Magoosh is a pretty good resource for GRE. The questions are pretty good, as are the video explanations.
They also have pretty good study plans, and pretty good auxiliary resources.
In fact, if I were to describe Magoosh overall, I’d describe it as (drum roll please) pretty good.
But it’s not the most straightforward process to go from signing up for Magoosh to scoring well on the GRE. Believe me: I’m a tutor, and I get plenty of students who didn’t make that transition.
If you use Magoosh for GRE, the most important thing is to first of all realize its limitations.
- Magoosh questions are not official questions. They’re ok practice, but you need to do questions from ETS in order to get the real GRE experience.
- You need to do official practice tests from ETS! This is the same as point 1, but I wanted to emphasize. You need to do at least the 2 free practice tests from ETS before you take your official GRE.
- It’s easy to get in the habit of just watching videos. Don’t fall for it! You need to do lots of questions in order to do well on the GRE. Videos are only to be used to make you better at questions.
- Just doing questions isn’t enough. You need to reflect on what you get wrong.
Let’s talk about that last point for a bit: reflection. Reflection means looking at what you get wrong and learning what you can from it.
Magoosh, actually recommends that you use an error log to reflect. They says it’s the single best way to pinpoint weak areas.
Well…it just so happens that I agree. And, in fact, 21st Night is an error log designed to do exactly that and more.
Magoosh can be valuable, but you can’t just use it haphazardly. Using 21st Night with Magoosh will result in a lot more success.