PMP Exam Prep Seminar - Complete Exam Coverage with 35 PDUs vs Magoosh GRE Prep

The course is one of the most complete PMP libraries on Udemy — 290 lectures across roughly 24.5 hours, mapped to the PMBOK Guide and split into the PMI exam's three domains (around 20 hours on ways of working, 9 on business acumen, 6 on power skills). Reviewers praise the depth of the worked case studies, the Earned Value Management and ITTO walkthroughs, and the formula coverage. The recurring content caveat is that some material reads as paraphrasing the PMBOK Guide and that the PMBOK 6-to-7 transition left a few coverage seams.

Joseph Phillips is the strongest part of the package and the reason most reviewers recommend it. A McGraw-Hill/AMA/Dummies Press project-management author with 25+ years of consulting and training experience, certified as PMP, PMI-ACP, ITIL, Project+ and a Certified Technical Trainer, he is repeatedly described as clear, articulate and good at breaking complex PMI concepts into understandable parts. The one consistent knock is that he does not answer messages — there is no real instructor interaction beyond the Udemy Q&A forum.

List price runs higher but the course is almost always on sale around $15-25 with lifetime access, and it delivers a genuine 35-contact-hour certificate that satisfies the mandatory PMI education requirement to sit the PMP exam — something most learners would otherwise pay a bootcamp hundreds or thousands of dollars for. That certificate alone makes it one of the best-value ways to clear the PMP eligibility hurdle, with the honest deduction being that you will likely buy a separate exam simulator for practice volume.

The weakest dimension and the one nearly every critical source flags. The course includes section quizzes, formula quizzes and two full-length 200-question practice exams, which is not nothing, but reviewers agree it is not enough question volume to be exam-ready and recommend buying a dedicated PMP simulator on top. There are also repeated complaints about quiz questions that are not covered in the lectures and a handful of wrong or unrevised answer keys.

The course has hundreds of learners crediting it with passing the PMP exam, often on the first attempt, and several describe a workable plan of pairing each PMBOK chapter with the matching lecture over about a month. The deduction is that almost no one passes on this course alone — the consistent advice across sources is to supplement with a separate question bank or simulator, so score movement depends on the learner adding practice the course does not fully provide.

Magoosh provides 290+ video lessons covering Quantitative, Verbal, and Analytical Writing, plus 1,600+ practice questions — 160 of which are licensed official ETS problems, making Magoosh the only US GRE prep company with access to these materials. Independent reviewers at Test Prep Insight confirm the practice problems are "a close match for the real GRE" and that it would be "hard to decipher real GRE problems from most of Magoosh's mock problems." The main content criticism is that hard-level Magoosh quant questions can exceed actual GRE difficulty, and the curriculum occasionally presents problems before the relevant concepts have been fully taught in the video lessons.

Tutors Chris Lele and Mike McGarry — the primary Magoosh GRE instructors — are recognized as experienced GRE educators who know their material deeply and present it clearly. GRE tutor Vince Kotchian (15+ years experience) specifically called them out as experienced teachers with strong instructional abilities. The consistent criticism is the delivery format: PowerPoint-style slides with voiceover rather than an instructor on camera, which multiple reviewers describe as "not the most engaging" and less polished than Kaplan's dynamic whiteboard format.

At $149 for one month or $179 for six months, Magoosh is consistently described as an "absolute steal" and "bang for the buck" by independent reviewers — especially compared to Kaplan ($599), Manhattan Prep ($599+), and Princeton Review ($449+). The +5 point score guarantee with a full refund option (verified by actual users who received refunds) and a 7-day no-questions-asked return window add additional low-risk appeal. Test Prep Insight calls the pricing "an absolute steal," and EduReviewer assigns value-for-money a 4.5/5 score. The Live Classes add-on at $499 is seen as significantly less attractive value.

Magoosh provides 24/7 email support from GRE tutors, with response times reported consistently within 24 hours and often faster. Top Consumer Reviews (June 2026) notes customers report "getting feedback on their questions super fast and the responses are super helpful." The platform also includes in-app contextual help, score predictor tools, and links from each question to relevant lesson videos. The limitation is the absence of live chat or phone support — communication is email-only — and no private tutoring is bundled in the standard plan. Live class sessions (extra cost) add real-time interaction but are excluded from the core subscription.

Magoosh reports an average student score increase of 5–6 points and a 5-point improvement guarantee. Verified reviews on gre.magoosh.com show students reaching scores of 322–335, with one student improving from 310 (157Q/153V) to 324 (165Q/159V). EduReviewer notes that 20% of Magoosh users score in the top 10%. GRE tutor Vince Kotchian's honest caveat is that Magoosh "is best for students in the middle who want structure and are okay with a score below 320" — those targeting 165+ per section may find the question difficulty ceiling insufficient for their goals, particularly on the quantitative side.