Experience with Magoosh for GRE

[wdcollide]

I totally agree with this post. In fact, my story is somewhat more tragic than yours. I have so far taken the GRE twice - first time I took it with a total of 10 days of preparation and a full-time job (40+ hours a week). I used to wake up @4 am to study before heading to work @ 8am. I was actually sure I would score really badly. My scores were 158Q and 156V. I thought, wow, if I could manage these scores with 10 days of studying, a few months will do wonders. So I signed up for a premium service with Magoosh and solved all their 500+ quant problems. Got the hang of it quickly and I felt much better prepared than I was before my first exam. Their practice tests gave me an average of 163 and I was certain this was going to be a smooth ride. Took the test again, this time the scores were 156Q and 155V. I never studied for the verbal because it did not really matter so much to me. That I was terribly shocked and depressed would be an understatement to say the least.

 

I do not regret purchasing Magoosh but I do not think it prepared me to face the actual test. The questions in the actual exam turned out to be far trickier than anything I had experienced on Magoosh website. Moreover, some of the questions I received were pretty new to me - ironically Magoosh say on their website that parabolas rarely if ever come up, well, I got 2 hard questions on parabolas. I was ill-prepared to answer them.

 

I have read that Magoosh has helped lots of people raise their scores, it's good to hear that. Sadly I am one of those people who cannot rave about it.

Hi I was wondering if you can help me.

i cannot afford to buy it  

Since the subscription is valid for 6 months, is it possible you can help me by sharing the logins for your account as you have already used it.

 

 

Many many thanks in advance.

 

Regards

[nadimishka]

Well, here it goes...

 

1st attempt: summer before senior undergrad (2011), glanced through a Kaplan book, seven months pregnant. Q 141, V 155, AWA 4. Cried myself to sleep.... seriously though.

2nd attempt: during fall semester, senior undergrad (2011). Actually busted ass with Kaplan books. Ended up having to miss my grandmother's funeral because I couldn't afford to reschedule the exam. Q 140, V 157, AWA 4. Spent a great deal more crying.

 

Now, I DID get in to graduate school with these scores, as I am currently a master's student. However, I go to a state school and my program, while respected, is not a top tier program. I was told my scores averaged around 1000 on the old scale (which is the low cutoff for most schools).

 

3rd attempt: I'm applying to Ph.D.'s. Retake on 12/04/13. I used a combination of ETS's practice materials, Kaplan online practice sets, and Magoosh. As you can see above, my quant was ghastly. I found the Magoosh math review the best out of all, really helped break it down for me (esp. since I haven't had anything but stats since 2007). When it came to actual questions though, Kaplan had it hands down. That said, Magoosh's verbal flashcard app was absolutely fantastic (and did I mention absolutely free...?). Again, Kaplan's questions had it here, literally they're almost the same thing you will see on the exam.

So.... scores! Q 150, V 162, AWA 5. While I'm still not completely happy with the quant, I'm banking on the fact that I have an A in graduate-level statistics to help them realize I'm not an idiot (I just really don't care about math). I've also had two more years of academic experience in there, so I'm not attributing my score jumps to just the study materials.

 

However, I have taken the damn exam three times now. Literally, 12 hours of my life wasted taking that exam. Those questions haunt me in my sleep.

 

That being said, I recommend Magoosh for the math review (and I'm talking basic math reviews) and the verbal flashcards. If you want good question simulation, use Kaplan online. Hope this helps!

[moyru]

First time taking test:
Verbal: 155
Quant: 151
AWA: 4.5

I studied for about a week or so. It was hard since I work full-time as a teacher. I was disappointed by my scores but thought if I invested some time/effort, they'd increase to something decent.

I signed up for Magoosh. I really liked their vocab app (which is free) and found that their online videos for the verbal section were helpful, as they explained some strategies. The questions were also similar.

The math lessons were somewhat helpful (although the guy's voice is very boring) and I felt I understood only some of the concepts. He seemed to have very roundabout ways to solving problems, which confused me.

