GMAT Strategy

This past weekend I had the opportunity to take the Veritas Prep weekend class. I must say I was completely blown away. I had always been in the camp that a prep class was not necessary. While I do believe it is possible to score between 650-700 without a class, if you want to score 700 plus, I would go with Veritas. They have the best verbal preparation in the business. The biggest issue most self-study students have is finding accurate verbal. Veritas Prep has the most accurate verbal in the business. After doing your verbal homework you have a great feel for the look and feel for how GMAC words its questions.

Another advantage that Veritas Prep has over other prep companies are the quality of their instructors. In addition to having instructors that scored in the 99th percentile, their instructors are good teachers. They really breakdown complex concepts and make them easy to understand. One example is when we were going over Critical Reasoning and many in the class were having difficulty understanding assumption questions. Our instructor went through a difficult example and broke down why each answer choice was wrong, what we were thinking when we chose a wrong answer, and how to ensure that we wouldn't make that same mistake again. I feel that the reading comprehension strategy was amazing. They equip you with a system that will enable youto handle both the short and long passagesin an efficient and concise manner. While other prep companies will have you waste time writing out an outline or a sketch. Veritas gets you used to approaching the reading comp passages in a very systematic way. They also do an outstanding job of dissecting the question types. Reading Comp was one of my weaknesses but I now believe that I am equipped to kill the GMAT verbal section.. If you can afford a class, I truly believe you would be best served by going with Veritas Prep.

Great to know your review !... Can you shed more light as to the duration of the course if one needs to go only for Verbal ?

osirus0830 wrote:This past weekend I had the opportunity to take the Veritas Prep weekend class. I must say I was completely blown away. I had always been in the camp that a prep class was not necessary. While I do believe it is possible to score between 650-700 without a class, if you want to score 700 plus, I would go with Veritas. They have the best verbal preparation in the business. The biggest issue most self-study students have is finding accurate verbal. Veritas Prep has the most accurate verbal in the business. After doing your verbal homework you have a great feel for the look and feel for how GMAC words its questions.

Another advantage that Veritas Prep has over other prep companies are the quality of their instructors. In addition to having instructors that scored in the 99th percentile, their instructors are good teachers. They really breakdown complex concepts and make them easy to understand. One example is when we were going over Critical Reasoning and many in the class were having difficulty understanding assumption questions. Our instructor went through a difficult example and broke down why each answer choice was wrong, what we were thinking when we chose a wrong answer, and how to ensure that we wouldn't make that same mistake again. I feel that the reading comprehension strategy was amazing. They equip you with a system that will enable youto handle both the short and long passagesin an efficient and concise manner. While other prep companies will have you waste time writing out an outline or a sketch. Veritas gets you used to approaching the reading comp passages in a very systematic way. They also do an outstanding job of dissecting the question types. Reading Comp was one of my weaknesses but I now believe that I am equipped to kill the GMAT verbal section.. If you can afford a class, I truly believe you would be best served by going with Veritas Prep.

thanks osirus for sharing your views . IS the online course at par with the classroom one.

rohan_vus wrote:Great to know your review !... Can you shed more light as to the duration of the course if one needs to go only for Verbal ?

I took the weekend option. I would assume that it would be roughly 20 hours of verbal, because that is what we got with the weekend package.

From my understanding the online course offers everything the classroom course offers. The only difference is that it may be annoying having to type out questions whenever you want to ask the TA. Each online course has a TA, but you have to ask the TA the questions via typing.

thephoenix wrote:

osirus0830 wrote:This past weekend I had the opportunity to take the Veritas Prep weekend class. I must say I was completely blown away. I had always been in the camp that a prep class was not necessary. While I do believe it is possible to score between 650-700 without a class, if you want to score 700 plus, I would go with Veritas. They have the best verbal preparation in the business. The biggest issue most self-study students have is finding accurate verbal. Veritas Prep has the most accurate verbal in the business. After doing your verbal homework you have a great feel for the look and feel for how GMAC words its questions.

Another advantage that Veritas Prep has over other prep companies are the quality of their instructors. In addition to having instructors that scored in the 99th percentile, their instructors are good teachers. They really breakdown complex concepts and make them easy to understand. One example is when we were going over Critical Reasoning and many in the class were having difficulty understanding assumption questions. Our instructor went through a difficult example and broke down why each answer choice was wrong, what we were thinking when we chose a wrong answer, and how to ensure that we wouldn't make that same mistake again. I feel that the reading comprehension strategy was amazing. They equip you with a system that will enable youto handle both the short and long passagesin an efficient and concise manner. While other prep companies will have you waste time writing out an outline or a sketch. Veritas gets you used to approaching the reading comp passages in a very systematic way. They also do an outstanding job of dissecting the question types. Reading Comp was one of my weaknesses but I now believe that I am equipped to kill the GMAT verbal section.. If you can afford a class, I truly believe you would be best served by going with Veritas Prep.

thanks osirus for sharing your views . IS the online course at par with the classroom one.

osirus0830 wrote:

rohan_vus wrote:Great to know your review !... Can you shed more light as to the duration of the course if one needs to go only for Verbal ?

I took the weekend option. I would assume that it would be roughly 20 hours of verbal, because that is what we got with the weekend package.

20 hours..hmm ! .. But lookslike this 20 hours was quite enough as you seem to be be highly praising Veritas !..
Strange that Veritas doesnt publish any book like Kaplan/Manhattan , when its so good , esp for Verbal.

Indeed i never heard anyone speaking so highly of Kaplan/Manhattan when it comes to verbal the way you did for Veritas.

But great that you got what you needed and all set for the final kill !

rohan_vus wrote:

osirus0830 wrote:

rohan_vus wrote:Great to know your review !... Can you shed more light as to the duration of the course if one needs to go only for Verbal ?

I took the weekend option. I would assume that it would be roughly 20 hours of verbal, because that is what we got with the weekend package.

20 hours..hmm ! .. But lookslike this 20 hours was quite enough as you seem to be be highly praising Veritas !..
Strange that Veritas doesnt publish any book like Kaplan/Manhattan , when its so good , esp for Verbal.

Indeed i never heard anyone speaking so highly of Kaplan/Manhattan when it comes to verbal the way you did for Veritas.

But great that you got what you needed and all set for the final kill !

It is a lot if you put it in context. Most prep companies entire courses are only 26 hours. To get 20 hours of just verbal is alot.

Math review will come next week.

Hey guys - I couldn't resist reading a thread with our name in the title, and just wanted to chime in regarding the Virtual Veritas Prep live online courses. Osirus is correct that a lot of correspondence takes place via typing (there's a chat box in which you can give short answers to an instructor's question, or ask your own questions), but it also includes a verbal communication interface, as well. We send each student a headset with a microphone so that they can participate verbally, but in the end most students get comfortable enough with the ease of typing back and forth (that must just be something about our text- and IM-friendly generation) that I'd say around 80% of student participation comes through the chat box.

If anyone is interested in checking out that format to see what it's like, I'll be hosting a free seminar tonight (February 24) from 5 to 7pm Pacific, and a free trial class on Tuesday, March 2. There are links through BTG to register - I hope to see some of you there!

Any other questions before I post the review of the math course?

osirus0830 wrote:Any other questions before I post the review of the math course?

How was the Math Focus?