question. I realized at times the split was irrelevant and the sentence had other errors that made it incorrect. While in my prior approach, I used to select the answer choices based on the split. The concept files are amazing and helped in my daily work as well.
Critical Reasoning: The course has been great in improving my accuracy. It gave me tools which can be applied with precision. The new concepts were ABC test for finding the conclusion in case of confusion. I learned a better application of negation test, variance analysis which helped me in assumptions and evaluate type questions. And pre-thinking has become a part of solving the problem. Though I just have one pre- thought answer to question before seeing the options, the process made choosing the final answer easier.
Reading Comprehension: I have tried to internalize the RC passages using the RC strategies. Humanities passages don’t haunt me anymore. Still I need to improve on my timing and accuracy.
Interactive Reasoning: I haven’t seen so much material on IR on any forum. All type of probable questions from graphs, 2 part quants, table, verbal, MSR etc. Though the question on standalone basis are not tough but been familiar with the structure has its own rewards.
Presently, I am almost a month out from taking the GMAT exam, still I believe that e-GMAT course has already made a big difference in my performance in my verbal scores. On my Manhattan mock tests I am able to complete the verbal and IR portion on time. Accuracy has improved and my raw score is hovering around 34- 35. I am trying to improve the same in the range of 37- 40 in my final month.
Wish me luck for my GMAT exam next month. The best part of the course is that it teaches you a new way to look at the problems and helps you to internalize the process and apply it across all questions. I hope my review will be helpful to non natives.

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After getting a 660 (Q50, V29) in Nov 2011 (It was all self-preparation, solving only the OG and taking the practice tests from MGMAT. I also bought the MGMAT SC book), I decided to make it 700+ and apply for Fall 2014 (Due to pressure in my job and some other issues, I had to skip my plan to apply for Fall 2012 and Fall 2013)
In Oct 2012, when I resumed my GMAT preparation, I started searching for a comprehensive course for Verbal, which could boost my score. I came across e-GMAT, and after going through the trial videos, I got impressed and decided to enroll for Verbal Online.
I started the course, and then realized that I should have enrolled a long time back. It gave me a very solid framework, based on which I can look for patterns in the GMAT verbal questions. All its rules and the method of teaching impressed me a lot. Especially the RC pack helped me the maximum.
Then I thought to upgrade my account to Verbal Live-Prep. To me the SC and RC sessions helped a lot. All credit goes to Shraddha! She is an excellent teacher. Somehow the CR sessions were not that impressive to me. I know Shraddha could have done a better job if she could have taken those as well.

Pros :
1. Great course for non-natives. It makes all the concepts needed for GMAT crystal clear. Worth Buying.
2. The audio- visuals are more effective than buying books such as MGMAT SC


Cons :

1. Offline support of the team is very weak. If you send an email to them for help, there is no guarantee that someone will respond. After you change the subject of emails, I used to get reply that my email had reached their junk folder, and hence I had to send reminders for reply
2. All the faculties (except Shraddha and Payal) are not that friendly,predictable and to some extent, may be professional. I remember that initially one of the faculties was very friendly and was really helping me a lot related to my doubts. But one fine day he JUST STOPPED responding to my emails (Please note that in those emails I was just asking for help. No fight. No abuse.) I sent repeated reminders but it seemed as if he simply started ignoring my emails. Am still to figure out what exactly went wrong. After all, I paid for the service. Also, this behavior looked a bit unprofessional and unpredictable to me.
3. I ended up getting a 690 (Q49, V34). I still believe that as per my preparation with e-GMAT, I could have easily cracked 720+. What I think pulled my scores down was my test taking strategies. e-GMAT still don’t have its own practice tests. May be they should add that. Grockit might not be that helpful to people.


But in conclusion, despite whatever experience I had, I would still recommend the non-natives to buy at least the Verbal Online course. It simply is too good to make up your foundation for GMAT verbal.

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I Started the preparations in mid May 2013 and completed OG in 2 weeks. I was mighty impressed with CR as the questions were not only good but also interesting, with every question giving a beautiful insight on its own. Quant was easy and verbal was selectively good (around 80% of the time). I bought an e-GMAT verbal live prep course in the last week of May.

While I was scanning for more information about GMAT on GMATClub forums in the months of April, I came across e-GMAT. I subscribed to one of their posts and this led me to accept the invitation for one of their free sessions. Since I couldn’t join the session I was pleasantly surprised to get a recording of their session the very next day. I went through the recording at my own ease and thought of joining e-GMAT. The reason why I ultimately chose e-GMAT over other courses was their relatively lower price and their innovative promotion as being the best course for non-natives.