When it came to taking the test, I did worse in math!

My scores today were:

Verbal: 160
Quant: 148

Now while I increased in verbal, my quant score went down...so I really only increased my overall score by 2 points.

I've read that it's worked really well for others and I wish that was the case for me!

Edited December 13, 2013 by moyru

[gatorgrad]

I'm in love with their program, but even moreso with their customer service. I purchased the 6 month plan back in May, and had planned on taking the GRE in August. I wound up in the hospital during the better part of the summer, so I was unable to study. A week or so before it was going to expire, I emailed them asking if they could renew for just a month (Now taking the GRE on 1/2/14) for a reduced price, and they emailed me back within 24 hours saying they had extended it FREE OF CHARGE until 1/3/14 because of my circumstances (I had offered to provide documentation for the medical stuff if they had wanted it for proof).

 

I'm now crash-coursing it using Magoosh, ETS book, and my friends boyfriend who tutors for the SAT/LSAT/GRE/GMAT because I'm scoring extraordinarily low in quant - 90% in verbal, 20% in quant

 

I seriously recommend it to anyone. The videos are extremely helpful, and if the video still leaves you confused, just email them - and get a response within 12 hours most times.

[Tin Sn]

I took GRE for three times.and I use Marathon and Magoosh during preparing for the GRE test.
To be honest, as a student who graduated in a country outside the US and does not use English as the mother language,   
I believe that both verbal and quantitative score can hardly been improved within three months.
As my scores are 161Q/145V 161Q/143V and 167Q/147V, the luck and stress have crucial roles on the drop and the rise of the score.
 

Before the first round, I realized that my verbal skills is my weakness. Thus, I paid a lot of my efforts on this to improve myself. I began with the Marathon Flash cards and read its books. I bought all three books on verbals and three books for probability, words problem, and data interpretation. After finishing the plies which consuming about a month, I took my first test. Actually, I was disappointed by my quantitative parts as well as my verbal parts. I found that  my lack of score is due to the fact that I forgot a lot of basics in Math. That is the reason why I moved to Magoosh product. 
   

Magoosh really helps remind me some important math rules that  I forgot, as well as the explanation on verbal part is quit good for me.

The exercise provided by Magoosh for verbal parts helps me understand how to analysis the reading passage, and how to answer the questions in text completion. However, the worst thing about Magoosh is that  the questions are rotated. So, most of the time, my score on Magoosh is incredibly inflated due to that I was unintentionally recognized the answers.
I spent two months on Magoosh, but my score on ETS pratice test showed a little bit of improvement.
This is like a prediction that my score on the second round would be like a hell on the test day. 

Another point about Magoosh is that it cannot help me on the writing section !!!!!! All the things that Magoosh has on the writing section are videos guiding and giving examples on how to write. I needs to find another sources helping on my essays. 
 

My score is pretty low and lower than the previous one, but this does not mean that Magoosh is not good. In fact, Magoosh helps me understand the language better. The lower score is due to the stress that I put on myself, as I believed that I would be better, and I was very tired as I always had three section on verbal and two on quantitative. 

 

I decided to improve only my math part seriously. I omitted the verbal section as I really don't know what to do. 

I used Marathon (8lb book) for my math part.
To my surprise, on the test date, I had three section on quantitative parts, and two on the verbal parts.
I have less stress as I felt that I can do well.
In addition, solving math problems consume less energy than reading a whole paragraphs and still wondering about the meaning of the authors. My score is better than before.

I planed to take it for the fourth round. The average GRE score for EE dept is incredibly high, and with my current score I was rejected  by many top twenty universities.   

Hope this helps  

Edited April 14, 2014 by Tin Sn

[victorydance]

http://magoosh.com/gre/2012/6-month-gre-study-plan-for-math-beginners/

 

I have been doing this for two months now. It's been great, math skills have really improved as I hadn't intensively used them in a while.

[ExponentialDecay]

Go old school with the Kaplan textbook.

