| What you're actually getting |
A glimpse into how test prep worked when your grandparents were young. Their main selling points are "We invented test prep," and "80 years of experience." |
Your money's worth. |
290+ video lessons, 6 full-length (and fully inaccurate) practice tests, and a very misleading sense of how you'll perform when you see questions written by someone who actually knows the test. |
Human experts who care deeply about helping you succeed, with carefully curated and time-tested structure and resources to back that up. |
| Explained in cooking terms |
Have you ever visited someone in a city full of amazing restaurants and asked about where you should eat and they're like "oh there is a McDonald's right on the corner, it's super convenient" and you're like "but is that our best option?" |
All you can eat buffet, $7.99 — including videos of our Celebrity Chef cooking in his home kitchen. If you're the kind of cook who figures things out on your own, you'll probably get at least what you paid for. |
They built a replica of a grocery store; the aisles are full of fake food. They hand you a lumpy piece of cardboard and tell you to cook something. A video appears and says "Close! That was a potato! With a real one, just throw it in the oven — BAM, french fries." |
You work with an expert chef in a small group, making practice meals every week — you get comfortable with real-time feedback, critique, and someone who can celebrate when you make something great and help you out when you're struggling to pull something off. |
| What is their core business / focus? |
GMAT, SAT, ACT, AP, PSAT, ASVAB, USMLE, DAT, OAT, NCLEX-RN, BAR, GED, COLLEGE ADVISING, COMLEX USA (Level 1 + 2), USMLE, USMLE Step 1, 2. and 3, TOEFL, IELTS, Navy-Wide Advancement Exam, MCAT, NCLEX-RN, NCLEX-PN, Nursing Educators, CCRN, FNP, NCLEX International, ISEE, SHSAT, SSAT, PRAXIS, BMAT, Real Estate Licensing, Real Estate CE, Contracting Education, Home Inspection, PE, FE, FS/PS, LEED GA, PMP, NCIDQ, CFP, Professional Designations, CAIA, CFA, FRM, Insurance CE, Insurance Licensing, Securities Licensing, IAR CE, ARE 5.0, CPE, Police Entrance Exam, GRE, and LSAT. |
GRE. Though it really seems like he wanted to set himself up for GRE + GMAT, right? |
GMAT, SAT, ACT, TOEFL, IELTS, MCAT, GRE, and LSAT. |
Helping you score your best on the GRE. Those are the only courses we offer (though we do have tutoring and other options for the GMAT). |
| What are your options when you're learning something new and you're struggling or frustrated |
Get help from an instructor who may or may not have experience (none is required), and may or may not have done well on the actual GRE (1 out of every 10 GRE test takers is score qualified to teach with them). |
Go to the forums. And like all internet forums, it's a mix of great, mediocre, and downright misleading advice. Too many cooks. |
Email a "tutor" and wait. Or just go somewhere else if you don't have time for that. |
A real instructor who works with you to understand the root of the issue and helps you navigate around it. |
| Who is this system designed for |
People who don't know that better options exist — or whose company is paying. |
People who want to basically self-study, but get some tips on the side. |
Paraphrasing their FAQ, "People who prefer videos to actually studying." |
Students who learn by doing, by structure, and feedback. |
| Vibe |
Company-wide mandatory corporate training seminar on accounting controls designed to prevent "material misstatement." |
No notes here. Greg has a great "industry outsider" vibe and positive "stick it to the man" energy. Good for him. |
I don't know, YouTube? They call it a "video-based approach." |
We're a small business owned by our teachers, and we do this because we love teaching and love to see our students succeed. That shows. |
| Priorities / What Drives Decisions |
Quarterly earnings reports. Owned by Graham Holdings Company — a diversified conglomerate that also owns TV stations, healthcare companies, auto dealerships, and a pressure-treated wood supplier. Kaplan is their largest division at ~$1.3B revenue and 12,000+ employees globally. It's hard to overstate how little they care about your success. |
Hard to say. He did attempt to sell the business for a while. |
Scale? Month on Month Growth? Subscription retention rates? |
(1) What is best for our students.
(2) What is best for our teachers.
