What separates Test Prep Unlimited from all other GMAT tutors?
We were named the top GMAT tutors in New York City by topmba.com!
We are the only GMAT tutoring company on the planet to offer a specific, quantified, flat-fee score increase guarantee for private tutoring!
The number one question you need to ask the competition is "What is your score guarantee policy for private tutoring?"
The best you'll find elsewhere is that some tutoring companies guarantee that if you enroll in a group class (6-12 students, not 1-1 tutoring) your score will change, but they do not specify by how much. That is an empty guarantee: Of course your score is going to increase if you study! That they do not offer a specific prediction means that they:
1) Are not confident in their service,
2) Do not even know how effective their service is, and/or
3) Don't want to reveal that information to you).
Ask anyone you are considering working with "What results can I expect for 15k of private tutoring?". Only TPU will give you a written contract. For what you're spending (time, money, energy), you deserve a promise, not a shrug and a mere "We'll try.". With the number of students and the amount of data the main GMAT tutoring companies have, lack of a guarantee speaks volumes.
We are the only GMAT tutoring company in the world to publish average student score increase rates.
No other tutoring companies or independent tutors publish theirs--because they aren't very high!
If you ask what results you can expect, you will get one of the following:
1) An "I have no idea" shrug,
2) "It depends", but no significant elaboration beyond that,
3) Empty promises by the sales team.
At 5-13 points per tutoring hour with our lead instructor, our typical new-to-GMAT students have the fastest score increase rates IN THE WORLD.
If you put the work into it, together we will raise your score faster than you could any other way. The record for a Test Prep Unlimited student is currently 15 points per hour (90 point increase with 6 hours of tutoring and about 30 hours of self-study).
You get to work directly with Josh, our founder and CEO, who is a featured author for Wikihow and Quora test preparation articles.
We were invited to GMAC's (invitation-only) GMAT Test Prep Summit.
About 25 representatives from the world's top test prep providers attended and discussed trends in the industry and the future of the test to help GMAC develop their product, as well as getting privileged information no other GMAT tutors have.
We were invited to both the QS World MBA Tour in Palo Alto and The MBA Tour in San Francisco. Click here for notes from the QS talk. (This is how we were invited to GMAC's GMAT Test Prep Summit.)
Hult International Business School invited us to give a GMAT workshop.
Students routinely come to us after the big tutoring companies and other top GMAT instructors fail to deliver.
These companies are widely believed to be "the best". However, they are only the best known options, because of their large marketing budgets. If they really delivered the best results, why don't they offer a score guarantee or publish their typical student score increase rates?
We provide more practice materials than any other test prep company, at no extra cost.
Many test prep companies use only the materials they've published, plus OG. That may be enough if you're already within 60 points of a sub-700 target score, but if you want a large score increase, or if you want to push into the mid-high 700's, you're going to need more than that. They do not want you to use their competition's materials, even if you could stand to benefit from doing so.
We are looking out for your best interest: Not only do we recommend the best of what each test prep company has to offer, but we also cover the cost for you and offer multiple comprehensive, full-course strategy guides, plus THOUSANDS of extra practice questions (beyond GMAC's materials) accompanied by insightful edits/comments.
We do not use Manhattan's or Veritas's full course guides because we have found them ineffective. Many test preparation materials have typos/inefficient solutions (especially the Official Guide's quant explanations--terrible). We have improved course materials with clearer, more efficient, and more effective explanations. We teach you the strategies for how to answer GMAT questions in the most efficient way, period.
Our e-materials are available for download, so you can get started on your tutoring assignments immediately.
You don't have to wait days to get started on your materials, or go anywhere to get them!
We give you specific, accurate goals to motivate and structure your study.
Other test preparation firms have a very poor understanding of what it will take to get you to your target, and consequently cannot effectively plan your studies.
We are experts at helping students of all ability levels.
Most major test prep classes are geared toward students starting in the 500-600 range, and most top independent private tutors only know how to work most effectively with students starting in a certain range (which probably isn't yours). We on the other hand have taken students from the 400's into the 700's, so we know the know the ENTIRE process.
We design a complete, unique syllabus for every student's 1-1 tutoring.
Major test prep providers do not provide this level of guidance, and instead simply offer a mass produced curriculum and connect student to tutor. Unlike our founder and lead curriculum designer, these tutors are not education consultants with experience in curriculum design. You will find no cookie-cutter, mass-produced GMAT curriculum with Test Prep Unlimited. Our founder applies his educational consulting experience to create a unique course for each and every one of our students, from start to finish. Other independent GMAT tutors do not offer comprehensive coverage of the topics in a systematic and coherent way, but rather rely on practice tests and questions, which present the topics in a random fashion. This is a waste of the practice tests and a horribly inefficient way of learning. In fact it's a big enough issue that I've addressed it in the GMAT Myths page.
Our tutors have taken recent GMATs or are fully immersed in GMAT tutoring.
Some high scorers took the test 10-20 years ago and are out of the GMAT mindset. GMAT is an art form that must be constantly practiced, or skills fade quickly!
An 800 from more than 5+ years ago does not carry the same weight as an 800 now, and these instructors would not be able to duplicate their scores if they took the exam today. If we go farther back in time to, say, the year 2003, we are at an ancient time when the GMAT pool was far less competitive: Test preparation has come a long way in the past couple of decades. This was shortly after the switch from paper tests to the current computer adaptive version. Think about it--2003 was before Facebook, Twitter, and iPhones!
Our tutors keep their GMAT prowess fresh, either by taking the test recently and/or living and breathing GMAT.
Most tutoring companies lack an impactful Verbal approach.
This is especially true for Reading Comprehension. They often take a fatalistic approach: "You have to learn that on your own." We will teach you strategies to focus on what's important in the passage and question, and how to quickly recognize incorrect answers. Don't leave points on the table with Verbal! Remember, both Quant and Verbal are out of 51 points. A 40 in Verbal, though 89th %ile, is still 11 points away from the max.
Most companies offer subpar materials and questions, especially for Verbal.
They fail to replicate the spirit of real GMAT questions, and consequently are nonideal materials for you to practice with as the test approaches. Additionally, they only use materials designed by their own company. That means whatever deficiencies the materials have are not balance by other materials. We at TPU offer you the best materials out there, which have been handpicked to form a complete approach to maximizing your score. Speaking of which,
Most GMAT prep materials are designed to have just the right holes to frustrate you and lead you to private tutoring.
If you can already get a top score alone, you don't need those materials. If you need them, you will most likely need an instructor as well. But most test preparation company instructors are short-term part-time employees, not master teachers, invested in your success.
You can get the same results in 10 hours with TPU that you can from an entire 27 hour Manhattan or Veritas class, and in less time!
Get individualized instruction and move at your own pace, not the group pace. Group classes progress slowly, as the instructor has other students solve problems, which takes up your valuable time. Students are there to learn; They don't have an interest in or the qualifications for teaching. Also note that when a company says for example that they have 4200+ problems for their course, only maybe 1000 of those are relevant to you--You’re only interested in the ones at/slightly above your skill level, and you probably only need to focus on some sections more than others). With OG/GMAC materials alone, you already have nearly that many problems, plus we provide plenty of specialized materials.
Josh is a master teacher with an education background.
He was an educational consultant for Chicago Public Schools, and designed and taught the entire upper-level honors math curriculum for a Chicago high school. The former is something that *no* other GMAT instructor has done, and that makes Josh by far the best Quant tutor out there. GMAT Quant questions can be very challenging, even for someone who studied math in college, but as far as prerequisites, they do not require any special knowledge beyond what the average high school student has (not even calculus). They only require learning how to apply such knowledge in the challenging question format of the GMAT. So Josh's background puts him at a distinct advantage compared with all other GMAT instructors. Josh can explain the necessary foundations in simplified ways accessible to a person without an advanced math background. Additionally, GMAT Verbal questions rely on logic as much as they do your Verbal ability, and Josh is well-equipped to help fortify your logical foundations as applied to the Verbal section.
Our instructors are more highly incentivized to ensure your success. No principal-agent problem here.