The content is good and neatly organized. They are truly the messiahs for SC. The sessions with Shradha and Payal are just too good. And the best part - shoot a doubt and you get responded in less than 24 hours. The ‘Meaning’ approach in SC is as good as it can get. The approach helps you save a lot of precious time and energy.

The CR and RC sections are equally good but just that they are more helpful to improve accuracy than time. However, the exam demands saving precious time and that is something that the candidate needs to improve on his/her own. Practice can be a better tool here.

The ready summary with pdf for each chapter is a great tool to revise quickly. I used to read those pdfs when I was at work and thus kept in touch with the SC concepts which I was likely to forget otherwise. I took my GMAT and scored a sweet 720 (Q51V36).

An added advantage with e-GMAT course is that you get 800score and Grockit access free of cost. 800score tests are easy but they expect higher accuracy of you. The quant is of the same level as GMAT but Verbal is easy. The Grockit tests are nearest to the real GMAT. Initially, I hated them but by the end of my preperation I had changed my opinion of them. The Quant is a notch higher than the real thing and the verbal is a notch lower but still they are as close as you can get. Though their scoring is wrong and even a few of their questions are marked wrongly - which can be frustrating at times, they are a good practice because they give you the same feel of urgency that the GMAT delivers. Their user interface is very poor and they should change it immediately. The way the test answers are displayed without any time analysis doesn’t help a candidate’s cause.

Overall, I have recommended e-GMAT to a lot of my friends who are preparing for GMAT. The stepping stone is the free strategy session, after that its e-GMAT all the way.

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Hi friends, I took GMAT 3 times earlier but could not cross 600 and the verbal score was stable on 29. I have already used most of the resources recommended on these forums but unfortunately could not get concept understanding.

Few months before I have seen e-gmat demos and signed for verbal live prep. I found the this course is unique and very helpful for non natives.

1. It covers all fundamental concept with their practical uses
2.The focus is given on building fundamentals
3. Especially made for non natives understanding inherent weakness they have while dealing with Verbal.

SC course- Must go through. Most comprehensive course. It will change your thought pocess drammeticaly and SC will become a cakewalk.

RC- Very practical strategies. A must buy if you are not good at RC

CR- Much comprehensive. Better than the resources available at market. Covers all fundamentals and approach to solve problems is explained methodically.

I storngly recommend all these courses to people who are stuck up due to less verbal course. I would have done much much better if I would have got such a great resource earlier. Dont delay if you are seroius about 700.

Kudos!!!

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I gave my first attempt back in Sep 2009. I scored 610(Q43, V31). I did not expect such a low score then. I had prepared for over 6 months with utmost sincerity. Such was the disaster that I did not even bother to analyze what went wrong.

One of my friends, though, advised me to retake the test after due preparation and to take the test only when I see an improvement in my preparations. That proved to be very true.

Now by the start of this year, I decided to give my second attempt and do things differently. Though there was a gap of nearly two years, my force to ace GMAT was no less. As a BITSian I knew it wouldn’t be too hard to score 46-50 in Quant. But as a non-native I needed better preparation in Verbal. Like Quant, Verbal can be aced with proper fundamentals, understanding and strategic attack. Below I have shared a few things that probably helped me in achieving 700(Q48, V37).

Fundamentals:

You might have heard this over and over again. Be strong in your fundamentals. This applies to both Quant and Verbal. For Quant, we have tons of reliable resources in the web: MGMAT Quant Strategy Guides, Kaplan GMAT Math Workbook and GMATClub WorkBook topics to name a few. I too relied on these resources to understand the nuances of certain GMAT format questions such as Work-Rate problems, Probability and Statistics problems and Inequalities problems. These are not complicated when you know what to look out for. For instance, you have to be so clear about the reasoning behind the work-rate question ‘A works for 12 hours to finish a job, B works for 14 hours to finish the same job and what would be the time taken to complete the same job when A & B works together’ that you can understand a complex question with jargons.

Similarly for Data Sufficiency questions, you should improve your reasoning to a stage where you can connect the dots between the questions that you practiced (during practice tests, GC forum questions, etc.) and the questions that come up on the test day. Of course none of the questions that you faced during your preparations is going to pop-up on your test day. But the logic will.

Is Verbal an up-hill task?

