GMAT Strategy

If it has been a long long while since you have taken math, DO NOT SIGN UP FOR KNEWTON. The program seems like the perfect solution as it's on-line and you can watch the courses on demand, but when it comes to refreshing you on the basics, Knewton ASSUMES you already know the basics and/or remember the basics. As well, when I did practice problems both in Quant and Verbal in the Official GMAT Guide, the questions were almost unrecognizable!!!

I tried expressing my sentiments to Knewton many times, but my complaints were never addressed. Knewton is for people who need a refresher course not for people who need a COMPLETE GMAT WORKUP! DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY.

I SIGNED UP WITH A TUTOR AND HAVE LEARNED MORE IN TWO SITTINGS THAN I HAVE IN 3 MONTHS WITH KNEWTON. BUYER BEWARE!!!

Can you offer some specific examples?

Knewton only provides explanations for their GMAT-esque practice problems. For all other practice problems that teach the fundamentals they do not offer explanations. When I brought this to their attention, they said this is just the way their program is set up; however, I argued that if I getting the basics problems all wrong, how am I supposed to conquer the GMAT questions????

This is just one of the programs flaws, but it's HUGE!

It is not a program for everyone, and that makes it a substandard program. I would love to know how many people get their money back for poor scores.

As an outsider looking in, it seems that you had a different expectation of the program prior to enrolling in it. Seems like Knewton is mainly focus on GMAT and its related topics, and you are looking for more foundation-based studying to get you off the ground.

Looking at it from another perspective, perhaps Knewton is simply designing its curriculum base around the needs of majority of the students that are enrolled, and these students demand "GMAT-esque" problems. Not to say that they should overlook materials on strengthening foundation, but if such materials are not in demand by most of its students, then naturally it won't invest its focus on them.

Maybe you should be looking into a specific program designed to strengthen foundation skills such as the tutor you have hired, and perhaps re-evaluate the Knewton program AFTER you are familiar with some of the foundation materials that Knewton did not go over.

I think an evaluation at that stage would be fair for both parties involved.

I am one of four Knewton students on my tutor's roster, so I know that my issues with Knewton aren't about me. From your defense of Knewton, it seems to me that you either work at Knewton and/or know someone that does.

Regardless, Knewton SHOULD NOT list itself as a program for everyone. It advertises heavily as the ultimate GMAT prep source when it knows that it is not. It's own staff has admitted this to me.

Having to pay 1,000s of extra dollars on a private tutor just to get myself to a place where Knewton may begin to be helful isn't worth it. How you don't see that I am not sure??? Don't really care either.

I am curious which topics you are struggling on.

PS. I have absolutely zero affiliation with Knewton. Just another student here struggling to understand SC.

hmm it happens every prep institute comes with there own flavour.
I guess there was something mising from your side while researching for prep course
they prices are very low no doubt some of the instructor are very good.
specially in maths the structure followed is reading on own ,then class then practice.
its good for our own cause as if we know little about the topic going to be taught i can give headache to the instructor by flodding him with doubt

Private tutor will follow your study plan
i dont beleive in prep institute or in private tutoring self study is d best study

Not here to judge, nor did I have any kind of relationship with Knewton, but not answering questions from OG is B.S. since the whole purpose of the course is structured to have you answering precisely those kinds of questions.

Hello all,

Just wanted to chime in here to provide perspective. I know the student who has created this post, and while I don't want to publicly talk about the particulars of that student's experience, I can give you some information about the features in question.

First, at Knewton we are fanatical about serving our students. We have a team dedicated to reviewing customer feedback, talking with students and prospective students over the phone and via email, and doing user testing, all to ensure we're always listening to what you all want in a test prep course.

The OP refers to fundamental math work. We have over 300 learning objects and videos for quant alone that deal with what we call "atomic concepts" -- the very basic building blocks of the concepts found on the GMAT. It is true that we had some exercises called pretests that did not have explanations associated with them. These are non-test-like questions that just focus on single, fundamental concepts. We have hundreds of them. By design, we originally left out explanations to these questions as we wanted students to take these just for remediation and focus more on the learning objects and, ultimately, the GMAT-style questions. However, we found that there was a subset of students who really wanted to review explanations to these questions, so we made it a project. In April, we deployed the explanations to these pretest questions, over 800 of them. We heard student feedback, and we jumped on it. There is a not a single question in the Knewton course now without a detailed explanation.

uwhusky, I appreciate your sentiment. In any company, resources need to be allocated for the most efficient use -- classic b-school operations management. At Knewton we use an agile development cycle to prioritize and execute our product roadmap. We try our best to accommodate each student's needs, but also must prioritize those that are of the greatest value to the greatest number of students. I appreciate the needs of the OP and am distressed we were not able to help the student more -- I consider the student's frustration a failure of ours that we will use to make us better. No business can ever make every single customer ecstatic, but that won't stop us from trying.

We'll also be unveiling a public community forum in the upcoming weeks so have open dialog with our students -- questions, feature requests, technical issues, etc., all out in the open. We are here for one reason: to give our students the best prep option we can.

Lastly, I'm not sure of the last post's question on the OG, but our teachers do review OG material in our course office hours and in our academic support.

Sorry for the lengthy response, but I just wanted to make sure that everyone understands what we at Knewton stand for.

Best wishes,
Chris