(3) Making the whole thing as enjoyable as possible. |
| Means of Recruiting Students |
Sales are almost entirely driven by advertising (Generally the #1 paid result for any GRE prep search) — you're paying for ads, not for education. |
Sales are almost entirely driven by advertising (Generally the #4 paid result for any GRE prep search). |
Sales are almost entirely driven by advertising (Generally the #3 paid result for any GRE prep search) — you're paying for ads, not for education. |
Word of mouth and reviews. The only way we grow is by making sure every student has a genuinely good experience — so that is where our energy goes. |
| Philosophy on Face to Face, Live Interactive Time with Other Humans |
We've got an R&D team working on a solution to that and will get back to you when we've eradicated it. |
Not really practical here; we'll settle for videos and giant groups, not individual interactive sessions. |
Not our thing. |
Get as much of it as possible. Spending time working through hard things with good people is the best part of this whole process. |
| Most likely to be endorsed by |
Test Prep Insight — one of the biggest "independent" review sites — is a Kaplan affiliate, disclosed in fine print. Their "#1 GRE Exam Prep Book by Test Prep Insight" claim is from their own affiliate. |
Reddit. GregMat is really in with the folks over there. Normally forum policies discourage endorsements of 3rd party Test Prep but somehow that policy doesn't apply to them. |
The small percentage of their massive subscriber base who sees good results and, correctly or otherwise, credits Magoosh for them. |
Our students. If you've taken the time to read this far in this ridiculous chart, take the time to read any of the 1000+ reviews people have left all over the internet and see what studying with us is really like. |
| Which direction does the learning travel? |
"On-screen teacher leads class while a team of off-screen teachers answers questions in a private chat." So classes are big lectures and the on-screen teacher can't stop them to help you, but you're welcome to DM someone who may or may not be a chatbot while class continues to move on without you. |
Mostly from the videos to you; somewhat from the forums to you. The problem here is a lack of curation and focus. |
One direction: from the video toward you. Everything depends on the videos having exactly what you need (unfortunately they do not) and you absorbing all of it. Good luck. |
Every direction: you ask questions, your peers model different approaches, your instructor gives real answers, your own practice reveals what's actually working — and SGT gives you a weekly session to work through whatever still isn't sitting right. |
| Which do they take more seriously: Quant or Verbal? |
Their quant material approximates the GRE — it is mediocre but harmless. Their verbal material is so unlike the real test that it is actually harmful to your ability to score well on official questions. |
This is basically a math program. There are some vocab resources that are practical but not ideal; there isn't really much to help you with reading comprehension. |
Unfortunately, neither. Magoosh isn't really about serious study. It's the "Low Calorie" version of Test Prep — "try this and maybe you'll find it sufficient." |
Roughly equally. You get significant time with a section expert in each of the three sections. Though if we're completely honest, we do offer 12 hours of classroom instruction for verbal and quant and only 9 hours for Data Insights, so you could argue that we give DI slightly less importance. |
| If you had to choose: quantity or quality? |
Profit. They're not really pretending to care about quantity or quality or anything except their own profit. Just read any of the countless 1-star reviews from people who had to deal with this company. |
Gregmat doesn't aim to have the most stuff — just to have "lots of stuff" or the highest quality. It's kind of a mess. The pitch here is "more quantity and quality than $8 will get you elsewhere" and that's not wrong. |
Quantity. Pretty clearly. Everything they write is like "290 video lessons." |
Quality. Hands down. Though we push for as much quantity as we can without sacrificing it. That's why we keep class sizes small instead of running bigger groups. That's why we offer live homework help instead of pre-recorded explanations. And that's why we have so many 5-star reviews: our goal is to give you the best experience we can. |
| Pricing Philosophy |
We have a division that handles that as part of our responsibility to maximize returns for the holding company. |
If we make it cheap enough, people will forgive and forget. They'll forgive the fact that it isn't an adequate stand alone study system for most, and forget that they're still paying for it even though they finished studying months ago. |
We'll make 6 months cost only slightly more than 1 month, because we know that our best shot at getting you to pay for more than 1 month is before you spend any time with our platform. |
What is the least we can charge while still giving the most resources and support? How can we keep our overhead costs nearly non-existent? You won't find anywhere else where you get as much expert time for less money. |