When I took the GMAT in 2006, I thought a single volume, all-in-one book was enough. And it was enough, at least to get a 710.

Fast forward to 2012. My previous score had expired, so I needed to retake the test. What I felt I lacked in my previous attempt was a focus on concepts, instead of just "tricks". Manhattan GMAT seemed to advertise more than any other prep program that it was "concept-focused". Not only was this true, but I think it had the perfect balance of concepts with strategies ("tricks") to make it the perfect prep program. Full disclosure: I consistently scored very high on the Verbal section, so I completely blew off studying the Verbal strategy guides and focused solely on the Quant section. I'm sure the Verbal was just as good, though. :)

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I recently took my GMAT for the first time, and was very pleased to have received what I consider a very good score(770). Although I have no prior experience taking the GMAT, and therefore no real "benchmark" to compare to, I am certain that the instruction I received from Manhattan GMAT was instrumental in allowing me to achieve such a result.

I think the bulk of Manhattan GMAT's success stems from their uncompromising focus on teaching. Indeed, it is very well advertised that ALL of Manhattan GMAT's instructors have scored in the 99th percentile of the GMAT. Less touted, however, is the rigorous selection and training process, all of which further refines the class of potential instructors. The result is a very concentrated group of uniquely qualified, extremely capable teachers. My course was no exception, and, despite a class with a diversity of scores, I feel that the whole class was able to receive the resources and instruction necessary to improve dramatically.

While teaching is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of the Manhattan GMAT experience, it is certainly not the only advantage offered to students. In particular, the depth of available resources is a HUGE part of--as would be said in the business world--the "value proposition" that is offered to customers. Manhattan GMAT has truly applied itself to deconstructing and dissecting the GMAT content and structure and, as a student, this seemingly unlimited set of information is made fully available. This is ironically both overwhelming and comforting at the same time; the depth and breadth of resources are initially very daunting, but it is refreshing to know that the team at Manhattan GMAT has exhaustively investigated and optimized every facet of the GMAT.

Finally, there are a few intangibles that I believe make Manhattan GMAT a very worthwhile experience. Firstly, students are provided with a definite approach--a "roadmap" as it is termed by Manhattan GMAT--that is pretty much guaranteed to ensure score maximization. In addition, I really appreciated the extra "office hours" and after class sessions with instructors. Moreover, included in the class are tools that helped me to develop a personal GMAT "gameplan," which really helped me approach the test in a very methodical way. The one-on-one 30-minute review of my personal testing history, included with the class, was also VERY helpful. With regard to the online class, the environment was very similar to, if not better than, an in-person, location based classroom approach. Having TWO instructors really is a bonus!

All in all, I am thrilled with my Manhattan GMAT experience. As others have mentioned, there are some small things that I would like to see improved(i.e the CAT is not as accurate as I thought it would be), but it is hard to argue that Manhattan GMAT is not extremely effective at its core purpose: to maximize students' GMAT scores. Like anything worth fighting for in life, mastering the GMAT will likely take dedication, hard work, and the right approach. I trusted Manhattan GMAT to guide my approach, and, fortunately, I haven't had to look back since.

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I wrote my first GMAT on 14th May 2012 and scored 23 points on verbal. The verbal score was so low that it brought the overall score down. I planned to take GMAT again to achieve my dream. I was going through the GMAT club for verbal courses and came across E-GMAT. After going through the free live sessions, I enroll for E-GMAT's verbal live prep.

The course was a game changer. I understood the importance of meaning through online courses by Shradha.
I able to link various grammatical nuances easily after completing SC section.

The CR course is a master class. Rajat is one of the best instructor. The concepts files, application files and methodology taught by Rajat is awesome. I recommend all the GMAT aspirant out there to attain CR online courses by Rajat. The online course is comparable with RON from MGMAT.

Finally, After re-writing the exam I improved my Verbal score from 23 to 30. I still have a long way to go achieve my dream. but at least I have right tools and instructors (from E-Gmat) to make inroads to the destiny.

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I had never taken the GMAT before I took the Live Online course from Manhattan GMAT but my score from my practice test went to my actual GMAT went up 130 points.

The course provides great structure each week with a ton of problems/strategy guides to work through. There is a lot of homework each week but I don't really see how you could do well on the GMAT without doing a lot of problems and taking the time to really learn the math concepts. You will never run out of material from Manhattan to do, there are tons of problems provided and CAT practice tests. The problems provided all seem pretty similar to the actual questions on the test. The strategy guides are great at explaining concepts, especially sentence correction and quant.

