I used the Economist GMAT prep in the Summer/Fall of 2015. I managed to go from a 560 on my first practice test in July to a 750 on my actual GMAT in November. I had tried self study prior to taking the course to little-to-no improvement. The courses adaptive format takes the guess work out of what your weaknesses are and what you need to devote time to. In the early going of test prep this is great as it gives you exposure to a wide variety of materials and gives you a litmus test of what will require extra attention. Additionally the adaptive model helps with fatigue as it moves between subject matters frequently and prevents you from getting exhausted on a single subject. This worked for the majority of my prep. Being able to send in emails/questions to tutors was also a huge help when I just "wasn't getting it." Additionally setting up the live calls was a huge help especially in terms of planning and scheduling my test prep. When it came time to focus on the tes t itself the economists prep was a little lacking in that it only had 5 tests. I ended up resorting to using other resources to get additional test practice. They also don't have a generic question bank to run through practice questions. My only other complaint is that the included app isn't very well designed. It's a regurgitation of the desktop experience in an app, which works on some subjects but those requiring a pen and paper or working out a problem don't work.

Pros:
Adaptive model
Timed Sessions
Live instructor calls
Ask an instructor option

Cons:
Not enough practice tests - can't retake previous tests
Can't take/retake specific lessons
Not enough practice questions
App isn't optimized and required network

Highest reviews for Economist GMAT Tutor.

Loved how the model adapted to pinpoint weaknesses and throw you more questions in those areas. I didn't have a lot of extra time to study for the GMAT so I appreciated the fact that every minute was used well and no time was wasted. The program also forces you to stay active in reading and solving problems whereas other online programs include watching videos which allows you to become passive in your studying. I would much rather spend my time trying out problems and going through the wrong ways to solve a it than watch a video of a tutor showing me how to solve.

Also felt the questions in the practice tests were very similar to those of the real GMAT so when test day came I was confident going through the exam.

But ultimately the results speak for themselves, I went from 670 to 780 using the Economist GMAT Tutor program. For what it's worth, my strategy was to study for about an hour a day for about 3 months. 5 weeks out I started taking a practice test each Friday, reviewed it Saturday and tried to schedule a tutor session on the Sunday/Monday afterwards. I also had the same tutor for every online session (Jake Wengroff) which was very helpful as we were able to build a good rapport.

I found this course really helpful. Within two months I use this course only and finally got 710 in real exam, 47Q and 42V. Before taking the course, I hardly did any quant at all since school (so, for 15 last years - just calculating a discounted price for coffee).

The feature of the program I adore the most - it is adaptive, so it focuses on your strengths and weaknesses. It is like private tutor with unlimited (almost) exercises.

And I highly recommend Kasia Slawinska for "ask a tutor session" in the course: due to her advice I got in 96 percentile in Verbal!

Though I plan to retake the exam in a month (my dreamed school is one of the best), I want to thank all the GMAT Economist Team for their product)))

I loved this course. They do a great job keeping the content fresh and drilling home the key concepts.

In terms of verbal, they really hit the nail on the head. It's good to look at the OG as well before the exam but overall, I couldn't ask for much more.

In regards to quant, I heard a few pepole grumble that it was good to give you a good theoretical overview but lacked the level of difficulty really high quant scorers look for. It's difficult for me to judge in this respect since I was much stronger at Verbal but definitely can't argue with my overall score of 730!

I would reccommend this course if you are studying at home and have to balance this with work etc.

I really appreciated that The Economist was adaptive to my learning - it would quickly pass off subjects I was proficient in and really hammer home areas where I wasn't. I felt that all of the example questions were very different from one another and overall it was a good course experience. The 1-on-1 tutoring was probably the most beneficial part to me, as I got to ask someone real my questions and work through specific problem sets.

I gave 2 diagnostic tests before starting with the Economist GMAT tutor and scored a 650 and 680 on them. Over approximately 2 months I spent 92 hours on the Economist GMAT tutor software and did not use any other preparatory material. I scored 760 on the two official GMAT practice tests and 740 on the final GMAT. Overall, I was very happy with my experience with the Economist GMAT tutor and even though it may be a bit more expensive than some of its competitors, I feel the money was well spent.

