EmpowerGmat Online Preparation Course

[expialodocious]

Greetings All,

I am currently preparing to select a GMAT preparation course. It's been about 4 years since I used Becker to complete my CPA. I am ready to put in about 3 months of study for the GMAT. I have narrowed down my selection to EmpowerGmat, Manhattan and Veritas. I am amazed at the number of preparation courses available and how much advertising is put into the whole process of determining which course to commit to. I have a few questions for Rich and anyone who has successfully used Empower to obtain a verified GMAT score of 690+.

1) I notice you have amazing reviews however a lot of those reviews are from people who are "Self Reporting" their score. Do you know why those good reviews did not Verify their Score?

2) I notice there are is a low amount of reviews available, albeit all of them are very good ones. Why are there only 54 reviews if you have been in business for at least 3 years?

3) I notice that most of the reviews show up here and also show up in beatthegmat.com. Is this the norm between the 2 websites?

4) Is there any textbook available for Empower or is just the PDF's? Are the PDF's the textbook or are they just notes on the various subjects of the course?

5) How organized is the textbook or PDF files?

6) Does the 24 Trial Version differ from the actual course or is it the exact same course? I am going to sample the free trial soon.

In summary, I am very excited about Empower but I need to be sure that the process and presentation of the material matches my learning style. Your prompt response is much appreciated. Thank you.

[[email protected]]

Hi expialodocious,

You've posted these questions on at least two different websites, so I applaud your tenacity. For future reference though, you likely would have received a quicker response if you had:

1) Emailed me directly.
2) PMd Max or I directly.
3) Emailed the Support Team at the www.empowergmat.com

Regardless, in answer to your questions:

1) I have no idea what motivates some people to post reviews (and/or verified reviews) or not. Privacy, maybe or a lack of free time. I personally love hearing about the success stories from our Clients, but I respect that the time that it would take to write a review might be an inconvenience for some people.

2) The Forums only allow Course reviews for paid site partners. We've been partnered in the Forums for a little over a year, so our access to that 'feature' has been limited by time. If you're going to use length of time as a significant gauge though, then I think it's a bit more odd that Kaplan only has 100 reviews (considering that it's been in existence for decades; on another site, it has just 7 reviews). There also appear to be some concerns about fraudulent reviews posted by some companies, which is why you should always take a practical approach to evaluating the products that you are thinking about purchasing.

3) I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. Many Test Takers visit multiple GMAT Forums, but I'm not sure if that type of posting history is the norm or not. I suspect that anyone who had a great experience and is willing to write about it wouldn't find it too difficult to copy/paste the same post into two Forums though.

4/5) Since the GMAT is taken on a computer, ideologically we're big believers in training for the Test in the exact same 'format.' As such, there is no EMPOWERgmat Book (or series of books). It's also often easier to learn when you're engaging more than one sense. With a book, you're just reading, but with multi-media, you're watching, listening, taking notes, etc - it's a far more engaging process. The PDFs break everything down into the essentials by subject (essential knowledge, Tactics, patterns, etc.), so they're convenient to access (imagine flipping through a huge book trying to find one piece of information; that is something that we wanted to avoid).

6) The 24-hour Trial gives you access to the FULL EMPOWERgmat Course, so you can work through any of the Modules.

If you have any additional questions, then you can feel free to contact me directly.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich