Are you evaluating the above-listed ways for your GMAT preparation? If yes, this article is for you. In this article, I’m going to evaluate the three mediums on 11 parameters that I think people take or need to take into consideration.

The first four parameters concern the ‘effectiveness’ of the course and are thus more important than the others (the first of these is the most important of all). The fifth parameter is the cost, which is also important for a lot of people.

Let’s get started.

Quality

The first and foremost parameter you should evaluate any medium or course on is the quality. By quality, I mean whether the course is focused on building skills required to ace GMAT and how good a job it does in that. If the course is not even focused on building skills and is rather focused on teaching tricks and shortcuts, you should stay away from the course, regardless of its performance on other parameters.

Think about it: Can a test like GMAT, which esteemed institutes such as Harvard and Stanford rely upon, be aced through shortcuts and tricks? Are Harvard and Stanford looking for masters of shortcuts and tricks?

If the course is focused on building skills, then the question comes: how good is the course in building skills?

The goodness of the course depends on the quality of the curriculum and the quality of the teacher. You can assess the quality of the curriculum by going through any freely available articles and videos by the company or going through any free trial session the company may offer. You can assess the quality of the teacher through a free trial session, by talking to former students, and by asking (and, given the sad state of affairs in the Indian test prep industry, asking for proof of) the credentials of the teacher.

Generally, online courses don’t have a live teacher; the content (audio-visual or text) is already made. So, in such cases, the quality depends just on the existing content. You can assess it by going through a free trial that most companies offer.

In the Indian GMAT prep space, my experience says that most large companies offering classroom-based courses are focused on shortcut-based approach and do not have good quality faculty. Thus, while I will not completely discard classroom-based courses for Indian students, I’ll encourage the students to be doubly-sure of the quality of the institute and the teacher before they sign-up.

Between classroom-based courses and online courses, I consistently recommend online courses for Indian students. Think about it. Since online courses have a global reach, the companies building online courses can invest much more resources and hire much better faculty (subject-matter experts to build the courses). Therefore, the quality of certain (not all, as you can expect) online courses is far superior to any classroom-based course in India.

The quality of a course offered by a private tutor depends entirely on the quality of the private tutor. If the private tutor has top-notch credentials and is highly effective in teaching, his course quality may surpass the quality of any online or classroom-based course out there. However, if the private tutor is an average one, he may not be able to match the quality of top online courses that are developed by highly qualified experts.

Comprehensivenss

By comprehensiveness, I mean at how much depth which the course covers the concepts, whether it looks at the different variations of the concepts or just the main concept, and how many solved examples and questions the course offers.

Generally, the top online courses can be much more comprehensive than classroom programs or private tutoring programs (Well, in a way, a private tutoring program can be as comprehensive as you may want it to be since private tutoring is generally custom-designed. However, the cost of an exhaustive private tutoring program can be extremely high.) Why so? Because the content in an online course is created once, unlike classroom-based or private tutoring courses in which the content needs to be delivered afresh in every batch. While the cost of delivery of an online course remains very small, doesn’t matter how comprehensive the course is, the cost of delivery of a classroom or a private tutoring course directly depends on the comprehensiveness of the course.

Ability to revise/review

This parameter is about how easy it is for you to revise the material after it has been delivered once in a session. Clearly, on this parameter, online courses come at the top since you can go through the content as many times as you need.

Some classroom and very few private tutoring courses also offer session recordings (I am one of the very few private tutors who provide session recordings to the students). A session recording is a very easy and effective way to revise the concepts. Courses offering session recordings are almost on-par with the online courses.

The courses that do not offer such recordings needs to offer detailed notes and/or exercises so that the students can revise the concepts effectively.

If a course doesn’t offer recordings or detailed notes, then it scores low on this parameter.

Personalized attention

Of course, no other form of course comes close to private tutoring, in terms of this parameter. Classroom courses also offer some personalized attention but, it depends on the batch-size and the motivation of the teacher.

Online courses are completely automated and thus involve almost nil personalized attention. However, they try to compensate the lack of individual attention by using technology to help students figure out their individual problems.

If you are looking for a lot of personalized attention, private tutoring is what you should go for.

