I have recently taken the GMAT, and did not perform as well as I had expected. I was looking for a program that would provide me with the necessary material to be ready to retake the exam within a month as many application deadlines were coming up. Having previously logged a little less than 100 hours of studying I needed a program that provided more practice tests. This was the main reason I went with the Economist GMAT tutor course. Once I started using the software I was able to fine tune all the areas I had struggled with. The software would build on various components of the test at a steady pace, which unlike any book I had used allowed me to see where I needed work. I found the software to be a great help in a very short period of time. If you have time constraints and you are already performing well, but for some reason unable to make that leap from scoring in the high 600 and low 700, I definitely recommend using the weeklong trial version provided online, and then using one of the programs offered. It really does help with the 4-5 question difference between a 690 and 750.

IK

Since I live outside of the US, It is hard to find a good course for the GMAT (there are just some few prep courses for the GRE). I chose the GMAT Tutor because I have some affinity for the way The Economist explains things and the simply but effective manner of helping me to polish my techniques as It also teaches me a bunch of new ones. I am happy I bought it. The only thing i have to do now is to invest more time in it.

I am improving really fast in the verbal part, as it also helps me to improve my English proficiency, so it will save me time when I have to take the TOEFL.

About the numerical and algebraic part Its been harder as I am learning techniques I did't use ever before. The application teaches you the adequate techniques and help you with tips all the time. Moreover, you can always ask a personal tutor who will answer you in a few hours most of the time.

I recommend this Course Specially if you are living outside of the US, your mother language is not English and also if it is your first approach to one of this type of exams.

So, as you will find out in my "I just beat the GMAT" post, I had a really difficult time with quant. I had taken several practice tests and gone through all of the Manhattan books, the OG, the OG Quant review and a Kaplan book and saw absolutely 0 increase in my quant score. My verbal score was good (in the 45-46 range) and I had done nothing to get there, but I had spent hours on Quant prep with nothing to show for it. So I started looking for tutoring options, but discovered that tutors were somewhat out of my budget. And GMAT prep courses (in their standard form) didn't really fit with my schedule AND I would've wasted precious time (I only had 3 weeks to go till test day) reviewing for the verbal section. So I finally caved and signed up for the free one week trial - best decision I could've made!

Here are the pros of the course:
-you get to pick (to some extent) what areas you focus on (i.e. you can pick to do a mix of verbal and quant or just one or the other. This is particularly great if you are really strong in one area, but weak in the other
-the essay grading service that comes with it is pretty awesome - it's actually a person that scores your essay and provides feedback - this really helped me hit on all the points I needed to get a 6/6 final score on my essay.
-the computer adaptive/artificial intelligence tutoring system is great. It measures your progress and focuses in on your areas of weakness. It also seems to pace it according to your strengths, spending less time on the areas you are naturally good at/already understand.
-you can do it at your own pace and on your own time. Your sessions can be as short as 5 minutes (this is especially great for lunch breaks)
-the mobile app lets you study on the go (My bus rides were so much more productive).

Cons:
-The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't really skip ahead to certain topics... i.e. the math course comes in a certain order and you have to complete certain sections before others. This was only a problem for me because I only had 3 weeks and I knew I wasn't going to be able to finish the whole course. I wanted to be able to skip ahead to the IR material but couldn't do so. In the end, it was ok. I scored 8/8 on the IR section (to give you an idea I literally scored 1/8 on the Manhattan practice test and without any other prep scored 8/8 on the real test, which makes me think Manhattan's IR practice test still needs to be tweaked a bit).

Things I didn't try (but am sure are awesome)
-Verbal material - I didn't do any of the verbal stuff because I was already scoring in the 99th percentile for that section. I am sure this section would be particularly good for sentence correction!
-Ask a Tutor or Skype Tutoring sessions - I didn't really have time for this, but I'm sure it would've been useful!

Bottom line: you get a 1 week free trial. If you dedicate enough time to it (probably about 10 or so hours in that first week) you will get a really good idea of how useful this tool will be for you. And you have nothing to lose! You get access to the complete package, just like you would if you paid for it, so you will really get a good idea of what you are going to be paying for.

In the end I took my score from a 700 (pre economist, post Manhattan guides) to a 760 in just 3 weeks. My Quant score went from a 40 to a 49. I can honestly say that was 100% due to the 36 hours I devoted to using the Economist course.

Feel free to let me know if you have questions.

