The GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) can be a real challenge, and opting for a GRE prep course before tackling the test is often a smart move. But with countless test prep companies out there offering their own courses, how can you tell which option is right for you?
This article reviews the pros and cons of six popular test prep courses on the market today, looking at factors like price, curriculum, duration, and self-study vs. live instruction format. To make the best choice of prep course, remember to consider your own needs and preferences:
To see how different courses compare at a glance, check out the summary table below.
| Menlo Coaching | Kaplan | Princeton Review | Magoosh | GregMAT | Target Test Prep | |
| Format | Self-paced & live instruction | Self-paced & live instruction | Self-paced & live instruction | Self-paced only | Self-paced & live instruction | Self-paced & live instruction |
| Unofficial practice questions | 0 assigns only real GRE problems |
2,500+ | 2,570 | 470+ | 1,600+ | 950+ |
| Live courses taught per year* | 8 | ~120 | ~36 | N/A | N/A** | ~12 |
| Ready for test day in… | 10 weeks | 3 months | 9 weeks | 6 months | 8 weeks | 6 months |
| Instructor pay rates?*** | $160/hr+ | $29/hr | $29/hr | $25/hr | ||
| 100% genuine GMAT homework | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Appropriate for… | High-performing students looking for an efficient way to achieve a top score | Those seeking a large selection of basic prep materials, but nothing too specialized | Test takers who aren’t worried about price and want a good amount of live instruction | Those on a tight budget who are OK with a self-study platform without any live instruction | Students on a small budget who are looking to combine self-study with some live instruction | Customers looking for a self-study platform like Magoosh, but with a greater focus on quant materials |
| Menlo Coaching | |
| Format | Self-paced & live instruction |
| Unofficial practice questions | 0 assigns only real GRE problems |
| Non-MBA related test services | 0 |
| Live courses taught per year** | 8 |
| Ready for test day in… | 10 weeks |
| Instructor pay rates?*** | $160/hr+ |
| Tutoring discount w/ prep course | ✓ |
| Video reviews from real clients | ✓ |
| 100% genuine GRE homework | ✓ |
| Summary | For high-performing students looking to break 700+ |
| Read more | Link |
| Kaplan | |
| Format | Self-paced & live instruction |
| Unofficial practice questions | 5,000+ |
| Non-MBA related test services | 80 |
| Live courses taught per year** | ~180 |
| Ready for test day in… | 6 months |
| Instructor pay rates?*** | $29/hr |
| Tutoring discount w/ prep course | ✗ |
| Video reviews from real clients | ✗ |
| 100% genuine GRE homework | ✗ |
| Summary | For students who want basic prep aimed at a mass market audience |
| Read more | Link |
| Princeton Review | |
| Format | Self-paced & live instruction |
| Unofficial practice questions | 2,570 |
| Non-MBA related test services | 17 |
| Live courses taught per year** | ~60 |
| Ready for test day in… | 4 months |
| Instructor pay rates?*** | $29/hr |
| Tutoring discount w/ prep course | ✗ |
| Video reviews from real clients | ✗ |
| 100% genuine GRE homework | ✗ |
| Summary | For students targeting a low- to mid-range score |
| Read more | Link |
| Magoosh | |
| Format | Self-paced only |
| Unofficial practice questions | 1,300 |
| Non-MBA related test services | 9 |
| Live courses taught per year** | N/A |
| Ready for test day in… | 1 year |
| Instructor pay rates?*** | $25/hr |
| Tutoring discount w/ prep course | ✓ |
| Video reviews from real clients | ✗ |
| 100% genuine GRE homework | ✗ |
| Summary | For students with very limited budgets and lots of study time |
| Read more | Link |
| Manhattan Prep | |
| Format | Self-paced & live instruction |
| Unofficial practice questions | 1,500+* |
| Non-MBA related test services | 1 |
| Live courses taught per year** | ~115 |
| Ready for test day in… | 6 months |
| Instructor pay rates?*** | $100-108/hr |
| Tutoring discount w/ prep course | ✓ |
| Video reviews from real clients | ✓ |
| 100% genuine GRE homework | ✓ |
| Summary | For students looking to go beyond (parent company) Kaplan’s basic offerings |
| Read more | Link |
| Target Test Prep | |
| Format | Self-paced only |
| Unofficial practice questions | 2,500+ |
| Non-MBA related test services | 0 |
| Live courses taught per year** | N/A |
| Ready for test day in… | 6 months |
| Instructor pay rates?*** | N/A |
| Tutoring discount w/ prep course | ✗ |
| Video reviews from real clients | ✓ |
| 100% genuine GRE homework | ✗ |
| Summary | For students looking for self-guided prep only |
| Read more | Link |
* Based on the average number of courses on offer each month.
