GMAT Review Courses

As I have mentioned in my previous posts, I am thinking about taking a GMAT review course. Not because I have extra hundreds of dollars just sitting in my bank account waiting to be spent on something but because I do think that some extra help might be helpful overall. One of fellow applicant blogger mentioned that maybe I am not doomed to retake the GMAT but I do think that if I go ahead without retaking it and get dinged from all the schools, I will blame my GMAT scores to be one of major reasons. I just want to eliminate that possibility as much as possible. Maybe I just want to get my ass covered from me kicking at the end of the day. I just want to be able to say "Ok, kooljaek, you really have tried to do your best." And that's all good.

So, I have been doing some research on the prep courses. And dang!! They are not cheap.

There are three test prep centres that I can find in the area. I am sure if I search harder, I can find more but this is as many I would look into. The followings are what I have found.

Kaplan - I mean no doubt that Kaplan course would be good. (Or is it?) Apparently most money. They do guarantee you with the higher score (whatever that means). I talked to someone at the prep centre and she gave me the whole deal on everything. Like how many sample tests you can write and blah blah blah and if you are not satisfied then you can use their services for another three months and if you want to take a course again you can do so for a lot less money then first time. So basically 2 month program 20 hrs of class time (I think) for $1,300. For me, the Kaplan location is not as convenient as others but it's Kaplan.

Princeton Review - This one... Hmm the next review course starts in July 11 and goes till Sept 19. That's way too late. Forget it. I have taken Princeton Review GMAT Verbal prep class LONG LONG LONG time ago (4 yrs ago) in Korea when I was visiting for a couple of months. It was a bore. I mean, it was crap. They did not teach anything. Maybe I am just a sucker for believing it might be different in Canada.

Veritas GMAT Prep - Never heard of them. So not sure how good they are. Not that I know how good Kaplan and Princeton Review are. Anyways, their class session hours are double of what Kaplan and Princeton Review offer for the same money. So my reasonable question should be; is the quality of the course getting compromised by the quantity (i.e. number of hours)? That is the question.

Without further knowledge of classes, my first pick is Veritas for the following reasons.

1. Location - easiest for me to get to
2. More hours - the thing is I only need to be prepped for verbal. Kaplan and Princeton courses are all about 20-24 hr long, which means I only get verbal-prepped for 10 hours or so. Veritas program is 40 hour long so I get verbal-prepped for 20 hours or so. But not sure what number of hours really represents.
3. Schedule - Veritas's program starts early July and finishes in late August. All others creep into Sept. I CANNOT let it hanging in till mid Sept.

Anyways, Kaplan says I can sit in their class any time. So I will try that sometime soon.

I was going to talk about "HBS and Stanford; is it worth it stuff" this posting but oh well. That has to move to the next posting.

If you have experienced GMAT review courses (I also understand that there is a possibility of it being completely waste of the money), please share. I would love to hear other thoughts and experiences. : )