You cannot go wrong with The Economist Gmat Tutor. Give it a try (for free!) for 7 days and you will be hooked.
I was studying for my gmat on top of having a full time internship, which proved quite challenging at times as books are unwieldy and not motivating. The Economist Gmat Tutor really helped me take advantage of every single break -even just 15 minutes- to maximize my time and results.
Explanations are very clear and you can email a tutor at any time during a study session. You can either choose your lessons yourself or let the course take you through learning points and practice questions.
The support you get from tutors is very professional and helpful and they work hard to create a comfortable learning environment on this platform.
The tool itself makes you progress at your own pace, gradually adapting to your level.

While it's more on the expensive side, the investment is worth it for the quality of service you get.

I recently wrote the GMAT in a very constrained time frame in order to make the cutoff for late entry into a top school. I under estimated the prep involved and just purchased the Kaplan GMAT Premier (with 6 Practice Test) book. It came with a dvd that had some instructional videos and link to web content.

Going through the book and the videos was a terrible way to approach the GMAT in the time frame I was working with. On exam day, I did terrible. I did not do proper due diligence into prep programs and thought from previous experience with Kaplan that their material would suffice. I was wrong.

After the exam, I did much more research on forums such as this one, and tried out a few different prep providers eventually going with The Economist.

A few big reasons why:
1. 7 day free trial that is the real version, not a demo version. I got to jump right into studying and the tool is the easy to use. No videos, no books, no gimmicks. Just strategy in order to attack questions.

2. Interview with instructor during free trial. I was contacted by the Instructor (Isaac) during my free trial to setup an assessment of my progress over the 7 days. Now, for me this set them apart, as I had nothing investment in their product but they still took the time to talk to me and give feedback. After this I felt comfortable with the tool, and with the people behind it.

3. The immediate progress. I spent the first two weeks, kicking myself because of all the simple tips and methods presented that help attack questions in a quick and effective manner. I work long hours and the flexibility of being able to log on any where and tackle a 30min (or whatever time you can spend) session is great. It also makes you feel like preparing is manageable with a heavy workload when you can tackle studying in pieces.

4. The solution. For me, and the way in which I learn, The Economist GMAT Tutor is perfect. Watching videos, and reading books might be best for you, but if you are like me, doing and working through problems and making mistakes and then learning from those mistakes is what works for me. The Economist simplifies everything. No nonsense approach. I am looking forward to rewriting the GMAT now, as my confidence and ability have improved.

I highly recommend The Economist.

This course was great. If anyone wants to see a 100+ point improvement in their scores, take this course.
This course is very adaptive. It asked me questions at my level of understanding. Incase if I answered some questions and I got them wrong, the course would adapt to my thinking and it would come down to my level of understanding.

The best part I liked about this course was that each topic had a "summary" section. This was of great help on the day before I took the gmat test. I just went through all the summaries before giving the actual test.

What really helped me were the personal tutor sessions. Even though I had to wake up at 6am and 7am on some days, the personal tutor sessions helped me a lot as I got an opportunity to ask several questions to the tutor. My personal tutors Jane (math) and Ilana (verbal) were of great help. They guided me to the right path.

I also admire the customer support services of this course. I always got a reply to my questions within 24 hours.

The 3 stimulated tests really showed me the topic I was weak at and the tests give detailed explanation of the answers. Thus, I advise everyone that if you are taking this course, and if you are taking the stimulated tests, spend about 2 hrs going through the explanations as to why you got the answers wrong. This will really strengthen your abilities to answer the questions in the right format.

Apart from that, in general, this course was of great help and I improved my scores by 230 points. I put in 3 hrs a day everyday for 2 months in to this course. Be prepared to put in a lot of effort into this course. It's worth it !

Hi,
I highly recommend this course to students panning to take Gmat test. The course is online, and you feel your self setting in front of an expert Gmat tutor. The course will help you mainly on dealing with computer-based test problems, you will learn so many topics for both Quant and Verbal, and you will solve so many practice questions for each topic. The Data sufficiency topics are super great, so when you set for your real Gmat test Data Sufficieny prblems will be mostly a piece of cake .

*note, it is recommended to spend studying more than 2 hours per day if you are planning to take the test after 1 or 2 months since the content of the course is not short and covers everything you need to pass Gmat !

I have used the GMAT tutor for about a month now , starting from the 7 day trial of the course. I find the course engaging because it selects the topic you need to study, & keeps your head light from any worry about what your next topic should be.

The quant is excellent , especially it looks like they fill your gaps from high school. I haven't finished the course , but from what I have started it is a very interactive experience.

I scored a 630 the last time I gave the GMAT & hope once I complete the course, I will be near the 700's .

I found this course excellent and really compatible with my lifestyle that forced me to learn at really weird hours. I was doing an hour before work and two hours after work for just over two months and thanks to this course I was ready to rock on exam day.