[Guest |||]

I'd also recommend going princeton book over kaplan.

[Mayflour]

http://magoosh.com/gre/2012/6-month-gre-study-plan-for-math-beginners/

 

I have been doing this for two months now. It's been great, math skills have really improved as I hadn't intensively used them in a while.

 

I have been following the same program (I just finished week 4)!  I find the structure very helpful for motivation and time management.  I like the Magoosh site and get a lot out of the video lessons and practice problems, but I like that the above program gives you a ton of variety with the different test prep books..  That way if Magoosh does have some shortcomings as previous posters have mentioned, the other books and practice tests through ETS and Manhattan can provide some extra coverage.

 

I've found that I'm pretty strong in Verbal (I got a 163 on the practice test I just finished) but need a lot more work with math (154).  I plan on taking the test in September (5 months) and really hope that Magoosh/all these books/all this time will be worth it when it comes to the quant section!

 

Since your math skills have been improving.. do you have any tips/anything you did besides the 6 month outline?

[victorydance]

I agree about the range of resources. I find that every single resource has strengths and weaknesses. Taking a multi-pronged approach is definitely the way to go.

 

I haven't really done too much outside of the schedule. But I think three things:

 

1) Whenever you are reading one of the sections or watching a video and they pull up one of those "according to this rule" write it down either in the note section or in a workbook. I find that you will be watching the video of a question you didn't get right and the solution will just throw out some random rule that you had no idea existed. It can be confusing and cumbersome to remember all these so I think writing them down and reviewing them every once in a while helps drill them into your head.

 

2) Master the fundamentals. I don't know about you, but one of the reasons my quant scores are weak is because I just am really rusty on basic algebra. Computations with radicals, exponents, fractions, ect. I haven't done in a while. I found/find that I am much better now just because I relearned a lot of algebraic skills. Since 90% of questions on the GRE have some component of algebra on them, mastering these skills makes everything that much easier. 

 

3) Skip the essay writing exercises and do extra math questions. Once again, you might be different but I have no need whatsoever to work on my essay writing skills. I am also not sure why they spend so much time on this in the schedule compared to the verbal section. Not only that, but I think it's kind of a waste of time; time that could be spent more productively on other things. 

[henryk8675309]

I took the actual GRE cold and got 152Q/158V. I have been using Magoosh for a few weeks and took a practice today and got a 158Q/158V (I think I got lucky with my first GRE verbal score). My experience thus far has shown that Magoosh does a good job of helping me think through the math questions carefully. Their questions certainly are tricky and have been a huge help to me thus far. The dashboard estimator is a little wonky I think. It has me at 154-159 Q and 153-158 V. I would say its probably underscoring me a few points on average. We'll see over the next few weeks if it starts to trend farther up.

 

EDIT

I should add that I took the ETS practice test after my first exam and got a 156Q 155V. This is perhaps the most accurate test so far I have heard. After looking at a lot of different forums and reading a lot of blogs...I am of the opinion that the exact scores that any given service will give you is accurate to within 4 to 6 points. I know that's a huge and perhaps unhelpful range, but that's as ubiquitous an observation as I can find.

Edited June 25, 2014 by henryk8675309

[bsharpe269]

My original practice tests were around 163Q, 153V and after 4 months of studying with magoosh my actual were scores were 168Q, 162V. I did their practice questions around once a week for a couple hours and then used the vocab app a few times a week for about 15 min each time. I really liked it!

[xolo]

I used Magoosh but only a couple of days so I would understand the test format.  Didn't really use it much beyond that, but it was good to know what to expect as far as exam format.  Magoosh estimated 163-168V and 156-161Q [that was from the pretty pie charts with 50 answers logged, I didn't take any of the practice exams, that was too boring to contemplate!].  My actual scores were 163V and 156Q.  I guess I did OK, halfway through the exam the frigging test proctor started noisily cleaning the room and using some kind of stinky cleaner fluid - very distracting!!!