Positives
? Adaptive learning ? Most GMAT programmes follow the ?one-size fits all? approach. GMAT test takers have different backgrounds and skill sets, which means that there is really no ?average student? which makes it important for a learning programme to meet the specific needs of the student. After giving the initial diagnostic tests, I did not give another test till I finished approximately 50% of the programme. Throughout this time I felt like I was making no progress because my accuracy on the practice questions with the GMAT tutor remained the same. However, the software was probably working on my weaknesses and giving me tougher questions on my stronger areas, which is what eventually helped me improve my score.
? Easy to fit into a busy schedule ? This programme is really good for people who need to balance work and other commitments with GMAT studies. You can have sessions from 5 mins up to 1 hour and can easily fit in short sessions on your way to work or during breaks so you are constantly making some progress.

Negatives
? Can not go back to past questions or explanations ? Your ?Dashboard? on the GMAT tutor has summaries of all the topics you have covered but it?s not possible to go to the detailed explanations of previous topics/practice questions.
? I had scheduled two tutoring sessions the day before my final GMAT to solve a few last minute doubts, but BOTH the tutors did not show up on skype for the sessions. They later apologised and said that this was a rare occurrence, but it was incredibly frustrating and highly unprofessional of them because not only did I waste time on skype waiting for the tutors, I had to spend a few hours on the internet trying to find the answers to my questions when all I wanted to do was relax one day before my GMAT.

The Economist GMAT Tutor is very complete.
I had less than 2 months to study for the GMAT, which is quite challenging when you are working full time. But the option of choosing the length of a session, makes it very useful to manage time. Furthermore, there is a window that shows the progress and an approximate gmat score, which in my case was very accurate.
I got 690 and the estimator had estimated my score between 680 and 710.

The tutors (Kesia and Jake) that gave me the private sessions were phenomenal, knowledgeable and very helpful. I recommend doing a strategy session. The advice in time management they gave was crucial.

All aspects of the quantitative and verbal section got me well prepared for the GMAT. I just thought the sentence correction part was a little weak though. I complemented it by purchasing a pack from the official gmat prep.

I got 5.5 on my essay, I have to give 100% credit to the Economist for that. They were great and very helpful.

The integrated reason part is ridiculous though.

Overall I'm very satisfied, and I wholeheartedly recommend The Economist GMAT Tutor.

The Economist GMAT prep was the key in boosting my performance on the GMAT. The tips were very helpful and the analysis of every answer choice is very insightful. I found the course much better than any book available on the market; I could study on the go and wherever I waned and even from my phone. It allowed me to easily monitor my studying pace on different sections and set goals relative to the time of my exam. More importantly, giving small sessions in an interactive, dialogue-like manner was very appealing to someone who gets easily bored of thick books. The course is outstanding on every level. However, the strongest aspect I realized was the adaptive artificial intelligence that made the course look like it was specifically tailored to give me what I exactly needed and give me opportunities of extra practice in my weak areas. It helped me better realize my strengths and weaknesses. I would definitely recommend it to anyone planing to take the GMAT.

Due to various factors, I only had 4 weeks available to prepare for my GMAT so I needed the programme that would enable be to achieve as much as possible in the little time available.

The Economist GMAT Prep allowed me to do a simulation test before I registered in order to gauge my level before starting the course. The course is clearly outlined and definitely helps to develop your higher order thinking skills and your approach to GMAT type problems. The fact that the course also adapts automatically to focus on your weaker areas is great.

After only 4 weeks of preparation and not even having completed the whole course my score went from 640 to the official score of 740.

Thank you!

I started my Gmat Tutor course 3 weeks ago. I already tried other courses for Gmat but none have help me focus on my weakness as Gmat Tutor do.

Its a unique system were you are forced to improve your weakness while you don't waste valuable time on your strongest sections. Its amazing how good this works.

The course also show you updated statistics of your improvement (200-800 score scale) and your productivity (hours spend learning and course progress). This statistics are very interesting, although i think they could complement them with more, such as the accuracy rate by time of problem.

I also suggest Gmat Tutor to complement its offer with a The Economist free subscription - Its make all the sense as everyone knows the Economist as the best source to improve the reading skills of non-native speakers. Usually the first 3 months of subscription is cheap (12? in UK and 30 ? on Europe) - this values are a little portion of the costs of the course, so doesn't make sense why Gmat Tutor doesnt include this on the course.

