Manhattan GMAT Private Tutoring Reviews

I took both the Manhattan GMAT course and 1x1 sessions with Mark Sullivan. He was AWESOME. He's naturally a great teacher (probably b/c he is a professor by trade!). The class was super engaging (I can genuinely say I actually enjoyed the class and looked forward to it every week, as odd as that sounds!) and he was really good at flexing the material and difficulty levels to the needs of the class. He is SO patient, and adapts the explanation from your point of view, i.e., how you went about the problem and your thought process. He was also SO helpful in follow-up questions I had after class. For one specific instance, I had a quant problem that I followed up with him on via email, and he not only responded quickly, but followed up with a recorded video of him explaining the problem... I was mind blown at the dedication and generosity.

I also really enjoyed our 1x1 sessions. I was struggling with how to organize my personal prep after the class over, so I sought 1x1s with him to prep the last mile ahead of taking the test. He laid out in extreme detail, the daily prep schedule, with drills, additional exercise sheets, etc. Definitely super helpful to have Mark on your team, he is all around a thoughtful, kind, and pleasant person to be around, who inspires confidence in your success :)

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After taking a GMAT prep course and studying for two months without seeing my score improve, I decided private tutoring may be a good option for me. I did a lot of research and found Mark had great reviews so I reached out with one month left until my test date. All I can say is THANK GOODNESS I did! Mark helped me pick apart my strengths and weaknesses. He showed me exactly what to focus on to increase my score. Not only that, he also taught me tips and tricks on how to best take the test. Mark is patient and always happy to help, and he knows this test inside out. If you REALLY stick to the homework he assigns (redo log especially), you will see an improvement. Every penny was worth it. THANK YOU MARK!

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I went into working with Jeff with very little context on the GMAT and a general assumption that if I had done well on past standardized exams, I could do well on the GMAT with minimal effort levels. Not only was I wrong, but I quite literally could not have gotten the score I received without Jeff's coaching, support, and the structure he provided. Jeff is without a doubt the most helpful tutor I've had and managed to provide an approach to my exam that helped me succeed beyond my own expectations. I would recommend Jeff and Manhattan Prep to any student looking to nail the GMAT and get over the hump.

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Sage is an amazing GMAT Professor with a lot of experience in teaching GMAT. Sage helped me a lot with improving my GMAT score by several hundreds points. Sage is great at teaching how to think in an efficient way and identify strategies to really accelerate your progress in improving the GMAT score or achieve a dream score. Sage is excellent in helping create a structure, study targets to be able to work independently and learn from mistakes to achieve your dream GMAT score.
Furthermore, Sage is a very inspiring, patient and encouraging professor, whether it is class or in the context of private tutoring. He teaches his students how to solve virtually any problem in a very efficient and interesting way, which would be extremely valuable for improving one’s GMAT score. If you are ready to improve your GMAT score by several hundred points, I would certainly recommend you to have lessons and classes with Sage Pearce-Higgins.

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When I started my GMAT journey, I scored a 490 on my first Manhattan CAT. I was certainly not one of those "Score a 740 in 20 days" stories. In David's Manhattan prep class I learned all of the ground-up framework necessary to understand the GMAT and strategize how to conquer it. Equally as important, as the COVID-19 crisis emerged, David and Manhattan prep made the transition to online learning seamless. At this point David and I had started private tutoring and he was able to give me a structured workload with followup meetings to keep me on track. As I continued to advance, David and I dug deeper into different strategies to tackle the toughest questions while reinforcing the framework that was built in the beginning. After scoring a 680 GMAT on my first run, there was no panic and David refocused my approach to improve on my weakest sections. The results speak for themselves and on my second go, I scored a 740. I am over the moon with my score and how far I've come, and I can not thank David enough for his help and guidance!

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I worked with Mark Sullivan one on one to fine-tune a few skills after completing the Manhattan prep in-person/online nine-week course. Mark was great! He was extremely organized and helped me find out how to squeeze a few more points out of the test. His nightly homework assignments kept me super focused until test day, and his advice about how to prepare in the week/days leading up to the test truly helped me go into the test with the confidence that I would get the score that I was hoping for. Mark was a great instructor and I highly recommend him to students who are looking to further their GMAT studies.

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I started my GMAT journey in the summer of 2019. I took a practice test and scored a 640-- I wasn't sweating it because I had been out of school for a few years and I knew I could brush up on the quant rather quickly (or so I thought). Just for reference, I have a masters degree in chemical engineering.
Kaplan
I signed up for private tutoring with Kaplan online 10 hour course. I watched some of the lessons, but quickly got bored. They were slow.. I did not feel my tutor was very helpful and about halfway through I started searching for alternatives. (I've had good luck with Kaplan for LSAT (scoring a 167) but this does not seem to be their strength).