We factor student score increase rates into our tutor evaluations. Most tutoring companies have no such performance benchmarks, and the tutors are implicitly incentivized to drag things out for as long as possible (principal-agent problem). That is money that could be going to faster and higher quality instruction. Any private instructor who delivers results should be paid according to how they perform. Our service is entirely results-oriented, and relies on personal recommendation. Part-time tutors at test-prep firms rely on the firms' large marketing budgets, and will get students' business no matter what. Moreover, we offer a Score Guarantee so that you know we are incentivized to do things as quickly as possible, and will only cover with you what will get you the best results.
Josh has been self-employed full-time as a private tutor for a decade, and has over 10,000 hours of teaching experience.
That speaks to both his experience and demand. Most private tutors, especially if they work for a company, are only tutoring on the side and do not have the extensive background and skill that Josh has. In a recent job posting for a major company, the recruiter stated that the teacher would have "between 3 and 20 hours of instruction per week, depending on market demand". 20 hours of instruction is only for their most experienced and in-demand tutors, during peak time in the application season. Also, all tutors have to sign a noncompete, precluding any other GMAT work, which means that even for the most advanced tutors, the upper bound is around 150 hours of instruction per year. The average tutor at a company will have significantly less experience. Not even half of that time is one-on-one tutoring, which you get with us.
We will help you restructure your way of approaching questions.
"If you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done." Doing better on the the GMAT is not just about applying your existing strategies faster, or being able to answer more difficult questions. It's also about how you conceptualize and approach the questions. It’s much easier to climb a mountain if you can see the path from afar before you begin climbing. This is true for answering individual questions as well as for your entire study plan. Josh will help you gain that perspective and will give you the tools to scale the mountains, little and big. Few other tutors have the vision, independence, and leadership to truly help you do your best.
No bogus or outdated strategies--only what works!
Many tutoring companies suggest trying to manipulate the GMAT scoring algorithm (e.g. adjust your timing for the first and/or last questions, etc.). This all stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the test is scored, combined with catering to the desire of students to get things done in the quick and dirty way. The truth is it takes work to raise your GMAT, and while there are more and less efficient ways to do that, there isn't much "gaming" you can do, because the test-makers did an excellent job of making sure the test actually measures something useful.
We are the only GMAT tutoring company on the planet to offer a specific, quantified, flat-fee score increase guarantee for private tutoring!
The number one question you need to ask the competition is "What is your score guarantee policy for private tutoring?"
The best you'll find elsewhere is that some tutoring companies guarantee that if you enroll in a group class (6-12 students, not 1-1 tutoring) your score will change, but they do not specify by how much. That is an empty guarantee: Of course your score is going to increase if you study! That they do not offer a specific prediction means that they:
1) Are not confident in their service,
2) Do not even know how effective their service is, and/or
3) Don't want to reveal that information to you).
Ask anyone you are considering working with "What results can I expect for 15k of private tutoring?". Only TPU will give you a written contract. For what you're spending (time, money, energy), you deserve a promise, not a shrug and a mere "We'll try.". With the number of students and the amount of data the main GMAT tutoring companies have, lack of a guarantee speaks volumes.
We are the only GMAT tutoring company in the world to publish average student score increase rates.
No other tutoring companies or independent tutors publish theirs--because they aren't very high!
If you ask what results you can expect, you will get one of the following:
1) An "I have no idea" shrug,
2) "It depends", but no significant elaboration beyond that,
3) Empty promises by the sales team.
At 5-13 points per tutoring hour with our lead instructor, our typical new-to-GMAT students have the fastest score increase rates IN THE WORLD.
If you put the work into it, together we will raise your score faster than you could any other way. The record for a Test Prep Unlimited student is currently 15 points per hour (90 point increase with 6 hours of tutoring and about 30 hours of self-study).
You get to work directly with Josh, our founder and CEO, who is a featured author for Wikihow and Quora test preparation articles.
We were invited to GMAC's (invitation-only) GMAT Test Prep Summit.
About 25 representatives from the world's top test prep providers attended and discussed trends in the industry and the future of the test to help GMAC develop their product, as well as getting privileged information no other GMAT tutors have.