One of the best things about the course is OG Archer which lets you track every OG problem you do. This makes it so easy to verify strengths and weaknesses so you can use your study time better. The CAT exams also have great stats on how you did and you can aggregate your data for multiple exams to get a good understanding of where you stand.

The classes themselves were basically just going through the material you did for homework and providing a few extra tips and strategy clarifications. I felt it mostly just keep me honest about getting all the homework done and served as reassurance each week that I was on the right track. The instructors were great and I assume all Manhattan's instructors probably are. They were always available outside of class to answer any extra questions.

Would definitely recommend this course. Great structure for your GMAT studying and provides all the materials/books you could possibly need.

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A truly Game Changer course in verbal for non-natives. After exhausting all available resources, I finally subscribed to this course. I saw a few reviews in GC forums and attended two free live class with Rajat on GMAT strategy & Pre-thinking. I was totally satisfied with the content & I knew I will definitely learn some new strategy to tackle my poor verbal score V23.

After taking the course I pulled up my verbal score to a respectable V40 (90%ile). I just turned my weakness into my strength now. My total score is 710 (Q49,V40)

As I progressed with the course I realized my shortfalls in concept as well as in attacking strategy. The Verbal live course is quite different from the verbal online course. I have clarified almost all queries on the spot during the class (that kind of luxury was there). The important thing that helped me most to improve on verbal is to understand the underlying thought process of the instructors while they approach/attach a particular question. For SC course Payal did a wonderful job there. In fact I asked her in one classroom to describe her thought process elaborately - how she approach a particular SC. And that key thing has changed my SC accuracy a lot.

Similarly Rajat's Strategy of pre-thinking is the key for CR. And not but the least- my weakest link RC in verbal has improved a lot after the course. My accuracy just went above 85% from 60-65% level. I always struggled with non-familiar topics in RC. At last Ron (one of e-gmat instructor) has rescued me from this big shortfall. After i completed the course I realized my improvements through Mocks & i was able to improve my timing on SC/CR/RC without sacrificing accuracy.

I am very happy with my decision to invest in e-gmat verbal live and doing so really rewarded me a 90%ile V score.

The concept files cover every single grammatical rules within the scope of GMAT. The practice questions, quizzes, assessment tests are very carefully crafted keeping the standards of Official GMAT questions.

A ton of thanks to e-gmat & group.

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This is a great course for Verbal. I am not a native speaker but have a very strong grammar. However, I still struggled with GMAT's verbal section. The first time I took the Gmat I barely studied for it. The second time I registered for eGMAT because my verbal score was too low. You can't go wrong with this course. Take the full package if you struggle with verbal and also complement it with CR bible.

My only advice is that if you struggle with RC practice that (don't reply solely on the course material, sharpen your skimming abilities)

Perhaps practice the material more than once...

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I gave my first attempt back in Sep 2009. I scored 610(Q43, V31). I did not expect such a low score then. I had prepared for over 6 months with utmost sincerity. Such was the disaster that I did not even bother to analyze what went wrong.

One of my friends, though, advised me to retake the test after due preparation and to take the test only when I see an improvement in my preparations. That proved to be very true.

Now by the start of this year, I decided to give my second attempt and do things differently. Though there was a gap of nearly two years, my force to ace GMAT was no less. As a BITSian I knew it wouldn’t be too hard to score 46-50 in Quant. But as a non-native I needed better preparation in Verbal. Like Quant, Verbal can be aced with proper fundamentals, understanding and strategic attack. Below I have shared a few things that probably helped me in achieving 700(Q48, V37).

Fundamentals:

You might have heard this over and over again. Be strong in your fundamentals. This applies to both Quant and Verbal. For Quant, we have tons of reliable resources in the web: MGMAT Quant Strategy Guides, Kaplan GMAT Math Workbook and GMATClub WorkBook topics to name a few. I too relied on these resources to understand the nuances of certain GMAT format questions such as Work-Rate problems, Probability and Statistics problems and Inequalities problems. These are not complicated when you know what to look out for. For instance, you have to be so clear about the reasoning behind the work-rate question ‘A works for 12 hours to finish a job, B works for 14 hours to finish the same job and what would be the time taken to complete the same job when A & B works together’ that you can understand a complex question with jargons.

Similarly for Data Sufficiency questions, you should improve your reasoning to a stage where you can connect the dots between the questions that you practiced (during practice tests, GC forum questions, etc.) and the questions that come up on the test day. Of course none of the questions that you faced during your preparations is going to pop-up on your test day. But the logic will.

Is Verbal an up-hill task?

