Why I chose Veritas Prep this time (but almost chose Manhattan GMAT last time)

While I was overseas during the holiday break, I signed up for a Veritas Prep course (I wanted to have the books at my door by the time I got back).

Making the decision between Veritas Prep and Manhattan GMAT (the two main companies in this space and, from all that I could tell, the two leaders in the industry by a long shot) was very difficult.

Both seemed to be established GMAT preparation services offering a very similar packages. As mentioned earlier, there aren't too many unbiased sources of information out there and, of course, even out of the "genuine" reviews, everyone has differences in opinion.

Two of the more useful forums, GMAT Club (stacked full of actual test takers and generally very useful) and Beat The GMAT (more of a commercial platform of some sort but offers discounts on the various preparation packages at no cost), have been somewhat infiltrated by fanboys and seeds (on the one hand) and haters and counterseeds (on the other hand).

This link provides a very good place to start for people's opinions of Veritas Prep, Manhattan GMAT and a host of other GMAT prep programs like Kaplan, Knewton and The Princeton Review.

In a nutshell, Veritas Prep and Manhattan GMAT both offer essentially two types of courses (I'm ignoring private tutoring - if you can afford that, you probably don't need to go to business school in the first place).

1. The first type is in-class training. There are various types of in-class training courses, from essentials courses (high level) to full blown courses (weekly or bi-weekly depending on which one) to "boot camps" (all classes crammed into a week) and the like. Veritas Prep also gives you access to the full set of pre-recorded classes (and I assume Manhattan GMAT does the same) in case you miss a class or in case you just want to go over a certain class again. Although Veritas Prep advertises that this access lasts for 6 months, it looks like I have access for something like 1 year and 3 months (hey, I'm not complaining).
2. The second type is online self-guided training. This is cheaper and you can either select "live" online classes where you log in at specified times (and, like a real class, these are live and interactive), or you can go for the pre-recorded classes only. The key difference in the pre-recorded classes is that the Veritas Prep classes are not technically classes since there is just an instructor going through the material and telling you to pause at certain times to answer questions in the workbook. The Manhattan GMAT classes are literally classes where you see people asking questions and instructors answering them. I don't think there's much difference. It might be useful to see what bothered other people and how those questions were answered. It might also be annoying though. In either type, you get the full set of written materials and access to practice exams.

Why did I ultimately sign up for Veritas Prep? At the end of the day, it came down to practicality - Veritas Prep offered in-class training in my city. I do not have enough self-discipline to learn the whole GMAT course by myself. Therefore, I knew that I had to enroll for some kind of class to force myself to get into gear. In other words, I didn't really have a choice. Having said that, the decision was only between Veritas Prep and Manhattan GMAT (having whittled it down to these two from the plethora of choices out there).

Manhattan GMAT reckons that Veritas Prep's rapid expansion (Veritas Prep started in 2002 out of Yale and already services 60 cities; Manhattan GMAT has been around for longer and does not service nearly as many) means one thing: it is either a "very impressive" feat or other things have been sacrificed, eg, quality of teaching and standards in hiring. I think that is Manhattan GMAT drinking too much hater-aide.

On a final note, a couple of years ago I signed up for free one hour lectures from both Vertias Prep and Manhattan GMAT. I think you can still do that now.

I also wasted a whole of time doing a meticulous comparison based on a thorough reading of their websites and any online review I could get a hold of.

The point of this story is that I remember coming out of that process thinking that Manhattan GMAT was slightly better and and more useful (especially after sitting both free classes), and proceeded to email them about their packages on offer. Also, there were no Veritas Prep classes in my city starting any time soon, so that may have factored into my thinking (ie, if there were no courses in my city, all I could compare were the materials on offer and what people said about the pre-recorded classes - on the basis of those alone, and my experience from the free lectures, I thought that Manhattan GMAT had the edge, but only slightly).

In the next post, I'll give a rundown of the preparation that I've done so far.