** With GregMat, you can’t sign up for a fixed course schedule; you just get access to any live classes that take place while you’re subscribed.
*** Based on salaries reported on Glassdoor. Data collected July 27, 2021.
As the table shows, there are several factors to consider when choosing a GRE prep course. Below, we explore the pros and cons of each of these courses in more detail. Read on to see the final verdict on which course is right for you!
Menlo Coaching’s GRE Prep Course is designed with ambitious applicants in mind: those who are aiming for GRE scores above the 90th percentile. It therefore focuses on advanced strategies and works exclusively with real questions from past GREs—no inauthentic proprietary questions here.
The course includes 25+ hours of live instruction spread across five weeks, followed by a five-week GRE study plan for timed practice and reinforcement. Instructor Hailey Cusimano brings enthusiasm and expertise to the course, familiarizing students with the underlying logic of different types of GRE questions.
The curriculum is built for efficiency, using only official materials from ETS (the company that makes the GRE) and homing in on the trickiest questions the exam has to offer rather than wasting your time reiterating the basics. Those basics are established in self-paced Refresh Modules to be studied before live classes begin.
Menlo Coaching’s course is about quality, not quantity. This is an efficient package for applicants looking to optimize their score by applying strategies that really work. It avoids the time-wasting elements of other courses, boiling the curriculum down to a comprehensive 10-week schedule.
Thanks to the preliminary Refresh Modules and the five-week study plan concluding the course, precious live instruction time is used to the greatest possible advantage.
Working only with real GRE questions, the course drills down into exactly where test takers get tripped up, and how to avoid these pitfalls. In this way, test takers learn strategies that are laser-focused on the real difficulties of the GRE, and they save the time that other courses often waste on generic fluff content with minimal utility.
Due to its focus on top-range scores, Menlo Coaching’s offering is naturally more demanding (in terms of effort, not time) than most courses. Those who aren’t looking for elite scores, or who need more instruction in the basics, may be better served by other options.
Additionally, it’s clearly not the cheapest option out there. Those with a lower budget for test prep may not be able to justify the expense.
A key consideration when considering a GRE prep course is return on investment: not just how much content the company offers or how much they’re charging for it, but how the curriculum and instruction on offer will really move the needle and push you into a higher score range.
That’s the value proposition offered by Menlo Coaching. This is a course for ambitious test takers who want to prep efficiently, ace the GRE, and move on to the next step in the application process.
Kaplan is a well-known test prep firm that offers prep materials and courses for a broad selection of tests—very broad, in fact, boasting coverage of over 100 tests at the time of writing. If such a big catalog of materials seems impressive at first glance, what it tends to indicate in practice is a lack of specialist expertise for specific exams.
For the GRE, Kaplan offers two main (online) packages:
For an additional cost, both courses offer a “Plus” package with additional math practice materials, three extra practice tests, and in the case of the live course, three hours of one-on-one tutoring.
In its marketing, Kaplan emphasizes its “Qbank” of over 2,500 proprietary practice questions, as well as its 13 full-length practice exams. Those looking for a large body of practice materials are likely to be satisfied with the quantity of content on offer here.
Positive reviews of the Live Online course focused on reviewers’ good experiences with the course instructors, whom they describe as engaging and approachable.
Both the On Demand course and the Live Online course are on the expensive side compared to similar offerings on the market today. While Kaplan offers a lot of content for the price, the really important factor is not quantity but quality: how much will the content and instruction on offer help you on the real test?
