| All Reviews > Manhattan Prep > MGMAT Interact Reviews |
The Manhattan Prep self-paced online class is a wonderful way to learn the foundation of everything you need to know for the GMAT. The books were extremely helpful in nailing down actual content with practice, especially for the quantitative reasoning section. Although I personally struggled with critical reasoning, I feel like the live online course where you had an instructor would be better to tailor your specific needs. However, I still am happy with the foundation that was given to me during this course. If you have a hectic schedule, this self-paced studying is a great option! The combination of video and module based learning combined with offline homework was great. However, if you are able to set aside the time for a class with a live tutor, that would probably be best.
As far as features that Interact provides, Navigator is an incredibly useful tool to accompany official GMAT questions. Solutions in Navigator fit in with content in the Manhattan Prep course, and help clarify the often complex solutions found in the official books.
The quant section videos do not often delve into difficult topics, but the strategy components are most helpful. The advanced quant eBook, which is included with the course, covers useful material and additional challenging practice. I found the actual GMAT's quant section to be much easier than the quant found in Interact's practice exams.
The verbal content in Interact covers tricky rules well, and quizzes you on them. Blog posts (which can also be accessed for free) cover strategy for timing, which I used when taking my exam.
This course is honestly great. You can take it as quickly or as slowly as you like as there are no live classes. Everything is pre-recorded and interactive so tailored to your strengths and weaknesses. It's also divided up into many sub-sections within Verbal, Quand, and IR. This means that you have the possibility to focus on just certain bits of the GMAT (even though I would recommend going through the whole course. I completed it in 4 weeks but I must honestly say that this was working at least 3 hours a day. I wish I had had more time to fully enjoy this course and do it over 3 months. It would have allowed me to practice more and use some of the extra resources that Manhattan Prep offers as part of the course (extra practice questions etc). I did however add 110 points to my previous score so I was very satisfied.
There are 6 CAT exams which are really useful to get used to the exam and also to see how you improve as you complete the course. One great thing as well, is that they have articles on time management which I found really useful because they give you special techniques of how to keep track of time as you do the exam (this is something I really struggled with initially), and how to use your whiteboard in the most efficient way given the time constraints.
Quant: I learnt some great techniques to go faster and how to recognise specific types of questions and strategies to go about them. MPrep Interact also often provides different strategies and let's you choose which one you prefer because it acknowledges the fact that we don't all go about math problems in the same way.
Verbal: I thought verbal was the best section of this course so if you're looking to improve your verbal score then I'd really recommend this MPrep Interact. It goes through everything you need to know for SC and RC but more importantly it has helped me recognise when the GMAT tries to catch you out, especially on the toughest questions which I found were in the CR section of the exam.
Overall I highly recommend this course, especially if like me you like to organise your studying with your own schedule and take more or less time depending on which sections of the exam you wish to focus on. I wouldn't recommend it however if you're looking to do it in just a few weeks like me, it's possible but really not much fun! If you're not an organised person, then maybe courses with actual live tutors would be more suited. I didn't buy the paper books, just the online PDFs that are included for free and that was fine! They're really useful (unlike the OG book that really is not enough to do well on the exam!)
Joined: Jan 31, 2021
Posts: 0
Kudos: 0
Verified GMAT Classic score:
750 Q49 V44 (Online)
I found the Interact program through Manhattan Prep to be quite beneficial in helping me to achieve my target score. I began studying in early February and by early April I was consistently achieving above 700 on the official practice exams.
The course is a great combination of original material and official guide problem sets, and the video lessons almost always helped me to better understand the topics covered.
My only issue was finding the Manhattan mock exams a lot more difficult than the real thing. For example, I scored 590 on a Manhattan mock and a 760 on an official mock two days later. At the same time, however, I can't argue that they didn't help prepare me for the real exam.
The Manhattan Prep online course I took was taught by Emily Madan. She was very detail-oriented, insightful and all around helpful in my GMAT pursuit. I started the class in August of this year and studied/did homework religiously. My original score was a 610 and quant was my biggest weak point. Emily was great in every class and always challenged us. The format is typically a topic from a combination of verbal/quant/IR and then example questions on that topic. She gave us plenty of strategies to use on test day. I would highly recommend using Emily to anyone wanting to improve their scores. I went from a 610 to a 690. It took me 4 months of hard studying and it definitely paid off. I would recommend Manhattan Prep/Emily to anyone looking to strengthen GMAT scores.
