Veritas GMAT prep

Yeah, the only people who get 700+ after a weekend of study probably would have gotten it without much study anyway. (I hate those people!!)

I would go with one of the other guys too. I mean, how long has PR been around? Decades?? I think they're a little more experienced at this!

I have talked to the guy who started it - Chad; he lives in Malibu about 3 miles away from me, so we met up for lunch last summer - very strong person; good skills and great ambitions; he has a good number of degrees and took most standardized tests scoring in the 99th percentile. However, I don't know much about the company as I did not take any of the classes. I offered him to review his services, but we never got that done - he was not very eager to do that and a little murky. So, probably there is some hype.

--Bogdan

i'll jump in here ...
i'm new to the forum, but completed veritas prep course in march. i took the full length course, not the weekender.

i should also mention that i took kaplan to prep for the LSAT and HATED it.
was really pleased w/ veritas. primarily b/c of the instructor - he was fabulous, super smart. he went to stanford, scored a 750. veritas requires their teachers to be 99th percentile.

anyway, the material was kinda crappy ... lots of spelling and grammar errors. but they give you A LOT of homework, more than enough to work from.

the MAIN thing i hated about the veritas material is that they don't provide answer explanation w/ any of the questions!!!! this was SO annoying.
they encourage you to "figure it out yourself!"
but there were a few times when i spent 30 mins + trying to figure out one d*mn problem!!
they want you to ask about questions in class or (get this) -- call an 800 number for answer explanations. sorry, i just didn't have that much initiative. especially when i was studying in the library - i mean, who wants to go make a phone call to get an answer explanation??

i did like the extra time in the class room - we met 2x a week for 8 weeks. i liked the "forced" structure.

ok, that's just my 2 cents!

Hi!

I used to teach at Veritas. I will defend their policy of not providing solutions to the problems.

The worst way to study, and unfortunately, the way most people study, is to do a bunch of problems, then compare with the answers. If they get it wrong, then they check the solution and tell themselves "ok, i got it", then move on. If they get it right (either by skill or by chance) they simply move on and forget about the problem.

But forcing students to solve the problem without help, Veritas forces students to go through the work. (One can say it artificially creates a need for their high priced instructors, but that is not a bad thing -- you can buy any book and see the solution and most of their questions are taken directly from the OG anyway). Using the solutions as a crutch can be counterproductive. Veritas gives you LOTS of free access to its teachers so you cannot say that you are deprived of the help. It is not their fault if you are too lazy to call.

One contributor complained that it took him 30 minute to do a problem. I think that is great. That person will understand that problem -- and problems similar to it -- because he/she took the time to work it out.

As for the quality of their booklet, i know Chad and Markus continually update them so it is inevitable that error will sneak in.

Finally, this is no program on earth that will prepare you for the GMAT in one weekend, although you may raise you score a few points. The GMAT mostly tests application of basic knowledge and you cannot cram for it like you would for a Real Estate exam.

A legend returns

Excellent advice, as always.

Sincerely
Praet

Do the Veritas books really not give much in explaining the answers to the problems.


wiseguy

Hi everyone,
I would just like to update Veritas course status. I just took the 1 week intensive course in New York, and it was really great.
The teacher was just perfect, very patient but very effective, and almost always able to make you understand why you got it wrong. I say almost because sometime to understand some tricky CR or RC main point, you need to go back home, think about something else and then rethink about the problem to understand it.

About the explanation of the answers, I guess Veritas policy has changed, as I got 2 full books of all the explanations of all the problems.

I would highly recommend Veritas honestly, it was very good. I could not really find any drawback.
But I did not take the GMAT yet, so I guess my argument is lacking quite an important premise...

I will update after I take it.
But anyway, as everyone said already, the course is not going to take you above 700, only you and yourself can take you that high, the prepcourse will only show you the path.

I took Veritas, however for me it was waste of money!!! The problem with the prepcourse is that you are taking a HUGE risk by going to some unknown instructor, who might have scored in 99th percentile, but doesn't know how to teach... he might be smart and entertaining, but it boils down to the fact that you don't go to class to laugh... you go there to learn and to get some support...

in my case veritas changed the teachers in the middle of the course... both instructors were smart, but completely different in the teaching approach... the later one was boring (for instance, he would time us on RC passage and ask questions later... i could do this myself at home) and the first one was very snobbish (liked to put people on the spot during the class and acted like he knows everything there is to know, although gave some good tips compared to the other guy who was kind of "old school")...

to the explanations... yeah... they SUCK! despite the fact that there is a whole book on each subject with explanations, they aren't too much of a help... sometimes IMHO explanations were over thought and confusing...

my advice... stay away from the catchy marketing campaign of "ELITE" preparation, unless you know who the instructor going to be!!! and if you have to choose blindfully which course to take, I suggest MGMAT instead... although I haven't taken it I only heard good reviews!

hope this helps someone.

ps... homework... yeah!!! they have A LOT! and the problem is that you are better off practicing with OG than spending that time on their HW... you might use their books for fundumentals, but when it comes to practicing, OG is way better... and btw, they don't list the problem types in the OG like MGMAT or GMAX does... at least they didn't at the end of last year.

I took the test a week ago and got a 710 -- I'm no 99th percentile guy, but I'm not at the bottom either. Although I did not take a Vertias class, I did use their Project GMAT book and I thought it was solid. I would say that I don't think taking a class is particularly useful because of the risk of getting a bad instructor, as has been discussed, and the fact that none of the test prep companies provide the perfect materials.... there are good things about nearly all of the companies/materials, and by studying from various materials, you get the best overall preparation. Just my 2 cents.

Marcus

I took Veritas Course
Most Tutors sucked, they think they know everything, they cant explain anything. Although one of them named Margee on the phone was very helpful in explaining...

Apart from that their books are really nice.. I like their explainations, and they have lot of hard LSAT CR and hard GRE math problems.. SC is good also...

I think overall the materials are worth the price.. but the tutors and teaching bad.

I'm currently using their 'project GMAT' - advanced math for statstics, permutations and combinations and it's very good. I looked at MGMAT for perm/comb - did not like their sort of 'hack' like explanations. Veritas teaches the fundamentals, and for the first time in over a decade I'm actually solving the darned problems correctly. But this is the ONLY veritas material I'm using, so I can't comment on any other aspect of their prep material or coaching.

I was very disappointed with the quant. The perm/comb stuff is great. They have a whole class devoted to it and it is a good class. But aside from that their topics are alegebra, geo, arthmetic, data sufficency, and problem solving. Their data sufficency was also decent, a few nice tips and tricks. But I feel the ps was really lacking. They did no speed/distance type rate problems. We went over one in the quant review and only one guy in the class could solve it. Why? Because we never looked at those problems. We looked at combined work and a few others, but really there wasn't enough "special problem types" explored sort of thing. You would definately need to agument the course with something like MGMAT word translations book if you wanted to be successful with difficult word problems, speed problems, etc.

Hi,

I am doing the sept. 11 Veritas class and if you are thinking of signing up, please e-mail me beforehand because together we can save some cash. If you refer 2 people, you get $400 off the class. I just need 1 more person to use as a referal and then we can all split the money (after the third week of class, which is when they send the check out).

I'm not doing this as a business, its expensive and I'm trying to reduce the cost any way possible. The girl who I'm doing this with just used me as a referral and we need one more.

My e-mail is jjsutantyo@gmail.com, hope I can find 1 more person who is interested!

Jeff

Has anyone taken priceton review classes ???