Manhattan GMAT Course

The 9 week class is a very very good class. It is a great way to get started studying. You cover all of the basics and really entrench yourself in the studying process. The structure provided by the class set me up to continue studying for the test 5+ weeks after the class ended as you get in the happen of studying a certain amount everyday/several times a week.

One thing I will say is that when I did take the 2 free GMAT prep tests and then the actual GMAT (in addition to the 6 Manhattan practices), I did notice a pretty big difference between the two (Manhattan vs. Gmat prep).

Manhattan Quant is much more difficult and calculation driven than Gmat prep and actual gmat. This is a good thing. If you can get to a point where you are doing well on your manhattan quant sections, you will be fine on the gmat, because I found it much theory based (number properties etc.) than the manhattan tests.

On the Manhattan Verbals, I was having no problems at all (44-45s on all practices) as I got into Gmat prep and the actual gmat, my verbal score dropped 2-4 points. I'm not sure of the reason why. I did notice that some of the critical reasoning questions are structured differently in the GMAT prep/GMAT tests than in Manhattan. I think that the Manhattan tests were much more blatant about what kind of CR question you were tackling.

Ultimately between my first Manhattan practice and my last GMAT prep practice i had a 140 point difference. On test day, I screwed up verbal and ended up with a 80 point improvement.

scores:
manhattan 1: 630
manhattan 2: 690
manhattan 3: 750 (don't have breakouts now, but was getting significantly higher on verbal than math on all of these tests. Got 2 45V and 1 44).
manhattan 4: 700
manhattan 5: 720
manhattan 6: 740
gmat prep 1: 720
gmat prep 2: 750 (50Q, 42V)
Actual Gmat: 710 (46Q, 40V)
*Update Gmat 2: 730 (46Q, 44V)

(i have the breakouts of the other tests at home and can update them later)

Overall, I think Manhattan is a great course and will prepare you for the gmat, specifically the quant section.

Update: I retook the GMAT a month later and improved my verbal 4 points to get the 730 i was looking for.