I really advise everyone to try the Gmat Tutor for the first free 7 days - you will enjoy it! In 3 weeks i already improve 100 points avoiding careless mistakes.

I subscribed to Gmat Tutor 2 months before taking the test and I found it to be useless. I hired a private teacher in the end so Gmat Tutor was a waste of money. I asked for a refund 10 days after I subscribed and they said this is against their policy.

Not what I'd expect of a product with The Economist's name on it!

Hi,

I took the Economist GMAT Tutor course and scored a 720 on my GMAT. Though this was a bit lower than what I was expecting based on GMAT Prep tests but I think the score is good enough to select the check-mark for almost all the schools. [There are lot of discussions that Indian students need to get a really high score but numerous people have told me that's not true - GMAT is really just one, and often not the most important, component in the application].

GMAT Score - 720 - IR8, Q50, V37 (screwed up a little on the verbal :( )

Prepping for the GMAT was kind of an impromptu decision to which I didn't give much thought but now that I have I think it was a good decision.

I read some posts on the forums and came to know about various GMAT courses and I decided to take a trial for GMAT tutor. I really liked the format, it was interactive and more importantly structured -- I thought the important thing would be structured in the study to maintain discipline.

The course started off with easy Math fundamentals, which are essential by the way, before moving to Verbal topics which were not very natural for me. The concepts presented were very structured and really focussed on getting the basics clear before moving on to harder topics or questions.

The thing I really liked about the course was the ease of studying -- I didn't have to worry about whether I was doing enough questions on a topic before moving to another topic. The course gave ample number of questions after teaching each topic with answer explanations. The answer explanations are the best - they really tell you how to approach the problem and always stuck to the "method". Developing and following the method, in my opinion, is very important when you begin so that you avoid careless mistakes. Trust me, avoid careless mistakes on the GMAT and getting a good score is not hard.

For Math - Covers all the essentials, questions are good, some data sufficiency are really good. I made sure I always read answer explanations for EVERY question I did.

For Verbal - Reading Comprehension is the best - the closest thing to the real GMAT. Some very tricky questions. I used to get a lot of RC wrong and then I really started to read options and each options' answer explanations very very carefully. The main thing in RC is really reading the options very closely - overtime this becomes fast. I practised a lot of RC from GMAT tutor which eventually enabled me to do ALL RC questions correctly in four GMAT Prep Tests. At first, I thought the format of RC on GMAT tutor sucked because they give one question a passage at one time which is unlike the real test, but the point I realised later is that mastering one type of question at a time really helped me.

Critical Reasoning was okay. There are certainly differences between the real thing and GMAT tutor's CR - GMAT Tutor's CR, I thought, had more straightforward answer options than the real thing. It's not bad per-se, there are definitely good questions, but the style was somewhat different from the real thing. You should augment this part with the official guide and verbal review.

Sentence Correction - The rules GMAT tutor teaches are helpful. These helped me solve SC questions quickly - you need to be quick in SC to save time for CR and RC. Ample of questions. But I think this is the weakest section in GMAT Tutor - the official questions and the ones you will see on the test will be noticeably different. SC questions on GMAT Tutor really focussed on 1-2 errors at most and the answer options revolved around those two errors but this will not be the case on the GMAT - the answer options will be very different from each other. I do think this section needs to be improved a lot as the style of the questions is not representative.

For AWA, GMAT Tutor gives a template which works. It discusses some useful techniques but the main thing here is practice. I submitted the 6 AWA essays to get rated - they score bit harshly but the feedback is awesome. I even took a tutor session on AWA and went through all of my essays with the tutor.

IR section is present but nothing much - plus I was good at IR so it didn't matter. Also I think getting an 8 in IR doesn't need much practice - just patiently work through questions in the test, know which 2 questions to skip (I generally skipped table questions which dealt with percentages).

SIM tests are really good and they give a accurate projection. I scored from 710 - 730 on the 5 tests, quite close to the real thing. The tests don't have essays and IR section. I spent a lot of time re-doing tests and reading answer explanations.