MGMAT Interact is an impressive product. It took a lot of work and dedication, but I was ultimately able to surpass my goal of a score of 700 (I got a 710 second attempt) through many hours of work and a highly effective Post Exam Assessment (PEA) after not reaching my goal on my first attempt, and having started out at a baseline of 570. I started the Interact course in the beginning of January, 2019. As an active duty member of the U.S. military, I had not exercised many of the academic skills tested in the GMAT in nearly 7 years. MGMAT Interact was a great tool that allowed me to "plug back in" at my own pace. I worked 10-15 hours per week for 3.5 months completing the Interact syllabus, and then left 1.5 months for review and practice before my test date in late May. I think the Interact syllabus could be completed in 2ish months with a less demanding work schedule. Owing to a very demanding work training tempo prior to my first attempt, I did not achieve my goal of 700 and scored 660. MGMAT offers a free, 1 hour Post Exam Assessment (PEA) on videochat with one of its tutors if you do not achieve your goal on attempt 1 and you are taking one of their courses. I had one month between my first and second attempt, but really only 2 weeks of good study time owing to work commitments. The PEA was highly effective. Elaine Loh did a great job of giving me tangible "do this" advice, while still really listening to and giving thoughtful answers to my questions. She helped me tailor essentially a 10-14 day study plan (obviously highly compressed) to give me the best shot of hitting 700. She sent me a ton of helpful drill sets for my weaker areas, and she gave me hard, tangible priorities for what I needed to work on and for roughly how long. She also helped drive home the importance of error logging. Most impressively, she stayed in contact with me for the next couple of weeks and promptly answered my questions via email. Her feedback on a day by day study plan I created helped boost my confidence in the final week before my second test attempt. Her efforts during the PEA and after it really underscored how MGMAT is committed to getting you to where you want to be, even if you don't hit your goal on your first attempt. That being said, Elaine went above and beyond; she was invested in my personal success and really wanted me to achieve my goal, irrespective of reviews, etc. The PEA is a great feature and I attribute much of my rapid score improvement (50 points) to Elaine's effectiveness and sincere efforts as an instructor.
This is almost exclusively Quant review, as I spent little time studying verbal.
Overall quant improvement: 41 to 49 in about 125 hours of work.
Pros:
-Trust: Reason I chose MGMAT is that they're a trusted resource. There're so many new companies that're entering the GMAT resource scene and I didn't want to dedicate an hour to studying poorly. MGMAT has been around for a long time and this trust paid off.
-Basics: Awesome math fundamentals guides. I needed help with that and the lessons/exercises were great.
-Rubric: I needed guidance on what to study when. The interact rubric provided exactly that: what to read, what exercises to do, what further reading and exercises you can do if you need more help with a specific subject.
-"Navigator" - This is the error log, timer, and answers to OG questions they provide you. This was an amazing tool that I didn't know about before I bought Interact, but was essential to my improvement.
-App: great resource for more math exercises and questions similar to OG.
Cons:
-2019 Q/V OG revew are not in the MGMAT navigator.
-Expensive
-No specific guidance. I think tutors can be helpful if you need guidance, I did fine without that by using these forums to help guide my focus once I plateaued.
Manhattan GMAT has long been regarded one of the best GMAT prep programs out there. The Interact product was a great way to get structured instruction and practice without spending the cash for the full classroom course.
I utilized the self study guides to practice the GMAT but hit a wall and was not able to improve my GMAT verbal score. The Interact product gave me the structured instruction along with guided practice that I needed to really grasp the materials. I completed the Interact verbal material within a week and noticed a 50 - 60 point improvement in my GMAT score. Although results may vary, I strongly believe that the Interact program can help students who are struggling on the self-study route.
Within just a month, my GMAT score improved greatly from 660 to 710, with most of the help being from Manhattan Interact courses of Verbal. Following the instructions of the teachers, finishing all the required homework and reading all their materials for twice, I managed to improve my verbal substantially. Of course that does not mean you will definitely going to score higher if you sign up for the courses, but it's the dedication put into the preparation and the interactions with excellent teachers they have, who give you answers whenever you have questions you could not figure out. They are really helpful.
I started studying for GMAT in June 2015, planning to apply to business school in Fall 2016. I have a Masters degree in engineering, so quant was not a concern for me. English is not my first language. I was looking for Verbal focused course, and landed Manhattan GMAT's website. Since I have plenty of time to prepare, so I didn't want to stress myself out with the intensive course schedule, and decided to go with the interactive route to study at my own pace. I made a study plan at the beginning of each week to help keep myself staying on track. I studied about 1-2 hours per night on week days on average, and 3-4 hours on Saturdays, and didn't affect any of my extracurricular activities. I took a MGMAT CAT in the first week, and scored a 620, took the 2nd CAT a month later: 640, a 3rd CAT a month later: 650, and a 4th one 2 month later: 680. My Verbal went from 31-35, Math from 45 to 48. A week before exam I took a GMAT Prep Exam, and scored 760. So from my experience MGMAT CAT is harder than official questions. I took my exam at the end of October, and scored a 730 (38V+50Q).
The preparation took about 4.5 months, as I mentioned before, I had a pretty relaxed study plan, and still slacked off from time to time, there are weeks I only studied 2-3 days. MGMAT Interactive Verbal was almost the only material I really used. I followed through the course, and completed all the homework. I did all the Math problems on OG, but only got through about 1/3 of OG Verbal questions. MGMAT Interactive has helped my immensely, I credit all my improvement in Verbal (from 31 to 38) to it.
MGMAT Interactive is efficient, effective, flexible, and entertaining. Comparing to online and in classroom sessions, I think I could get more out of the interactive course, since it allows me to study at my own pace, so I don't have to worry about not finishing all the homework.
Bottom line: I highly recommend MGMAT Interactive, especially if you are starting early, and don't want to exhaust yourself over a long period of exam prep.
thanks for the review.