Sunayana Basa
I want to give a HUGE shoutout to Yuri and Martin for helping me with GRE quant. I had been prepping for the GRE for a few months on my own for business school, and was stuck in a plateau - as much as I wanted, I couldn't get my GRE quant score out from the 155 range during my practice tests. After taking the official GRE and realizing that I was still stuck in this range, I googled best GRE courses and TestCrackers quickly came to the top of my list. From the moment I texted Yuri, I knew I was in good hands. Yuri was responsive and free to chat with me the day I texted him, which I appreciated given how anxious I was. We talked through not only the TestCrackers quant course basics, but also about myself as a test taker and applicant. Yuri was extremely patient and kind, taking extra time to share his perspective on my score and what he knew from his experience helping others in my position. Once I signed up for my course, the TestCrackers team continued to be supportive to get me the help I needed. Even though my GRE quant course started a month after my conversation with Yuri, the TestCrackers team sent me the material early so I could start to review. I was able to attend small group tutoring from the day I chatted with Yuri, which jumpstarted my prep and allowed me to start to practice test strategies before the course even began. As the course began, I was so appreciative of Martin, our course teacher. Our classes were Saturday morning, which is not the easiest time to do quantitative math, but I appreciated how upbeat and helpful Martin was during each session (even the session that was on his birthday!) He was always timely and available outside of class too - I was very grateful for his offering to review of one of my previous GRE practice tests and to give me advice about which problems he thought I could get once I got the timing strategies down. Speaking of timing... I appreciated how upfront Martin was with the GRE. One of the things I struggled the most with the quant session is knowing when to "skip" a problem and move on, and felt like I had to do every problem like I would with other tests. Martin showed me how to think about this differently, the importance of the "skip" strategy, and gave me the tools to figure out which were my skips. Once I unlocked this skill, I started to notice a definite improvement in my scores! All in all - I am very grateful for the TestCrackers team. From the small group tutoring sessions with Yuri's puns, to the very helpful reframing of the GRE on my mind, I was finally able to break the 160+ barrier for quant and scored better than I thought I could. Thank you to Yuri and Martin!!