The trouble with immersing yourself in endless proprietary content—especially from a company more interested in covering all the bases than specializing in one exam—is that the materials just don’t correspond to what you’ll see on the actual test.
That is, working through thousands of Kaplan questions using Kaplan-taught strategies will certainly improve your score on Kaplan’s practice exams, but not necessarily on the real GRE.
Kaplan’s one-size-fits-all approach to test prep and its insistence on selling you its own materials make it a poor fit for those interested in high-level, specialized GRE prep. You may learn something and have a pleasant experience with Kaplan, but in this kind of price range, there are much more efficient options.
Like Kaplan, Princeton Review is an established brand in the world of test prep, offering courses and materials for a wide range of exams from high school admissions tests to professional qualifications. Again, this means you should be somewhat skeptical about the specificity of its materials to any one exam.
For the GRE, Princeton offers a somewhat confusing array of packages ranging from a purely Self-Paced option to what they advertise as their most popular option, the (eye-wateringly expensive) GRE 162+ Course.
This is comparable with Kaplan’s offering in several ways. Princeton pushes a library of 470+ “exam-style” (not from the actual exam) practice questions and eight practice tests, combined with 45 hours of live instruction.
Positive reviews of Princeton Review’s courses note the high quantity of live instruction time. They also focus on the “DrillSmart” system, which allows you to run through practice questions in an environment that adapts the difficulty of the questions to your current performance, somewhat like the real exam.
As the name suggests, the 162+ course claims to guarantee you’ll attain a score of 162 or higher, or your money back. While this might seem attractive, customer experiences show that such score guarantees are usually something of a scam, forcing the customer to jump through a number of hoops to qualify for a refund.
Princeton charges a high price for this course; don’t get caught out on the assumption that you can always get your money back. Notably, you also get fewer practice materials for a much higher price than Kaplan.
Besides those caveats, past customers have also complained that, though they were seeing improvement in their scores during the course (i.e., while working exclusively with Princeton’s testing materials), those improvements didn’t carry over to the real exam. This, again, is the risk of relying on third-party materials: the real exam turns out to be significantly different.
Princeton Review offers an expensive package whose price is hard to justify. Focusing on fairly generic self-produced practice materials, the course is good at making you feel like your score is improving, but beware being tripped up by the real thing on exam day!
Magoosh’s GRE prep course differs from the options discussed above: it’s not so much a course as a self-study package. That is, no live instruction is offered; you’re buying a collection of practice materials and suggested study schedules rather than a series of classes.
This model will be tempting to those with a busy schedule, but the effectiveness of less structured prep work tends to be limited.
Magoosh’s low price is what attracts many users to the service. It’s undeniably one of the cheaper options on the market (although GregMat—see below—is cheaper still).
Another unique benefit Magoosh currently offers is the inclusion of around 100 official GRE questions licensed directly from ETS itself. As we’ve noted, ETS is generally reluctant to allow external companies to sell its questions, so this is a rare bonus.
It’s worth noting that those licensed official questions make up only a small proportion of Magoosh’s total bank of 1,600+ questions.
The 100 real questions included are useful, but before letting them swing your decision, remember that you can get around 600 for a much lower price—directly from ETS, in the form of their official prep books. That’s a purchase we strongly recommend, whatever course you’re following.
Magoosh tends to spin its lack of real instructors as a pro for those looking for flexibility and “without much time to study.” In practice, though, this kind of flexibility has limited usefulness: squeezing in the occasional practice question at the end of a busy day is unlikely to result in the kind of improvement customers expect from a prep course.
Like some other companies, Magoosh offers a score guarantee: a five-point improvement on your previous score, or your money back. Our words of caution apply here as elsewhere: read the small print, and don’t assume such guarantees will necessarily be honored.
Magoosh is a pioneer of the self-study approach to GRE prep—a somewhat questionable model that allows them to undercut most competitors’ prices but lacks the kind of expert guidance that makes a prep course valuable in the first place.
