Manhattan Prep GMAT Course Reviews

Manhattan GMAT is really a first-class organization from top to bottom. A little bit about my history with the organization and then some of the highlights: I took a course back in summer of 2011 and took the GMAT once after the course and got a 660. I was disappointed in the result, but decided to step away and return to the GMAT in early 2012, when I signed up for a discounted 9-week course as a second-time student. Took the test 4 days ago and got a 740. Needless to say, I am pleased with the outcome.

A few highlights about the organization:

* Customer Service is Incredible: Every time I call this Company, someone very nice answers and helps me through whatever issue I have. I've almost never experienced such consistency with another Company.

* Online Platform: The whole OG Archer online question bank, Eluminate platform, and general "onlinenness" of the business is first-rate. I loved doing questions on the Archer so I could track progress and time, and I utilized a lot of the Thursdays with Ron.

* Charismatic and Nice Teachers: Really sets them apart, the fact that they screen teachers so heavily to get ones that are charismatic, that are smart, that are genuinely nice, and that really care how you do.

* Plethora of Prep Programs outside of the 9-week Course: I took advantage of everything I could. Thursdays with Ron. The Quest for 750 Workshops. I thought the fact that I had all of this at my fingertips was great, and as a 9-week student I got discounts.

* Overall Just Caring How You Do: I felt like the "discounted" nature of my second course showed they cared about MY outcome. They cared what I got. Plus, they have so many 1-on-1 assessments to really prep you for test day.

Overall, I am glad I never have to take the GMAT again (it's been a long 4 months), but if I had to do it all over again there is no doubt I would use Manhattan GMAT. I have already referred multiple friends. Hope this Helps and Good Luck!

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I enrolled in the Live Online course in December with plans of taking the GMAT in March and, if necessary, retaking it in April. My experience with Manhattan GMAT was excellent. My teachers (Gilad Edelman and Marc Fienberg) were great. They had a thorough understanding of the material presented in the course and were great at answering questions asked by students. The course is a lot of work, but it is well worth it if you are shooting for a top score.

What really made Manhattan GMAT great was not only the quality of the instructors, but also the extensive amount of materials provided to help you succeed. The study guides are very thorough and are great at explaining the concepts. Especially with the quant, these books were fantastic. The OG Archer they provide is also extremely helpful. It allows students to time themselves on official guide questions and records answers. Based off this data the system identifies strengths and weaknesses and allows one to study accordingly. It also provides answer explanations for all the math questions. My one issue with the Archer is that the questions in the supplemental verbal and quant guides do not have answer explanations in the Archer. This would have been very helpful as the answer explanations in the official guide are not particularly helpful.

All in all, I had a great experience with the course and would recommend it to anyone. In the end, I improved 90 points above my initial diagnostic test. If you are serious about getting a top score and are willing to put in the necessary effort to master the material, Manhattan GMAT should be at the top of your list for GMAT prep courses.

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The Manhattan GMAT 9-Session Prep Course drastically improved my test score and helped me achieve my goals for the GMAT. The course gave me excellent structure for studying for the test, the proper tools to study and critical strategies for solving all of the problems on the test. My instructor was smart and engaged the class well in discussions, providing simple and effective explanations for all of our work while teaching us to think about how to handle the problems.

The volume of information in the class and textbooks means that taking this course is a serious commitment. I spent at least 5 hours a week studying and reading the materials for the week's classes. With thousands of pages in review content, there is plenty of material to cover. The course will not teach you everything you need to know in the classroom. You will absolutely need to put in the time and effort to study.

The instructor that taught my course was fantastic and did a great job engaging with the class and working through problems thoroughly. He helped teach us multiple ways to attack and solve all of the different types of quantitative and verbal problems, which helped us understand the different ways to approach problems. He focused on helping us understand how to approach problems and identify methods to solve them instead of focusing on the different individual steps. While the work was sometimes tedious (I lost track of how many times I wrote AD BCE to begin working on Data Sufficiency problems), the detailed reviews and analysis of real GMAT questions helped me to quickly identify how to approach each problem. After reviewing the material on my own and doing many practice exams and questions, I was very comfortable taking the test on the day of my exam.

I found that putting in the effort yielded a significant improvement in my score. The course provided me with the tools and strategies that I needed to succeed on the GMAT. However, I did need to put in a lot of time and effort on my own to supplement the classroom work. If you are looking for a course where you can sit in a room, be spoon-fed content and then take the test immediately after, this is not the right course for you. If you are a highly-motivated self-starter who will put in the time and effort to study and want smart, engaging teachers who will help take you from a great score to an outstanding score, Manhattan GMAT is the place to go. My score rose from below the average grade of accepted students at the top business schools to above it thanks to this course.

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The MGMAT recorded courses are great if you want to score between 600-700, which may be all you need. However, in order to get 700+ the courses themselves don't really cut it.

On the other hand, the books, online tests, and other materials are GREAT! Paired with Google it's all you need to drag you up from a 500 to a 770 ;)

The yellow pad and pen are a great addition to the pack - it eases you into the simulating the tests. The online tests the MGMAT has are a bit more challenging in the math department than the real test but the pressure that creates to learn the shortcuts of the math problems will help you out. SC was what tripped me up the most, but the MGMAT SC book paired with the Official Guide (included in the package) dragged me through that kicking and screaming.

And of course, since it is a pricey course, after you're all done you can sell the books on ebay for a few hundred too. If I were to do it again I'd skip the 9 online courses and just get all the books + online practice exams.

