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Improvement 130 Points
Course Manhattan Prep Live Online
Instructor Jonathan Schneider
Location Online
As an older student, returning to academia after a 19 year absence, where I wasn’t the most engaged student as a young man, to say that I was rusty would have been a significant understatement. Though the EMBA program that I chose did not necessarily require the GMAT, they encouraged it for students who, in their words, "believe [their] academic records do not accurately reflect [their] current knowledge of quantitative methods.” Manhattan Prep was absolutely crucial not only to taking the GMAT, but to relaunching my academic pursuits. The online live courses were a fantastic way to reintroduce me to the classroom. The weekly class was highly interactive. At any moment, I could be called upon to answer a question or explain a concept. I quickly learned that I needed to be engaged, focused, and come to class prepared. The homework was voluminous, in a great way. As I mastered each concept, my confidence increased. With each week, I felt more ready for the GMAT and more ready for an MBA program. The instructors were enthusiastic, knowledgable, and great encouragers. Manhattan Prep’s live online courses include the physical books, e-books, practice exams, and access to all of their recorded online content. That’s a tremendous value. At the conclusion of the course, I chose to start all the way over at the beginning with the recorded online material to reinforce what I learned in the live course. If you have the time to do that, I highly recommend it. The material is very high quality, and very engaging. It solidified my learnings and allowed me to go at my own pace when I got hung up. The impact was clear. The score of my initial practice exam was abysmal. I saw progressive improvement with each practice exam. The actual exam was very consistent with what I had learned and practiced. I felt confident and prepared during the test. I walked out with a good score, but almost more importantly, I felt prepared to continue my academic pursuits beyond the GMAT.
I took the online class with Manhattan Prep and thought it was great. Because it was a live online class, you could still ask questions, interact with the instructor, and practice timed sets. However, if you happened to be busy during the scheduled time, all the lessons were recorded.
Overall I thought Manhattan Prep was extremely helpful in learning how to be strategic about the GMAT. On the first diagnostic test I took, I received a 680. My final GMAT score was a 760. I believe the main reason I was able to get this score is because of the class I took with J.R. Tomkinson. While I felt confident in my verbal abilities, I still was able to improve my verbal score by practicing the strategies we went over in the class for trickier critical reasoning questions. In addition, the quant section seemed to be an insurmountable obstacle before I started using the tips and tricks I learned through Manhattan Prep.
Overall, I would highly recommend this program for anyone trying to boost their score on the GMAT. This class really helped me wrap my head around how best to attack the GMAT
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I'd highly recommend Manhattan Prep, and specifically Josh Braslow as an instructor. When I was initially looking up who to take the course with, there were many highly rated instructors. Josh's name obviously came up, given how long he's been at MGMAT and his consistently strong track record. Despite the fact that there were some younger instructors who were highly rated, I figured that Josh's experience with the test for many years would be helpful. And boy, was I right! Josh really understands the test inside out, and will help you understand how the test writers think about questions. This goes a long way in terms of understanding guessing and elimination strategies. Josh also has a great sense of humor, which make the classes very enjoyable - making it a lot easier to sit through classes starting at 7am!
I also had a post-course assessment with Josh, which I would HIGHLY recommend signing up for ASAP after the course ends, provided that you were able to keep up with all the classroom requirements. I had one month between when the class ended and when I was taking my exam, and spending about 45 minutes with Josh on the phone really helped me develop a plan to elevate my performance in the last 4 weeks before my exam. We analyzed my prior performances on practice exams, focused on key areas, and made sure I was spending my last few weeks efficiently.
The first time I looked at anything GMAT-related was in February 2017. I improved 140 points from my first practice test in February 2017 (620) to my actual test in May 2017 (760) - all in the span of 3 months
It's not about working hard and doing as many practice questions / tests as you physically can, it's about working smart and using your time efficiently. Josh and MGMAT do a fantastic job of reinforcing these principles.
Took Avi Gutman's class - great teacher and very engaging. You have to be fully involved in the classroom discussion to make the most of the course, but if you do so, your score will definitely improve.
MGMAT's quant strategy guides are super helpful; in my opinion, the Number Properties guide really is the best of them all. Put simply, I would not have obtained my quant score of 50 without this guide. The GMAT is all about thinking logically and using quick tricks wherever possible - MGMAT's Number Properties guide really knocks it out of the park in this regard.
The verbal strategy guides are also very useful; I have found the CR strategy guide to best most effective in raising my verbal score. While I am no expert at CR, MGMAT's CR guide lays out an extremely effective framework for approaching each CR question type. It took a lot of practice to get used to this framework, but the extra boost to my verbal score (42) was worth all the trouble.