We were invited to both the QS World MBA Tour in Palo Alto and The MBA Tour in San Francisco. Click here for notes from the QS talk. (This is how we were invited to GMAC's GMAT Test Prep Summit.)
Hult International Business School invited us to give a GMAT workshop.
Students routinely come to us after the big tutoring companies and other top GMAT instructors fail to deliver.
These companies are widely believed to be "the best". However, they are only the best known options, because of their large marketing budgets. If they really delivered the best results, why don't they offer a score guarantee or publish their typical student score increase rates?
We provide more practice materials than any other test prep company, at no extra cost.
Many test prep companies use only the materials they've published, plus OG. That may be enough if you're already within 60 points of a sub-700 target score, but if you want a large score increase, or if you want to push into the mid-high 700's, you're going to need more than that. They do not want you to use their competition's materials, even if you could stand to benefit from doing so.
We are looking out for your best interest: Not only do we recommend the best of what each test prep company has to offer, but we also cover the cost for you and offer multiple comprehensive, full-course strategy guides, plus THOUSANDS of extra practice questions (beyond GMAC's materials) accompanied by insightful edits/comments.
We do not use Manhattan's or Veritas's full course guides because we have found them ineffective. Many test preparation materials have typos/inefficient solutions (especially the Official Guide's quant explanations--terrible). We have improved course materials with clearer, more efficient, and more effective explanations. We teach you the strategies for how to answer GMAT questions in the most efficient way, period.
Our e-materials are available for download, so you can get started on your tutoring assignments immediately.
You don't have to wait days to get started on your materials, or go anywhere to get them!
We give you specific, accurate goals to motivate and structure your study.
Other test preparation firms have a very poor understanding of what it will take to get you to your target, and consequently cannot effectively plan your studies.
We are experts at helping students of all ability levels.
Most major test prep classes are geared toward students starting in the 500-600 range, and most top independent private tutors only know how to work most effectively with students starting in a certain range (which probably isn't yours). We on the other hand have taken students from the 400's into the 700's, so we know the know the ENTIRE process.
We design a complete, unique syllabus for every student's 1-1 tutoring.
Major test prep providers do not provide this level of guidance, and instead simply offer a mass produced curriculum and connect student to tutor. Unlike our founder and lead curriculum designer, these tutors are not education consultants with experience in curriculum design. You will find no cookie-cutter, mass-produced GMAT curriculum with Test Prep Unlimited. Our founder applies his educational consulting experience to create a unique course for each and every one of our students, from start to finish. Other independent GMAT tutors do not offer comprehensive coverage of the topics in a systematic and coherent way, but rather rely on practice tests and questions, which present the topics in a random fashion. This is a waste of the practice tests and a horribly inefficient way of learning. In fact it's a big enough issue that I've addressed it in the GMAT Myths page.
Our tutors have taken recent GMATs or are fully immersed in GMAT tutoring.
Some high scorers took the test 10-20 years ago and are out of the GMAT mindset. GMAT is an art form that must be constantly practiced, or skills fade quickly!
An 800 from more than 5+ years ago does not carry the same weight as an 800 now, and these instructors would not be able to duplicate their scores if they took the exam today. If we go farther back in time to, say, the year 2003, we are at an ancient time when the GMAT pool was far less competitive: Test preparation has come a long way in the past couple of decades. This was shortly after the switch from paper tests to the current computer adaptive version. Think about it--2003 was before Facebook, Twitter, and iPhones!
Our tutors keep their GMAT prowess fresh, either by taking the test recently and/or living and breathing GMAT.
Most tutoring companies lack an impactful Verbal approach.
This is especially true for Reading Comprehension. They often take a fatalistic approach: "You have to learn that on your own." We will teach you strategies to focus on what's important in the passage and question, and how to quickly recognize incorrect answers. Don't leave points on the table with Verbal! Remember, both Quant and Verbal are out of 51 points. A 40 in Verbal, though 89th %ile, is still 11 points away from the max.
Most companies offer subpar materials and questions, especially for Verbal.