In Person tutoring
I did two months of in-person tutoring and was able to increase from 640 practice tests to a 690 real GMAT test. I took the GMAT 3 times (690,Cancelled,690) and wasn't making much progress. I was having timing issues in the quant section (either too fast or too slow). I often panicked when I got to a quant problem that I felt I should know, but couldnt think how to solve. I was frustrated with this tutor (who also crossed some professional boundaries) because usually standardized tests are a strength of mine, but the GMAT was winning.

Manhattan Prep Advanced online course

This is where Mark comes in, after 3 attempts at the GMAT, I was willing to try something new. I signed up for the advanced online class through Manhattan prep. I typically stay away from online group study classes because it's easy for me to get distracted completely defeating the point..

Mark's advanced online class was excellent. It skips the basics and jumps right into how to increase your score. He keeps everyone engaged by "cold calling" which kept me from playing on my phone and I learned a lot from my classmates. What I learned especially on verbal was that while I may have gotten the right answer, it wasn't necessarily always for the right reasons!
I also challenged myself to make sure I did ALL the homework in between the lessons. I really enjoyed the Manhattan prep video lessons that they had on topics. I watched all of them multiple times. However, my mistake here was that I did not do all the practice tests. Therefore I still struggled with timing and test stress when I took my 4th GMAT a month after the class finished.
My score improved (finally!) to a 710 (Q44, V44). My verbal score benefited the most from the advanced online class and I went from a 40 to a 44.

Mark Sullivan Private Tutoring
I was happier with the 710, but still not satisfied. I really felt I had more I could do on the quant. I reached out to Mark to see if he was available to help me while I prep for my 5th and final GMAT about a month later. Luckily he was and we got started right away.
Working with Mark for private tutoring after the Advanced Online class was absolutely the right choice for me. I had the strong base (from doing all the homework) and I knew how he taught. We were able to build on that really quickly and I improved every tutoring session. He had me practice every day on timing and I did regular practice tests. The private tutoring was great because then we could really expand on my unique questions.

Thanks to Mark I had a 40 point improvement in my GMAT score!

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I worked with Reed at Manhattan Prep NYC from May-August 2019. I came in to tutoring scoring around 560-610 on a few practice GMATs I had taken. In September, I ended up scoring a 710 (45Q, 41V)! Reed's patience, clever strategies/tricks and expertise were a critical part of my GMAT journey. I am by no means a natural test taker, but with persistence and Reed's guidance I was able to exceed my target score. Not only is he fun to work with, but he is great at tailoring each lesson exactly to what you need (sometimes he knew what I needed better than I did) for both Quant and Verbal. I highly recommend working with Reed if you are looking to improve you GMAT score. I can genuinely say that not only did his expertise greatly help my score but also that I looked forward to every session! It's been a pleasure.

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I highly recommend private tutoring with Joshua Braslow. After scoring 650 (Q: 42 / V: 37) on my first attempt I signed up for private tutoring with Joshua and retook the GMAT after three private tutoring sessions (~4 weeks). On my second attempt, I accomplished my goal and scored 710 (Q:46 / V: 41). Joshua helped identify strengths/weaknesses and targeted strategic areas for improvement to help me raise my score in a short amount of time. In the tutoring sessions, Joshua coached me on content as well as strategy and I felt well-prepared during my second GMAT attempt. Could not have achieved the score I was hoping for as quickly as I was able to without Joshua's help. I highly recommend using Joshua regardless of where you stand in your studies. He will help set goals and provide useful insights that will help you accomplish those goals.

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I've been working with Mark ever since I enrolled in his Advanced Course back in October 2018. At that point, my sister had already taken a regular course with him and suggested that I enroll in the Advanced Course to see if I could raise my score to the 700+ level. I'm not a great test taker and I think timing in the GMAT is especially difficult, but - after his Advanced Course and several private tutoring sessions - Mark really helped me get to the 700+ I was hoping for.

Mark is a GMAT expert (he'll be able to walk you through the best way to solve any problem you throw at him), but he's also excellent at helping you maximize your study time -- he really makes an effort to identify the areas of improvement that will help you achieve the largest score improvement on the test. In particular, I think the private tutoring sessions were especially helpful because Mark and I were able to look into my weak areas much more closely (i.e. advanced absolute value, inequalities, or geometry concepts that I was too shy to ask in class). He was also able to show me quant problem shortcuts that were tailored to my specific weaknesses and create a personalized study plan that allowed me to efficiently tackle low-hanging fruit given my tight timeline. And while the private tutoring sessions are a little pricey, Mark is willing to work with whatever budget you may have. In the end, I'm extremely glad that I decided to work with Mark and I thought the Advanced Course/private tutoring sessions were absolutely worth it.

My GMAT journey was not an easy one for me (scoring a 670, then a 680 in which my verbal and quant scores essentially flipped), but I'm glad I didn't give up. Seeking the right kind of help can really make all the difference and I think Mark was key throughout my whole process.

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