Yes and No. Yes because we either think that there is no one procedure to get the exact correct answer or that process of elimination is the ONLY way to get the ‘best’ answer. I strongly disagree here. There is a way to get to the exact answer (note not the best answer). That’s because GMAT has a pattern in framing the logic behind its questions. Note I said logic not the structure. Most of the resources out there teach you the structure of the GMAT questions: how to use advanced negation technique in an assumption-type CR questions or how to memorize the usual idioms or how to quickly read a four paragraph RC question. Believe me. This doesn’t work.

I said no because I used the e-GMAT Verbal Live product which showed me these logical procedures to answer the Verbal questions. I have to say here that I’m not part of the marketing team from e-GMAT. I am genuinely ‘just’ a customer of e-GMAT. I got to know them only through GMATClub.

Coming back to the logics, here are my thoughts for Verbal Question types:

Sentence Correction:
The GMAT SC questions from the Official Guide teach us certain important patterns. These patterns include but not limited to misplaced modifiers, logical parallel lists and many more. These cannot be answered in a mechanized manner. Because the answers might be grammatically correct but logically wrong. Only when the intended meaning of the sentence is clear, you can get to the correct answer. Again the OG teaches to eliminate the wrong choices because of very specific reasons. When this line of reasoning becomes intuitive the process of elimination becomes more logical and you get the ‘correct’ answer.

Critical Reasoning:
I learnt to better eliminate the incorrect answer choices through e-GMAT’s CR Course. I religiously followed the pre-thinking process as taught and improved in my timing to answer CR questions. Again here efficient elimination techniques come handy because GMAT throws in errors in a certain way which can be identified after thorough practice.

Reading Comprehension:
Though there is no one way to master this question type, the only proven way is to logically attack each RC question type. For that you need razor-sharp focus while reading the passage. When you focus on the structure and tone of the passage, the main crux will become evident. Per e-GMAT process, the passage summaries at various stages of reading the passage prove enough to answer the questions correctly. This helped me a lot as I was always struggling with RC.

On the Test Day:
Have fun! I mean, relax and look forward to enjoy the process. I tried to smile at various points to ease myself and to not think about what happened in the previous question. Of course this is not easy unless you practice it during the practice tests. I recommend taking MGMAT practice tests and review the questions to understand the source of errors. GMAT test will be lot easier after taking MGMAT tests. This might have a side-effect on you on the test day. That is, you might end up feeling that you screwed up the test. But actually you dint. That’s how I felt after each section. But I thought I ended up with a decent score. Thanks GMATClub, e-GMAT and MGMAT for helping me out in the process.

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I recently gave my GMAT for the second time and scored 750 (Q50, V41) – 98th percentile!! I scored 610 (Q46, V27) in my first attempt. I have improved in quant and BIG TIME in verbal. I attribute the improvement in my verbal performance to my hard work, keeping the cool during the test and most importantly to the CORE SKILLS that I have learned through the e-GMAT verbal prep course.

Remember guys, in calculating the 200-800 score, GMAT assigns a higher weight to your verbal score than to your quant score – just open OG 12 and look at the percentile score difference between quant and verbal for the same numerical score. So, if you really want to boost your GMAT score to beyond 700, you need to make sure you do well on the verbal section. If you are a non-native English speaker like me, the chances are that you are missing some of the core skills needed to perform well in GMAT verbal, especially those related to sentence structure, identifying parts of the sentence and understanding the meaning of a complicated sentence. Developing these core skills makes the difference between scoring 30 versus scoring 40+ in verbal.

The first time around, I was getting a good score in verbal during my practice tests but the scores were not consistent. I would get 35 in verbal in one test and 30 in another – I could not really understand why. After the disappointing verbal score in my first GMAT, I decided to take a more fundamental approach to my verbal preparation and started looking for some course that catered to my needs. I read some reviews on e-GMAT and I wanted to give it a try because it was said to be designed specifically for non-native English speakers. After I listened to the free videos on their website, I was immediately very impressed. I signed-up for the verbal package right away and I think this one of the good decisions I made in my GMAT preparation. Their focus on building the core skills in non-native English speakers makes e-GMAT different from other test prep companies. After going through the basic, intermediate and advanced sentence correction sessions of the e-GMAT course, I was very convinced that they got it right! I religiously followed the e-GMAT three-step process in solving each of the sentence correction questions and I immediately started seeing results. I was able to breakdown complex sentences into smaller, more manageable parts and understand the intended meaning much better. This process not only helped me in sentence correction, but I started to notice that I was now able to do much better at CR and RC as well because I started to understand the meaning of complex and tortuous sentences.

Overall, I think e-GMAT course was a great return on investment. If you are non-native English speaker and are struggling with your verbal score, I recommend you to e-GMAT course – you will not regret it!

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