Pros -
- Very structured course, good for people who are not sure whether they have the discipline for self-study but don't want to attend a classroom for preparation.
- Math is very structured and explains things very clearly. I was already good with Math so no complains. Questions are good and very similar to the real thing.
- Verbal is overall good. Lots of questions.
- SIM tests score are similar to the real thing.
- The usefulness of the tutor sessions depends on you -- take specific questions and the tutors are helpful.
- Lots of realistic questions - specially after you finish the theory part. I finished 96% of the course and the last 70 - 80 hours were just practice questions which really helped.
- Ask-a-Tutor feature is good - be sure to be very clear on what you are asking and you will get good answers.

Things to improve -
- Sentence Correction. I cannot stress this enough. Though the concepts are helpful, the questions are not. GMAT questions are noticeably very different.
- Needs to include AWA and IR on the SIM tests. It's very important to build that stamina . Though the scores are not that important but building that stamina is very very important.
- More tests. For the cost, I think 5 tests are a bit less.

I am happy to have taken this course and I would recommend it (yes, also to indian students though the course is bit on the expensive side).

I find the Economist GMAT course to be very useful. It is thorough and adaptive. It also gives great tips regarding time-saving during the GMAT. I strongly recommend the course.

When I first took a Manhattan Prep practice test, I got a 59% on the quant and a 710 overall score. Economist app helped me jump to 87% on Quant (50) and a 770 overall. After my practice test, I soon started using the Economist GMAT app, and I loved it!! I only used it for Quant, but I saw that it made a huge difference even early on in terms of how I approached problems and how easy they were for me. Deciding to pay to be able to use 100% of the app was the best decision I have made in my MBA prep. The online ap is super easy to use and it guides you at your own pace through all the material you will need to know. I highly recommend this website for anyone who wants to up their Quant game on the exam. My score jumped to 770, and I did not use any other resources at all. Only negative to the Economist app is that it seems like in order to schedule your private tutoring lessons, you have to reserve the time well in advance, even specifying what topic area you will want to cover. Since I only had a month to study, this did not make sense for me and I was not able to utilize that part of the package.

I first encountered Economist GMAT Tutor as free iPad app which I installed and tried to use. It appeared to be interesting, yet inconvenient, mostly because of small answer choice button size - I have "made" really stupid mistakes many times. However, after I tried the course on Mac, it became clear that it is really good for me.

First, it did not contain long videos taking huge amounts of time to watch - all explanations are pure text and it was all I need. Since I can read rather fast, this form of explanation was preferable to me.

Then, it was course structure - it offers different topics and mixes Quant and Verbal ones you are currently working on with occasional flashback reviews of those already completed.

Another advantage is that I didn't need anything else to study - just my laptop, a notepad and a pen. No extra books, no other web pages - just me and Gmat Tutor. I understood that it is an advantage when was looking at other preparation tools and courses.

Finally, I really liked the material given and the quality of explanations. As a mathematician, I do not always agree with the methods offered, yet they are doubtlessly effective.

On my free Sample Test included I got Q50 and V31 meaning that I should concentrate on Verbal. Yet, reviewing sample test results in Quant showed me lots of stupid or careless mistakes I made, as well as lack of experience of solving certain specific types of problems. So while I plan to improve my Verbal score, I can certainly do much better in Quant - and this course is helping me with it.

So, summarizing my review, I see the following pros:

- efficient use of learning time
- really easy to use
- good quality of explanations

And the following cons:

- Math is sometimes simplified
- iPad app is not convenient due to small button size

Finally, the price. What I paid is really too much, and since I live in a rather poor country with high USD to local currency exchange rate, the course has cost me quite a lot. Yet if if will help me get the score I want and ultimately get into BS I want, I\'ll be fine with the price paid.

I'm a fan of the app portion of this in particular -- especially b/c it let me study on the train and in 10-15 minute sections at a time on days when I didn't have a full hour or so to study. Having taken other GMAT courses/read through other GMAT books, this one really does take a different approach and gets you to approach problems differently.

Sadly, ultimately, it didn't help me correct my timing problems, so I didn't get as much out of the techniques in terms of a score increase!