They fail to replicate the spirit of real GMAT questions, and consequently are nonideal materials for you to practice with as the test approaches. Additionally, they only use materials designed by their own company. That means whatever deficiencies the materials have are not balance by other materials. We at TPU offer you the best materials out there, which have been handpicked to form a complete approach to maximizing your score. Speaking of which,
Most GMAT prep materials are designed to have just the right holes to frustrate you and lead you to private tutoring.
If you can already get a top score alone, you don't need those materials. If you need them, you will most likely need an instructor as well. But most test preparation company instructors are short-term part-time employees, not master teachers, invested in your success.
You can get the same results in 10 hours with TPU that you can from an entire 27 hour Manhattan or Veritas class, and in less time!
Get individualized instruction and move at your own pace, not the group pace. Group classes progress slowly, as the instructor has other students solve problems, which takes up your valuable time. Students are there to learn; They don't have an interest in or the qualifications for teaching. Also note that when a company says for example that they have 4200+ problems for their course, only maybe 1000 of those are relevant to you--You’re only interested in the ones at/slightly above your skill level, and you probably only need to focus on some sections more than others). With OG/GMAC materials alone, you already have nearly that many problems, plus we provide plenty of specialized materials.
Josh is a master teacher with an education background.
He was an educational consultant for Chicago Public Schools, and designed and taught the entire upper-level honors math curriculum for a Chicago high school. The former is something that *no* other GMAT instructor has done, and that makes Josh by far the best Quant tutor out there. GMAT Quant questions can be very challenging, even for someone who studied math in college, but as far as prerequisites, they do not require any special knowledge beyond what the average high school student has (not even calculus). They only require learning how to apply such knowledge in the challenging question format of the GMAT. So Josh's background puts him at a distinct advantage compared with all other GMAT instructors. Josh can explain the necessary foundations in simplified ways accessible to a person without an advanced math background. Additionally, GMAT Verbal questions rely on logic as much as they do your Verbal ability, and Josh is well-equipped to help fortify your logical foundations as applied to the Verbal section.
Our instructors are more highly incentivized to ensure your success. No principal-agent problem here.
We factor student score increase rates into our tutor evaluations. Most tutoring companies have no such performance benchmarks, and the tutors are implicitly incentivized to drag things out for as long as possible (principal-agent problem). That is money that could be going to faster and higher quality instruction. Any private instructor who delivers results should be paid according to how they perform. Our service is entirely results-oriented, and relies on personal recommendation. Part-time tutors at test-prep firms rely on the firms' large marketing budgets, and will get students' business no matter what. Moreover, we offer a Score Guarantee so that you know we are incentivized to do things as quickly as possible, and will only cover with you what will get you the best results.
Josh has been self-employed full-time as a private tutor for a decade, and has over 10,000 hours of teaching experience.
That speaks to both his experience and demand. Most private tutors, especially if they work for a company, are only tutoring on the side and do not have the extensive background and skill that Josh has. In a recent job posting for a major company, the recruiter stated that the teacher would have "between 3 and 20 hours of instruction per week, depending on market demand". 20 hours of instruction is only for their most experienced and in-demand tutors, during peak time in the application season. Also, all tutors have to sign a noncompete, precluding any other GMAT work, which means that even for the most advanced tutors, the upper bound is around 150 hours of instruction per year. The average tutor at a company will have significantly less experience. Not even half of that time is one-on-one tutoring, which you get with us.
We will help you restructure your way of approaching questions.
"If you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done." Doing better on the the GMAT is not just about applying your existing strategies faster, or being able to answer more difficult questions. It's also about how you conceptualize and approach the questions. It’s much easier to climb a mountain if you can see the path from afar before you begin climbing. This is true for answering individual questions as well as for your entire study plan. Josh will help you gain that perspective and will give you the tools to scale the mountains, little and big. Few other tutors have the vision, independence, and leadership to truly help you do your best.
No bogus or outdated strategies--only what works!
Many tutoring companies suggest trying to manipulate the GMAT scoring algorithm (e.g. adjust your timing for the first and/or last questions, etc.). This all stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the test is scored, combined with catering to the desire of students to get things done in the quick and dirty way. The truth is it takes work to raise your GMAT, and while there are more and less efficient ways to do that, there isn't much "gaming" you can do, because the test-makers did an excellent job of making sure the test actually measures something useful.