The course is really really great, it adapts to your level of learning and keeps going back to the subjects you are weaker at. Thanks to the course I managed to raise my score from an initial 620 that i got on a simulation exam i took before the course began to a 700 on the actual day (from a quant 35 to a quant 47!).

The only area that I think may need improvement is the RC part which is still not up to the level of the rest of the topics.

The response time on questions and requests was very very quick.

Massive thanks to everyone at GMAT Tutor.

This program, in addition to being responsible for a 200+ pt improvement in my GMAT score, was truly a pleasure to use.

Concepts are explained clearly, with different tactics (video, small exercises, etc.) used in different areas of the curriculum. The tailored algorithm works surprisingly well, too, and I noticed that the program after a while tended to give me questions in areas that I knew represented my weaknesses.

But what makes the program work at the end of the day is the incredible support staff that responds to any questions almost immediately. You can ask them about any topic and expect a clear explanation soon after. The live tutor sessions via Skype are also helpful to talk through test-taking strategy, although I didn't use all my allotted sessions. The folks on the other end are always courteous and I got the sense that they are truly committed to making their program as easy to use as possible, especially in their development of the iPad app and other changes made as I was taking the course.

There are, as others have noted, some small weaknesses that I'm sure will be improved as the program is developed further. The section for Integrated Reasoning is still small, and the simulation tests don't include IR which means you'll need to use other sources to find proper practice tests that are the real deal. And it would be nice to have the option of slightly more control over the content, although in my case it was nice to have sessions planned for me. Finally, this program took me 6 months to get through - don't plan on spending a few weeks on prep if you use it.

All told, if you're self-motivated and short on slots of time during the week to take a full-fledged class, I cannot imagine a better option. I recommend this program wholeheartedly.

I decided to finally stop talking about applying to business school and actually do it. The only problem with my decision is the application was due in two months. I immediately went to Amazon and purchased the Official GMAT study guide which is inarguably a great resource. I then found the Veritas Prep videos on the iPad that really helped me understand thinking like the test maker. Unfortanately, thinking like the test maker didn't translate into beating the test maker as my first score was much lower than I anticpated. I think I let my poor performance on the IR section affect me during the Quant and Verbal sections but regardless I needed to retake the test in one month and increase my score at least 50 points. At that time I found great reviews and a free trial for the Economist's GMAT Tutor. I bit on the free trial and after being impressed with the teaching style of the online course I purchased the one year subscription. I did not have enough time to complete the entire course but in the 40 hours I was able to get through approximately 40% of the material and raised my GMAT score by 100 points. Overall I was impressed with the layout and teaching style and have recommended it to several other co-workers considering going to B-School next year.

While nothing is perfect, I really only had a few small complaints regarding the Economist GMAT Tutor. The first is more an issue with my lack of time as I did not have time to get to some of the sections that I knew I needed more time with like Geometry and Combinatorics. I also wanted to review the exponents section a few days before the test but you are unable to select specific topics. I also had two technical issues, the first on my work computer where I am unable to login via IE because of a "no transport" error. However, it is a work computer so who knows what restrictions are causing the issue but Firefox worked without a problem. I also tried to use the course on a first generation iPad and some of the scientific notation fonts would not render which made learning the Quant sections impossible but selecting Verbal only was still available while I was mobile.

The constant interaction required with this course is guaranteed to keep you involved in the learning and forces you to learn the material.

I had a great experience with the GMAT tutoring from the Economist. The setup is great for people with odd schedules who need to get some studying in but don't know when. The tutoring, especially from Aron, was top notch. Be sure to schedule in advance if you want a specific time. The verbal tutoring was also great but not as good as the quant prep.

Response times for tickets/requests were usually less than an hour.

I also have to say that doing the practice tests online was a very big help.

Thanks so much, I got the score I wanted and I'm very pleased with the level of service offered.

I would definitely recommend the Economist's GMAT prep program! When I initially began studying for the GMAT, I attempted to prepare using standard online and print resources, which offered basic test-taking advice, content review, and lots of sample practice questions. As I only had a little over a month to study, I quickly realized that I needed a more focused strategy. I tried the Economist's free trial week of their program and felt that my efforts had become much more efficient and productive. The content review was very helpful, presented in a step by step, adaptive format that tailors the lessons to individual strengths and weaknesses. However, ultimately it was the even more personalized guidance of the actual, very helpful, human tutor that convinced me to purchase the program. His advice to capitalize on my strengths in verbal, rather than attempting to master the quantitative content in such a limited time frame, was a major factor in my achieving such a high overall score. I do believe that if I had had a full 2 to 3 months to devote to preparing, I would have gained a high degree of confidence on the math sections as well. Overall I was very pleased with my overall experience.