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I have been out of school for quite a few years so I needed to come up to speed pretty quick on the material. Initially, I tried studying on my own with a couple of the Manhattan GMAT books but wasn't progressing as fast as I liked.

Taking the class quickly turned that around. It forced me to stop making excuses for not studying and if you don't put in the work, you'll quickly fall behind.

I took my in-person class with Ron Purewal, who I believed scored 800 on the test. He was an excellent instructor. He would give us tips that were not in the Manhattan books but that help us solve the problems quicker. For example, he emphasized multiplying numbers a certain way to save time.

He was just fanatic about helping us ace the test. He answered pretty much every test question on the forums and showed the quickest way to derive the answers. On top of that, his Thursdays with Ron were very insightful.

I initially scored in the mid to upper 500’s on the Manhattan’s online test and ended up getting lower 700’s on both the Manhattan version and the real GMAT test. The biggest benefit of taking the Manhattan online tests for me was to get the timing down.

Your score is still up to you and how much effort you put into it but these guys can definitely save you time and help you get there. I highly recommend taking their classes, especially with Ron.

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I completed the ManhattanGMAT program in London. After taking test classes with both Kaplan and ManhattanGMAT, I would MGMAT to have not only better educated and more engaging instructors, but also a more serious and advanced group of other students. The classroom courses were a good mix of lecture and examples and - at three hours - passed quite quickly. The online materials, particularly the practice tests, were incredibly valuable, as were the books that you received on each individual topic covered in the tests. After a couple additional months of study following the course, I scored above my target score on the first time taking the test, thanks in large part to the quality of the manhattan GMAT program. I would highly recommend it.

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Disclaimer: Before I write my review, I'd like to say that I am in no way affiliated with Manhattan GMAT Prep.

In the fall of 2011, I signed up for the 9-week, live online MGMAT course after several recommendations from friends who had previously taken the course and used the MGMAT materials. Although I had scored pretty well on the SATs back in high school, I knew that the GMATs were a completely different beast. Thus, I knew it was crucial for me to commit to rigorous preparation for the GMAT exam - and Manhattan GMAT prep provided just that.

In my opinion, MGMAT is truly the best GMAT prep source out there. I was incredibly pleased with how comprehensive the course is and how great the test prep materials are. I was particularly impressed by the following:

1) The strategy guides: these are super helpful, especially Sentence Correction (treat this guide as your bible - memorize it from cover to cover), Word Translations and Number Properties. The best thing about these guides is that they really drill GMAT concepts into your head, so that your understanding of such topics as prime numbers and permutations is rock solid. For example, I went into my preparation thinking, "I know my perfect squares!" but MGMAT materials really teach you how to tackle various problems in a very systematic and strategic way (i.e. perfect squares have an odd number of factors, whereas other integers have an even number of factors).

2) Official Guide Tracker - the OG tracker tracks all of the different problems one has completed in the Official Guide and categorizes the problems based on problem type, correct/incorrect and the amount of time one has spent on each respective problem. This is especially useful to gauge one's strengths and weaknesses. Using this application, I was really able to hone in on my problem areas and work at them so that I could succeed on the exam.

3) MGMAT CAT exams - I cannot emphasize how important these CAT exams are. One of the biggest challenges of the GMAT is staying physically and mentally alert throughout the entire ~4 hour marathon (during my first two CAT exams, I started to zone out around 30 minutes into the Quant section). These CAT exams are not only incredibly similar to the actual thing, but are also great for building up one's stamina for dealing with the long battle known as the GMAT. My only issue with these exams is that they tend to focus pretty heavily on combinatorics and probability-type questions; however, on the real thing (I took the GMAT twice) I have -at most- encountered 1 to 2 combinatorics/probability type questions. So don't stress out if you're bad at these aforementioned problem types!

4) General strategies/study methods taught in class - one of the best parts about the MGMAT course is the strategy taught by the (super helpful!) instructors in class. For example, I was advised to go through all of my practice problems -both the ones that I did correctly and the ones I did incorrectly- so that I could really grasp concepts and figure out quicker ways to do the problems I had already done correctly.

After my dismal diagnostic score of 590, I was almost convinced that I was never going to score above a 700. However, after going through tons and tons of timed practice problems, reviewing the MGMAT strategy guides from cover to cover (multiple times!), and stimulating real test-day conditions with the MGMAT CAT exams, I was shocked to find a score that was 180 points above my diagnostic (you do the math). I think that MGMAT was crucial to my GMAT success; however, one must also devote a good amount of time to really study the MGMAT material in order to succeed on the GMAT.

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I was very pleased with my final score and the improvement I'd made on the score I got at the beginning of the course. Classes were always fun. My instructor was very engaging and energetic. The materials were thorough and to the point. There are definitely no short cuts; you have to put in the time. But I actually enjoyed taking the 9 week prep class and studying for the exam. It was less daunting to prep as part of the course rather than solo.

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I highly recommend Kim Cabot's class. She manages to make studying for the test fun - and I could go on about how much I despise the GMAT. Kim is a highly entertaining teacher and extremely intelligent.

Manhattan GMAT is very well organized and the handouts and online resources give its students a huge advantage over a student just studying from the Official Guide.

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I currently work at an Investment Bank so trying to study for the GMAT has been difficult. In addition to achive a successful score, you have to not just worry about studying and understanding the material but having strategies along the way. Manhattan GMAT provides great structure that has been proven in addition to the support and resources. They understand what is key asnd how you should look at the questions and test. This is important for a test taker looking to get a high score.

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