Cost

If think about it logically, an online course should be the cheapest, private tutoring the most expensive, and a classroom-course somewhere in the middle, keeping all quality factors constant.

Why?

Because an online course is created once and can be delivered to thousands of students with negligible recurring cost. A classroom course needs to be delivered afresh to every batch of 5-20 students. On the other hand, a private tutoring is delivered afresh to every individual student.

If we do not keep the quality factors constant, the cost of a mediocre private tutor may be close to that of a good classroom or online course. If cost is a big constraint for you, I’d suggest that you go for an excellent classroom or online course rather than a sub-par private tutor. As I mentioned in the ‘quality’ parameter above, the ‘quality’ trumps all other parameters.

However, if cost is not a big constraint for you, you can consider a top-notch private tutor since no course can beat him in terms of quality and effectiveness.

Stage of your preparation

If you are at the beginning of your preparation, then all three forms of courses can be considered.

However, if you are in the middle of your preparation, you may need help only on a few identified areas. In such a case, a classroom course will be the least effective since you may have to wait till the course reaches those identified areas. Besides, since classroom courses don’t get into a lot of depth in any area, you may not be able to clarify all your doubts in those areas. Online courses or private tutoring sessions will best serve your needs.

If you are towards the end of your preparation and need fine-tuning on a few aspects, private tutoring will be the best for you since a private tutor may give you the required personal attention to iron out remaining wrinkles in your concepts, application, and strategy.

Time you have

If you have a lot of time to prepare, you may consider online or classroom courses, which are much cheaper than private tutoring courses. However, if you are short on time and want to make the most out of it, private tutoring is what you should look at.

Personality Preferences

Do you like to study alone? Or do you like to study in a classroom?

Do you have the motivation and self-discipline to go through the course on your own? Or do you need some individual to guide and motivate you?

If you can study alone, then you can consider online and private tutoring sessions. If you want to be part of a group, you may consider classroom courses (but do not forget to consider the first four factors above).

If you have the motivation and self-discipline to study on your own, you may consider online courses. If you are not sure, consider classroom or private tutoring courses.

Flexibility

I talk of flexibility mainly in terms of when you can go through the course content. Online courses offer the most flexibility since you can access the course wherever and whenever you want. Then, comes private tutoring in which you can schedule the sessions per your (and your tutor’s) convenience. The most inflexible are classroom courses since the schedule is fixed at the beginning of the course, and allowance cannot be made for individual students since they may impact other students. Some classroom courses may allow you to attend sessions that you may miss in your batch in other batches. However, in such a case too, you may have to wait till the same session is delivered to some other batch.

Travel Time

Sine most of the people preparing for GMAT are working professionals, time is a very precious entity for them. If you are taking classroom courses or in-person private tutoring sessions, you will need to travel to the institute. If the institute is quite far away, you may end spending a lot of your precious time in commute.

Online courses and online private tutoring sessions are the best in this aspect since your travel time goes to nil in these cases.

Internet Connectivity

Of course, to do an online course or a private tutoring session, you need to have a decent internet connectivity (I think 1 Mbps should work for an online course and 2 Mbps for a private tutoring session). If you do not have a good internet connection and cannot get one, you need to go for a classroom course or in-person private tutoring sessions.

What do I recommend?

1. First and foremost, go for the best quality course, whatever form of delivery you choose. You may end up wasting your precious months or years on sub-par resources. The months wasted could have been spent in much more fruitful engagements, possibly leading to considerable economic benefit.
2. The only reason I think one should go for a classroom course is that one likes to study within a group and needs some in-person interaction. Otherwise, online courses are better in every other way than classroom courses.
3. If you are comfortable preparing on your own and have sufficient time to prepare, you should look at online courses.
4. If you are stuck on a score for a long time or you do not want to take any chances of wasting your time and cost is not your main concern, consider private tutoring.
5. You need not look at these forms of deliver as either-or. You may initially start with an online or a classroom course, and then towards the end, go for private tutoring for fine-tuning.
6. Pay much more attention to the quality of the delivery than to the form of the delivery. Always choose a more effective online private tutoring than in-person private tutoring. Same holds for online and classroom courses.