Among all of the value-driven GMAT prep programs on the market, Target Test Prep and Magoosh are by far the two most popular. But which one should you choose to help you prep for the GMAT Focus? In this guide, we take an in-depth look at each GMAT prep course and break down whether Magoosh or Target Test Prep will be a better fit for you.
As this is a lengthy article, we’ve provided helpful jump-to links above so you can easily navigate this post by section.
In this video, TPI team member John analyzes everything you need to know about the GMAT prep courses from Target Test Prep and Magoosh. Continue reading for more detail.
Let’s begin with an overview of the Magoosh GMAT course.
From a high level, Magoosh provides many of the same features that Target Test Prep GMAT does.
This includes lessons, practice tests, video lectures, performance metrics, email support, and study notes, among many others. However, when getting into the nitty gritty details, Magoosh is different from Target Test Prep in a couple big ways.
For one, Magoosh takes a slightly less rigid approach to how you work through the study material. With Target Test Prep, you work through the course modules in a very linear, structured order.
By contrast, with Magoosh, you drive your own studies and attack material in whatever order you see fit. Of course, the Magoosh GMAT team provides suggested study plans and lesson orders for you to follow if you want, however, you have a lot more freedom to jump around with Magoosh.
They likely do this because when prepping for the GMAT Focus, some people already have a pretty good grasp of some of the material, especially on the verbal side.
Thus, spending a bunch of time on material that’s not going to give you much lift just doesn’t make sense.
The second (and arguably more important) difference between Target Test Prep and Magoosh is that Magoosh is a lot bigger on video lessons.
Interestingly, Target Test Prep makes a big deal of promoting how they offer over 1,200 short video lessons.
The reality, however, is that these videos only focus on quick problem breakdowns. There aren’t any video-based content lectures with Target Test Prep, as they rely heavily on text lessons.
In stark contrast, Magoosh offers 200+ content-based video lessons, which is a big difference.
Knowing how the Magoosh GMAT course works, let’s get into where it specifically beats out Target Test Prep’s GMAT course.
As noted above, the first major victory for Magoosh is their video lessons. While Target Test Prep really only utilizes video for problem breakdowns, Magoosh provides hundreds of content driven videos.
For visual learners, I think this is a major value add. I don’t necessarily think the delivery format of Magoosh’s videos is amazing, but the content is on point and the visuals definitely help, so that’s a big win.
For the record, Manhattan Prep/Kaplan also offers better GMAT video lessons than Target Test Prep.
Magoosh offers so much more value than TTP. Effectively, Magoosh is one-third the price of Target Test Prep, yet still offers, in my opinion, 80% to 90% of the same course.
It’s obviously a differently structured program, with different features, so that will factor in, but for courses that are this close in terms of quality, yet far apart in terms of price, that can be big.
Another highlight for Magoosh is all the extras. Despite being slightly cheaper than Target Test Prep, Magoosh actually provides better bonus tools and resources, such as flashcards, FAQs, a score predictor, email support, a progress tracker, student forum, and more.
Target Test Prep provides some of these things (like performance analysis and chat support), but Magoosh’s resources just feel more supportive and comprehensive.
For an extra $50, you can sign-up for Magoosh’s Premium + Admissions course, which gives you access to a nice mix of resources post-exam. This includes insider advice on how to best craft your application, essay examples, on-demand videos, and Q&A with MBA experts.
👉 Read Our Full Magoosh GMAT Course Review
Let’s cover an overview of the Target Test Prep GMAT course. In comparison to Magoosh, the Target Test Prep GMAT course is fairly structured.
The program is broken out into learning modules, which each cover a specific topic tested on the GMAT.
Each learning module is generally built around four components:
The first component, the quick review, is a just a short quiz that reinforces material from previous modules. It leans on the concept of spaced repetition to make sure you’re retaining material as you move through the course.
The lesson chapter, which follows it, is the meat of your learning. Each chapter is built around a series of short passages that are filled with text-based notes, example problems, videos, and occasionally, illustrations.
Then after you complete the chapter, you take a chapter test. These are basically just quizzes to test the material you just learned, and they come in varying difficulty levels.
And finally, the fourth component is a simple review session where you review your missed problems from the chapter test. You read through or watch a video solution to see where you went wrong and learn from your mistakes.
Then around this main structure, there are some other features, like GMAT Focus practice tests, chat support and performance metrics, but that’s largely the Target Test Prep course in a nutshell.
That’s how the Target Test Prep course works. Next, let’s discuss where Target Test prep beats Magoosh.
The first advantage in the company’s favor is the amount of practice material. Basically, where Magoosh provides 800 practice problems, Target Test Prep provides over 4,000—more than 4x as many.
Therefore, if you’re the type of person that learns best by doing, and you love working practice problems and reviewing answers as opposed to watching or reading lessons, this could be a big factor for you.
Secondly, I like Target Test Prep’s learning module-based approach to teaching. These “missions,” as they call them, are very effective for efficiently delivering new content and hammering old material to reinforce it.
Each module nicely streamlines content instruction, practice, and review into one nice little package that’s easy to manage and digest. TTP offers a much more organized and guided course overall than Magoosh.
Lastly, I like the company’s performance analytics better than Magoosh’s. In short, Magoosh’s performance stats are good, but Target Test Prep’s are particularly deep and helpful.
Their score reports give you behavioral trends through error analysis, metrics on how you stack up against peers, pacing issues, and a ton more.
You could seriously spend hours digging through all the performance data once you’ve logged a good sample size of questions. This, in my opinion, this is a major value add.
👉 Read Our Full Target Test Prep GMAT Course Review
Before wrapping up with my final thoughts, I’d like to cover a quick cost breakdown, as it’s an important topic (especially among value prep providers like these).
In terms of pricing, Target Test Prep offers several packages ranging from $229/month for their self-paced course to $1,600 for their package with live classes.
On the other hand, Magoosh offers just one package to choose from: their Premium self-paced online course. This package costs $249 or $349 depending on your desired length of access.
When you stack the two companies up side-by-side and compare the self-paced courses, Magoosh is cheaper no matter which Target Test Prep package you opt for.
Now that we’ve covered all the important detail, let’s get to my final verdict. Should you go with Magoosh or Target Test Prep for your GMAT Focus prep?
Well, after using and thoroughly testing out each of these GMAT prep programs, it’s a close call. Both GMAT courses actually get pretty high grades across the board, but in the end, I personally would go with Magoosh.
With video-based problem explanations, better value, a deep library of lessons, and all the extras, I simply got more out of the Magoosh GMAT course. I think it’s the better all-around value and overall course.
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When breaking down and grading out all of the factors that truly matter when evaluating a GMAT course, we give Magoosh the win over Target Test Prep. Their course feels more complete, and we particularly like their GMAT Focus video lessons.
If you stack up the two standard packages from Magoosh and Target Test Prep, Magoosh’s self-study package is cheaper than Target Test Prep’s (unless you only need one month of access under TTP’s subscription model).
When considering only the quant-based study materials from each package, we give Target Test Prep the slightest edge over Magoosh. We found the realism and quantity of practice work from each to be good, but Target Test Prep’s text lessons and hundreds of video breakdowns push its quant practice material over the edge.