I bought the three months Economist GMAT Tutor as I wanted to learn as much as possible in the short time I had to prepare for the test: 3 weeks. I completed around 60% of the program, working only with the course and not with the official guids. After around 70-75 hours of studying (including tests), I finished with a score of 690.

What is good about the Economist course:

+ it's very flexible as you can time the sessions individually and take 5 to 60 minutes at once

+ the simulation tests gave a pretty good impression of my progress. The latest one, two days before the actual test, predicted a 680 score, which is just 10 away from my real score
+ despite all the annoying things about the course (see below), I learned alot. I like the way the content is presented and overall, the tips are pretty useful. The GMAT is all about knowing what the GMAC wants to see, this program will tell you

What I did not like about the program:

- the shortest plan for the program is 3 months. I liked the trial version, so I went for the GMAT Tutor even though I just had 3 weeks to learn and couldn't finish the course. Personally, I think it is a little cheeky to make people pay for such a long time in any case
- you cannot choose a particular lesson yourself. I found this pretty annoying in the end when I ran out of time and wanted to pick specific topics that weren't included in the course yet and where I knew I needed improvement. Consequently, I was forced to look up (google) topics elsewhere online. If you don't have the time to take the entire course, that is a real contra.
- the mobile phone app of the program is a nice idea but needs improvement. When my internet wasn't very stable (in the train etc.), the app kept switching from offline to online mode and then mixed up verbal and quant parts all the time. I preferred to learn the verbal part with the app because you don't need to take notes here, but with the mixing up that was pretty useless.

- There are only 3 simulation tests. Paying 500? for a course, I think it is just ridiculous to limit the number of tests to three. Why would you do this?
- The email communication, including the ask-a-tutor feature, did not work well. I did not get an answer to all of my questions within 24 hours, sometimes it was near 48 hours for them to respond. To give another example: The evening before my GMAT test, after I had already completed the 3 sim tests and 60% of the course, I received the email that I had now finished more than 30% and that I could have a go for the sim tests. The program claims it is so personalized, in this case it failed.

Overall: I think it is a good choice if you have the time to finish the entire course. Still, I think it needs improvement and lastly, looking at the price, I am not really satisfied. For me, that was a real investment and if I spend so much money, I expect a perfect product. The course did not always meet my expectations.

Hi,

I studied around a total of 100hs for verbal and 105 for math during 3.5 months with the Economist and reached 90% of the course.

I got an impresive improvement in the Verbal Section. The Economist teaches you how to do a systematic approach to this section that reduces your mistakes and increases your awareness to eliminate wrong answer choices. However, I found that SC and RC were much better than CR in the course.

For the Math section I didn't improve as much as I was expecting on my score. But it has an interesting approach that teaches you how to think problems faster with a strategy to "ball-park" or guess if necessary.

For AWA the course gives you usefull templates to use and the tutors helps you with their corrections. And last, for IR you don't have so much material to do. But I don't think IR is as important for the GMAT score right now as the other sections.

The practice tests are realistic and helps you improve very much, but they don't have AWA and IR section. I recommend to use other sources of AWA and IR before taking this tests so you can more precisely resemble the test conditions.

Good luck.

The content was good, but I had problems as soon as my credit card expired. I never received an email stating that another payment was due; my account was simply made inactive. As soon as I saw this, I updated the account with another credit card, per the FAQ section recommendation. Nothing happened. I emailed customer service, who said they'd restore the account once they processed the payment. I confirmed that this was fine. Nothing happened. I've tried contacting them for days now...via the phone, email, and even Twitter. No one has ever picked up the phone at their 1-866 number, or returned my call.

Today, it said my account was deactivated. I have not received any responses from customer service. I guess that's it?

The big issue here is that I cannot really open another account; I would have to repeat the program, and I was about 67% of the way through.

It's really a shame, because the platform ran smoothly and the content was helpful.

Took gmat a year and a half ago, got a 650 after 3 months of self study guides prep and knew i needed help if i ever wanted to improve my quants score. After extensive research, went for the economist gmat tutor, specially interested in their +70 score guarantee. So far its been incredible. 20 days in the program and i already know my quants score is improving. Tips and strategy techniques with emphasis in practice right from the start.

One recommendation is to take notes from the very beginning, i didnt and had to go back for those, wasting valuable time.