This is obviously the future of course prep. Self-directed, interactive, computer/mobile devise based, with human interaction both in the form of pre-planned tutoring sessions and unlimited email interaction. Tutors usually respond within a few hours and their responses are always thorough, thoughtful, and enlightening.

My biggest criticism of this service as a whole (besides the lack of android support) is the lack of any form of a literal or figurative "back" button. You cannot go back and review old questions, and you cannot go back and re-learn old lessons. Their explanation for this misses the mark. They will never convince me that there would be no value in being able to go back as well as forward in their linear pedagogy.

Overall, I am grateful it's available. I feel like it's well worth the cost, but my big hope is that this sort of format catches on on a wider scale for not only test prep but also other types of interactive self-directed courses.

While I have no basis of comparison with other courses, the scores I received on practice exams as my exam approached steadily improved, and my actual score was my highest score. The adaptivity of the course seemed to be very helpful, as I had a constrained study period, and was able to obtain what is, based on the research I have done, a competitive score.

A definite pro that I would cite with respect to the course was the availability of real human being responses to my questions within a reasonable time period. Compared with other online courses I've taken, this exceeded my expectations. I really didn't feel severely disadvantaged by the fact that the course was online; in fact, as I could take it whenever I had time, I perhaps accomplished more studying that I may have otherwise.

Practice test score: 610 --> 730
Official GMAT score: 740

While I have cannot compare this course with other courses since I have no experience with others, I can confidently say that Economist GMAT Tutor is very effective in helping students understand the fundamentals of the tested topics. More importantly, it is tailored to each individual's needs, providing the most practice in his or her weakest areas. Above all, the program is very engaging and user-friendly, and is designed to make the user feel like an actual tutor is supervising and assisting him or her during the preparation process. I could not be more happy with my results from using the program!

I prepared for the GMAT in 4 weeks (during which I did not have any other commitments, so I could dedicate myself fully to studying) using the Economist Tutor.

Pros:
- Adaptive, meaning it will learn your strengths and weaknesses (through quizzing) and will give you problems that challenge you repeatedly, till you get better at them.
- Summary of your personal strong/weak topics is provided
- Very good support via internet/phone -- you will get a response in less than a day to any inquiries regarding problems you do not understand
-Thorough coverage of material in every topic, with more time dedicated to topics that are more frequently tested
- Good practice exams (minus the first diagnostic one-- I think this has many more challenging/strange problems than the others, my opinion..) that are quite reflective of performance/level of the official GMAT exams. Gives you confidence going into the real exam.
-Computer-based program, so you get used to solving problems on a computer

Cons:
- Statistics could be improved to give you a better sense of strengths and weaknesses per topic (rate of making mistakes, average time per question....)
- Tutoring sessions provided didn't really help me. I used 1 out the 4 available

I am halfway through this course and really enjoy the format - it makes it fun and keeps you engaged. Because you have to answer questions and prompt responses every few minutes, the program keeps you engaged. The periodic introduction of practice questions on previously covered material during the progressing course keeps all of the material fresh. I like that the program is self-paced and easily accessible (can be used on iphone and ipad or a computer, through a browser - no downloads needed!) - it is great for people who need flexibility. The site highlights your strengths and weaknesses and shows your progression through the content. The program has a great mix of fundamentals, tips and tricks.

I am giving 4 stars instead of 5 for functional shortcomings of the website: I would really like to see more features such as the ability to go "back" in instances of a misclick, the ability to "exit" a session in progress and the ability to replay whole modules. The site does give you summaries of each modules and revisits them with practice questions and reminders throughout but sometimes I would like to just go through the section again.

All in all, I think this program is going to boost my GMAT score tremendously over my initial practice test.

I have only been studying for about a month. This course is very good and teaching you the specific knowledge required for the GMAT. I already feel like I'm in a better place for the exam.

I have only started my preparation with GMAT Tutor from The Economist, but already it has exceeded my expectations.

I initially purchased and studied from a Kaplan GMAT textbook. Although I was able to score a 680 on my first GMAT test, this score was not to my satisfaction as I am aiming to attend an Ivy League MBA program or receive a very generous scholarship for another solid MBA program.

When studying from the Kaplan text, I could only learn so much as it catered to an "average" test taker. I wasn't able to expand on the technique I already knew, and because of this I wasn't able to score in the 700's.

I have only studied with GMAT Tutor for one month, but have already noticed a drastic improvement in my GMAT test-taking ability. GMAT Tutor is a computer adaptive program that adjusts the level of difficulty of the material to suit your needs as a student.

As a test-taker that is aiming for a top score, the GMAT Tutor study program has exceeded all my expectations, and has thus far prepared me well to reach a score well beyond 700.