Overall I did not think VERITAS met my expectations. I took the online course on Saturdays and Sundays.

The Books

I found several errors in the books and coursework throughout the course. When I brought these errors to VERITAS’ attention, I found it amazingly difficult to convince them there was an error at all. Often times I had to email several different people to even get a response. Once they finally conceded to the error, I was often surprised by how curt their reply was. For example (I’ve copied and pasted this directly from the customer service email I received):

“You are correct. Both slides are in error and you have correctly assessed why. I will pass you feedback on to you headquarters.”

What sort of a customer service response is that? At least take the time to put together a real sentence.

The Software

The online software package was not intuitive. To make matters worse before the first class I had some technical issues. When I called technical support I got an answering machine saying I needed to call on business days during east coast business hours. My class was on Saturday and Sunday. You can imagine I left a fairly irate message, for which I got no response (there’s a pattern here). The online material seemed to be a collection of disjointed sites, poorly tied together. This is such a strange description it even confuses me, but if you've logged onto the VERITAS site I think you'd understand. I found myself creating a number of different user names and passwords for a variety of sites in order to access all the material. I’m not sure which of these sites were VERITAS, but it left me somewhat uncertain as to what I was doing and what I was paying for (were some of these sites free?)

The Course Material And Instructors

The course material was ok at best. I often felt the instructors skimmed over concepts without fully exploring them. When students would raise questions, they were often not fully answered, leaving many students confused. Moreover I felt one of the instructors was a little cocky, often belittling the students. I never experience this first hand, but I definitely observed it. Also consider I’m in the military, so have a fairly thick skin for that kind of thing!

One thing that really annoyed me was that they never finished the prescribed material for the day. The instructors would say, read the last few chapters away from class and let them know if we had any questions. Even when a number of students (including me) brought up that we wanted to cover the material in class, the instructor said they wouldn’t because other students had to leave, ignoring the fact these classes were recorded and could be viewed later by those students that had to leave. Bottom line it seemed the instructors were on a paid timeline and wouldn’t budge.

I felt that this class did not address concepts in enough detail to help students wanting to score above 700. The material was at best an 80% solution, but that extra 20%, to take you beyond a 700 score was just not there.

Overall

I should start off by saying I am in no way associated with Manhattan prep! After a few months of studying the VERITAS material I was getting frustrated. I had gone from solid 700+ practice tests to mid 600s. I didn’t feel the VERITAS methodology was working for me. So I turned to Manhattan prep books. I immediately recognized how much more detail and precision Manhattan used. They also referenced official GMAT questions from the official GMAT books, which I found very helpful. Overall I thought the Manhattan GMAT material was far better suited to my needs. If you’re shooting for a 700+ score, buy the Manhattan GMAT books. I will also add that their site was intuitive and professional looking. Their post practice test analysis was outstanding! You’ll be very happy with the material. After three weeks of studying Manhattan books my scores went from mid 600s to high 700s. When I finally took the test I scored a 740. VERITAS might say that this is proof that their method worked, but to be completely honest I attribute this high score to Manhattan.

The first and most obvious point to make is that my Veritas course greatly improved my GMAT score. I took the GMAT once during the course in order to make first round deadlines, and then again 3 weeks after the course on Ethan's recommendation. My first score was adequate, but when I completed the course, I blew the test out of the water. There is really no other explanation for the improvement in my score- my Veritas course enabled me to absolutely beat the snot out of the GMAT.

Veritas was especially valuable on the quant side. I hadn't taken a math course or really thought about math since freshman year of college, when calculus and I had a pretty serious falling out. When I started the course, I struggled with my times tables. It was bad. Veritas not only got me to where I needed to be in terms of remembering everything I forgot from 10th grade, but it stressed the importance of speed and got me nailing some of the toughest problems in less than 2 minutes. When I took the GMAT the second time, I was miserable because I thought all of the math questions were too easy and I was getting questions wrong. Turns out I was just going in extremely well prepared.

Verbal was previously a strong suit for me, but for the hardest problems there is really no good answer, and you need to understand what the test makers are thinking. After I took the GMAT the first time I realized I needed to start drinking the Veritas cool-aid as far as their approach to verbal. I have no doubt that it helped me to hit the 99th percentile on the verbal side.

I'll also go out on a limb and say the course works for folks who struggle on the verbal side as well. We had a hispanohablante in our course who initially needed a lot of help in terms of grammar and English in general. Ethan gave him a lot of great advice which he must have taken to heart; by the end of the course he was crushing sentence correction and ID'd errors that I was missing.

For me personally, the most valuable part of the course was the practice it afforded, and the structure that I really needed. The course forced me to be thinking about and doing GMAT problems for at least 6 hrs a week, and usually much more than that. Additionally, the Veritas problems are very similar to actual GMAT problems, and Ethan stressed the importance of using the official GMAT book. So not only did I get the practice hours I needed, I was practicing the right thing. Looking at some materials from other test prep organizations, I can't say the same of their sample problems.

If you've gotten this far you likely understand that I would recommend this course to anyone based on how effective it was. I feel like Ethan specifically was responsible a lot of this- some of the most helpful frameworks he gave us were of his own creation. Additionally, Ethan made the course enjoyable. He managed the material with ease and he truly cared about how his students did on the test. He ensured everyone was engaged and kept the atmosphere lighthearted- no small feat when you're talking about this heinous test for 3 hours straight. He also loves the 90's references. Trust me, it's awesome. Bottom line: I don't think I could have stuck with this course had the instructor been a dial tone. I was getting home to this test after working 12 hour days, and I can honestly say I enjoyed it.

Last point, using a standardized testing framework: other GMAT courses are to Veritas as WalMart is to your local coffee shop. Veritas is a small organization. I called the help line a couple times and got connected with an insanely smart Vermonter who went beyond answering my questions and forwarded some materials on data sufficiency questions, with which I was struggling. If supporting smaller organizations is important to you, this is an added bonus.

To summarize, Veritas helped me crush the GMAT, and made the whole process as enjoyable as it could possibly be. Ethan is the man, and it's an organization worth supporting. I hope this review helps you make the right choice in a GMAT prep course.