MGMAT also helped me tremendously with my timing issues, a very important part of this test.
Advice for prospective students: Take your MGMAT CAT scores with a grain of salt. I will note that the MGMAT quant section is much tougher than that in the actual exam (this is why I am giving Quant 4 stars). While over-preparation is obviously better than under-preparation, MGMAT runs the risk of demoralizing students into not taking the test. I recommend MGMAT re-calibrate the difficulty level of its CAT quant questions.
Thank you MGMAT for getting me to my dream score!
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I'm really happy that I signed up for Manhattan GMAT Prep. I only allowed myself ~7-8 weeks to study (which is less than recommended), so I needed the course to keep me on track and make sure my studying was efficient.
I ended up completing the homework before each class and used the class as a review. The homework plan, resources, and pacing was the most helpful part of the course. The live-online format was really nice because I could take the class from home (I was working full-time while studying) and also ask questions of the instructor when needed. My class was really small (3-4 people total), and I really liked that because we were able to keep a quick pace.
My score improved 80 points from my diagnostic exam and 60 points from my last practice test (I only took 3) to a 700+ score. If I had given myself more time, I may have been able to score even higher (but there is a chance I might have also burned out as I was studying ~20+ hours each week in addition to working full time).
The resources and questions were very helpful. I did find the IR section on the Manhattan Prep practice tests to be significantly more difficult than the actual tests, and there were fewer prep resources for IR. I scored between a 0-2 on each IR practice test and ended up with a 7 on my actual IR.
If you want to score a 700+, look no further. Going through the well explained Manhattan GMAT guides and watching Thursdays with Ron alone will help you score that 700+.
My verbal did not improve from my diagnostic exam. (I am a native speaker). In my diagnostic exam I got a 41V but on test day I got a 37V. I am not sure why this is as I have scored at least a 38V or higher on all of my practice tests. I do wish that the MGMAT verbal guides had multiple choice questions in the back (to simulate test questions) instead of the short answer questions that they currently have.
For Quant, the books are good to clarify concepts and lay down fundaments but I felt overall the quant tests from MGMAT are a bit more tedious than the actual GMAT which has slightly more witty questions which can make the real GMAT challenging. Along with this I would suggest to use the gmatclub Quant practise tests which are extremely representative. I suggest to focus on verbal for MGMAT and gmatclub tests for Quant.
As I mentioned, MGMAT Prep is a good investment but I do think to really ace both Verbal and Quant you need a bit more specifically on the quant side. The verbal of MGMAT is brilliant - it seriously helped me clarify my understanding and devise an attack strategy for my verbal. For Quant, the books are good to clarify concepts and lay down fundaments but I felt overall the quant tests from MGMAT are a bit more tedious than the actual GMAT which has slightly more witty questions which can make the real GMAT challenging. Along with this I would suggest to use the gmatclub Quant practise tests which are extremely representative. I suggest to focus on verbal for MGMAT and gmatclub tests for Quant.
The MGMAT course review books are so fundamental to picking upn on the basics of the GMAT. I Dont know about all of you but they make concepts so clear and concise and so easy to follow that they really did help me better understand the material. The Quant Section was very good I especially liked the Advanced sections at the end of every book. Verbal was more or less ehhhh but Verbal is not a hard component of this test unless your a non-native speaker would highly recommend!! I would especially recommend the advanced quant book from MGMAT it really is a comprehensive book which lays out all the different tricks and GMAC can formulate questions. Would highly recommend coupled with the OG Guide to perform well on your exam.
Manhattan GMAT prep has a very extensive preparation material. I took 6 mock test package.
The mock tests with Manhattan were really good and were really realistic. The content of the test, the questions were pretty much close to the actual GMAT or of higher level. But the pattern of question is as good as actual GMAT.
For Verbal section the content is very rich and approximately of same toughness as in GMAT hence very useful.
For Quant section the content is lil on the higher side of toughness when compared with GMAT but a 46-47 here means 50 in the actual GMAT.
The Manhattan GMAT prep set was the only resource I used to study for my GMAT. The discrete guides were a great way to really focus on your weaknesses. In general, you want to avoid spending too much time on things that are already strong on so I truthfully read about half the books in depth and skimmed the other half.
Additionally, the practice pad was instrumental in getting my score squarely above 700. I would attribute a good 20 points to proper pad management - setting it up ahead of time and using it to help manage time.
Additionally, the teaching content of the guides were great - the GMAT is a game and the MGMAT materials treats it as such - it gives you the strategies and trains you to know how to play the game. You don't need to genuinely understand or know the content intimately to ace the GMAT - you need to know how to play the game.