Yes and No. Yes because we either think that there is no one procedure to get the exact correct answer or that process of elimination is the ONLY way to get the ‘best’ answer. I strongly disagree here. There is a way to get to the exact answer (note not the best answer). That’s because GMAT has a pattern in framing the logic behind its questions. Note I said logic not the structure. Most of the resources out there teach you the structure of the GMAT questions: how to use advanced negation technique in an assumption-type CR questions or how to memorize the usual idioms or how to quickly read a four paragraph RC question. Believe me. This doesn’t work.

I said no because I used the e-GMAT Verbal Live product which showed me these logical procedures to answer the Verbal questions. I have to say here that I’m not part of the marketing team from e-GMAT. I am genuinely ‘just’ a customer of e-GMAT. I got to know them only through GMATClub.

Coming back to the logics, here are my thoughts for Verbal Question types:

Sentence Correction:
The GMAT SC questions from the Official Guide teach us certain important patterns. These patterns include but not limited to misplaced modifiers, logical parallel lists and many more. These cannot be answered in a mechanized manner. Because the answers might be grammatically correct but logically wrong. Only when the intended meaning of the sentence is clear, you can get to the correct answer. Again the OG teaches to eliminate the wrong choices because of very specific reasons. When this line of reasoning becomes intuitive the process of elimination becomes more logical and you get the ‘correct’ answer.

Critical Reasoning:
I learnt to better eliminate the incorrect answer choices through e-GMAT’s CR Course. I religiously followed the pre-thinking process as taught and improved in my timing to answer CR questions. Again here efficient elimination techniques come handy because GMAT throws in errors in a certain way which can be identified after thorough practice.

Reading Comprehension:
Though there is no one way to master this question type, the only proven way is to logically attack each RC question type. For that you need razor-sharp focus while reading the passage. When you focus on the structure and tone of the passage, the main crux will become evident. Per e-GMAT process, the passage summaries at various stages of reading the passage prove enough to answer the questions correctly. This helped me a lot as I was always struggling with RC.

On the Test Day:
Have fun! I mean, relax and look forward to enjoy the process. I tried to smile at various points to ease myself and to not think about what happened in the previous question. Of course this is not easy unless you practice it during the practice tests. I recommend taking MGMAT practice tests and review the questions to understand the source of errors. GMAT test will be lot easier after taking MGMAT tests. This might have a side-effect on you on the test day. That is, you might end up feeling that you screwed up the test. But actually you dint. That’s how I felt after each section. But I thought I ended up with a decent score. Thanks GMATClub, e-GMAT and MGMAT for helping me out in the process.

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The Manhattan GMAT Live Online course was excellent. Ryan Wessel and David Chong were really good instructors. I raised my GMAT score by 100 points (from 620 to 720) by taking the class. The class was given once a week for 9 weeks.
The most helpful lectures were on the subjects of:
- Sentence correction
- Data sufficiency
- Reading comprehension
The recorded labs offered had some of the most insightful tips and shortcuts I learned throughout all my time studying for the course. The information given in the labs was extremely relevant for test day; the labs taught things such as timing strategy, shortcuts to data sufficiency questions, etc.

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This was my worst tutor I've had in my life. My parents told me to keep giving her a chance since I had already moved to the city where she was located for her tutoring services so I continued with her and trusted her as she instructed me to do.

After every tutoring session, I didn't feel any better about anything that she tried to teach me. Maybe because she went over problems that she already had me do and I told her I had already figured them out? If I had to choose what she was better at, I would say Verbal but she chooses to do Quant no matter what you want to do.

Not only did she not teach me the material, my score continued to drop and then she blamed me for the drop and said it was stress even though I felt calm during the exams. She did not focus on my weaknesses which is what I wanted to do. She also lowered my self-esteem during tutoring sessions, something that should never be done by a tutor.

I would not recommend this tutor to a friend OR stranger. This was not worth $1500.

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I initially signed up for Magoosh for the 50 point guarantee to break the 700s. I was using Manhattan GMAT prior to that, but needed help with my verbal.

I found the sentence correction videos to be very helpful and pretty straightforward. All the videos are fairly short (3-12 minutes) and the instructors have a nice approach to things. The critical reasoning was good, but I would recommend complementing your studies with PowerScore (I did not use PowerScore but I've heard great things about it). The only drawback that I noticed was the Reading Comprehension. The passages in the problem set were wayyy too long and would never show up on the GMAT. The Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency questions and videos I thought were both great and they had a lot of difficult problems. I really liked the adaptiveness of the problem sets too. The biggest drawback would be that they don't have practice exams!

Overall, still a good course and I would recommend it for people who are taking the GMAT for a second (or third) time but also use other materials as this alone may not be enough.

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