For anyone still keen to proceed with pure self-study, we recommend buying ETS’s official GRE prep books, which are better value than even the cheapest self-study “courses.”
GregMat is something of an anomaly in the test prep world. Its model is something like that of Magoosh—a monthly subscription (called “GregMat+”) gets you a collection of practice materials and other resources. But it also buys you access to “at least 10” interactive live classes each week.
This approach combines the flexibility of self-study with the guidance of live instruction, making GregMat a potent competitor for the likes of Magoosh.
GregMat’s subscription price is exceptionally low, even compared to Magoosh, and certainly offers better value for money since the package includes some live classes where Magoosh does not.
Moreover, GregMat is focused primarily on GRE prep, not on other tests (although it does include occasional coverage of other tests). This is not a big test prep company trying to cover every possible exam, so you can trust that the instructors are fairly specialized in the GRE.
Although GregMat (like Menlo Coaching) uses questions from ETS’s official GRE prep books as examples in class and advises users to purchase these materials, the practice questions on the site are not official. These are self-produced questions and run the same risk of inaccuracy to the real test that we’ve discussed above.
Also worth bearing in mind: GregMat offers live instruction, but it’s not the structured, comprehensive curriculum you get from other prep courses. You get to join whatever live classes happen to be running during your subscription period, and you can go back and watch recordings of past classes. It’s a deal that offers flexibility but lacks structure.
Due to its novel approach and low cost, GregMat is a popular choice for GRE prep. For students set on following a flexible self-study approach in their prep, GregMat offers much better value for money than competitors like Magoosh and Target Test Prep.
Still, for those looking for a more structured curriculum with a consistent schedule, homework, and personal accountability, GregMat necessarily has less to offer. Anyone targeting an elite score on the GRE will be better served by a more tightly planned course like that offered by Menlo Coaching.
Target Test Prep (TTP) offers a self-study GRE prep package similar (and similarly priced) to that of Magoosh. It also offers a more expensive live course, branded as “TTP LiveTeach” which includes 40 hours of “seminar-like” instruction via video call.
The live classes are a more recent addition and, based on customer experiences posted online, are fairly underwhelming. TTP is known mainly for its self-study options, and it’s seen primarily as a competitor of Magoosh.
Like Magoosh and GregMat, TTP operates on a monthly subscription model, offering a degree of flexibility in how long you intend to study before taking the test—just subscribe for as long as you need.
There’s also a five-day free trial (of the self-study package), allowing you to try out the materials before making a decision.
Notably, while TTP offers coverage of both quant and verbal topics, it started out covering only quant. Its quant material, accordingly, is generally considered much more reliable than its verbal, so it may be a poor fit for those struggling with the verbal side of the test.
Additionally, TTP boasts a large bank of practice questions (over 4,000), but, as in other cases, these “ultra-realistic” questions are simply not the real thing. Avoid focusing on quantity over quality!
The terms of TTP’s “score guarantee” are dubious even by the standards of big test prep companies. There’s no refund offered at all; instead, if you can show that the course didn’t improve your score, you get to “continue using the course for free.” In other words, complain that the product is defective and receive … more of the same defective product.
TTP is primarily a self-study platform, and in that respect it’s similar to Magoosh, but with a better reputation for reliable quant materials. On the other hand, it lacks the official GRE questions included in the Magoosh package.
The live classes offered by TTP make it more than a pure self-study platform, but so far customers seem to think these classes fail to stand out from the competition.
Searching for online GRE prep courses, you’ll encounter brands making big promises they just can’t live up to, courses wasting your time with huge quantities of shoddy materials, and self-study packages that can’t offer much value beyond what you’d get out of just buying the textbook.
For aspiring top scorers, the Menlo Coaching GRE Prep Course aims to dispense with superfluous content and provide what has been proven to work: a focused curriculum taught by experienced instructors using only real, advanced GRE materials.
Replies in 24 hours
✓ Get feedback on your profile as a test-taker
✓ Ask questions about strategy, timelines, or the GRE itself
✓ Learn what you need to work on to improve your score
✓ Find out whether you’d be a fit with our private tutoring
