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You can buy the Manhattan Prep Study Guides on Amazon or in your local B&N. The books are great and should be reviewed consistently as you will understand more of the content each time. This review is not about the solid study material. Manhattan Prep's online tools (especially the Archer tool) are essential. The office hours (phone conferences with instructors) were invaluable. Understanding what to do to get past certain plateaus was only possible for me after quick chats with the instructors. I used the Online Self Study program over a 2 month period and scored a 720, 180 points above my diagnostic test.
After independently studying for months, I took the GMAT for the first time and scored a 650 – about 70 points lower than my goal. I approached Manhattan GMAT for tutoring, desperate since I was planning to take the GMAT again a month later, and requested to be paired up with Dmitry Farber since a friend of mine had had success with him.
Dmitry taught me as much about mental preparation for the GMAT (something I largely had ignored before) as about effective approaches to problems. I had overstressed before taking the GMAT the first time, and exhausted myself mentally by taking too many practice tests in the weeks leading up. Dmitry really nailed in for me how important it was to have a relaxed but alert mind coming into the test. Further, after analyzing some of my practice tests, he provided me new methods for tackling problems that I was spending too much time on so that I was more efficient in the test.
Several tutoring sessions later, and not TOO much extra study or practice tests, I felt much more confident and prepared to tackle the test and came out with a 760 – far beyond what I had targeted. I simply could not have done it without Dmitry’s insightful perspectives and practical help.
I highly recommend the full set of Manhattan GMAT self-study materials, as well as MGMAT tutors. In particular, MGMAT helped me raise my quant score significantly thanks to its difficult Quant sections on its online CAT exams.
After several months of intense self-study using prep materials from other providers, I first took the GMAT in March 2013 and scored a 700. I debated sticking with the score, my quant/verbal split was very skewed (63rd percentile quant/93rd percentile verbal), and I felt that with more effort/dedication through a structured prep program I could bring up my quant score.
Initially I enrolled in a full 9 week MGMAT course, however when I took a diagnostic test and discussed the results with my instructor, he recommended I consider tutoring instead and focus on quant alone (since my verbal score was already high). MGMAT allowed me to transfer my course credit with relatively little hassle, and I met for ~5 hours of tutoring spread over 2 months.
My tutor did a great job working through difficult problems with me, helping me develop strategic approaches to test-taking, and analyzing the results of my practice tests to give me personalized feedback and problem sets based on my weaknesses. In particular, my tutor helped me understand the importance of time management on the Quant section, and gave me several useful strategies to improve in this respect.
I retook the GMAT in Aug. 2013 and scored a 760, with an 81st percentile quant/99th percentile verbal split. I think my improvement from a good to great score is a result that speaks for itself in terms of the quality of MGMAT materials and instruction. Thanks Manhattan GMAT!
David was an excellent tutor and helped provide the feedback I needed. He broke down the concepts and provided tips that were very helpful during the test. He was very available to answer questions and was able to really hone in on my weak points, specifically probabilities and combinatorics. He also made the GMAT less of a mystery by explaining how the scoring process worked and what the best strategy was for time management, difficult problems, and boosting your final score. In my case, I knew that I wanted to boost my quant as much as possible so we focused on that. He gave me hundreds of problems to do and in the end it paid off.
I studied for the GMAT for a year before taking my first official exam. I spent the first ten months reviewing Manhattan GMAT's two Foundation supplements and eight Strategy guides. I did every problem in these books and in all three official GMAC guides. In addition, I spent time re-learning grammar (always good to know). I spent 1-2 hours a day on this material.
I spent the last two months taking the six Manhattan GMAT exams as well as the two free official GMAC practice exams. Sometime during the content learning stage, I took the official diagnostic exam. I was scoring above average on all but one category. I never actually took a full practice exam from start to finish. One day I would do the essays and math sections of the exam and then do verbal practice and review. The next day I would do 1-2 hours of math problems and then take the verbal exam. After completely finishing the exam, I would review all the problems, an effort taking several hours.
My first practice exam was horrible -- 9th percentile or so -- because I didn't finish on time. That was an extremely important lesson to always finish the exam. My other CAT exam scores ranged from 650 to 740, but most were above 700. My official practice exam results were in the high 600s and low 700s. On the official exam, I got a 650; I scored very high on each section except for math. I thought I had done pretty well on math timing and that I was dropping the hard problems. Further, I thought my math score was a fluke, so I quickly decided to sign up for a second official exam the next month. However, I decided to use another math strategy. Since I had often spent more time on the first half of the math section and rushed the last third but had done well during those practice exams, I thought I would stick to this other approach that I was more used to. My study strategy was to buy the recently released 13th edition of the official guide and complete all 800 practice questions. This took a lot of time.
In addition to this, I completed the Manhattan GMAT Advanced Quant guide. I took two official exams again, achieving the same results as before. On the actual exam, my scored dropped. My math score was identical. I quickly reasoned that I must have been fooling my self somewhere and that I would need help to identify and fix the problem(s). So the first thing I did when I got back home was set up a 20-minute appointment with a tutor. I'm glad I did and I'm glad that my request made its way to Liz Moliski. I just wished I had worked with her sooner.
Liz realized that I was studying too much and did not have a real timing strategy for math. Important for my confidence, she repeatedly told me that I was good at math. She advised me to study fewer hours and practice timing sets. The "watertight" timing set strategy is laid out in Manhattan GMAT Roadmap (Guide 0). Two to three times a week, I did 15 tough math problems in 30 minutes, making sure I was sticking to the 5 problems/10 minutes intervals. The point of this exercise was to learn to drop problems that I couldn't do quickly. This was also a way to practice guessing, which I was not good at. Once I got the timing down, the next step was to make sure that I focused on correctly solving the easy and medium problems and quickly dropping the hard problems that I probably could not do within two and a half minutes. I stayed warm on the verbal by doing a couple sets of 12 hard problems each week. I took two GMAT Focus quant exams and took one official practice test, which I did from start to finish. A few weeks before taking the third official exam, I began to make flashcards (about 40 in total by the end) using the example from Roadmap of problem types that appear often or had a useful "trick" -- an insight that unlocked the problem. I wish I had done this earlier.
The week and day before the exam, I didn't over study. I did spend several hours the day before reviewing my flash cards and some problems, but I made sure I didn't study in the evening. On test day, I got over 700!
I took the GMAT for the first time in July after studying on my own with materials I purchased online. I got a 620 and was unhappy. Though my verbal was quite strong, my math score was way below where I thought it could be. I decided to sign up for individual tutoring sessions at Manhattan GMAT in NYC.
I met with a tutor on a one-on-one basis approximately every week for about 2 months. We reviewed the fundamental aspects of the quantitative portion of the test, established a plan for studying and practicing on my own using the Manhattan GMAT materials and website, and developed a test-taking strategy to ensure I completed all the questions on test day and wasn't rushed. Ultimately my math score improved considerably and I was able to reach my overall score goal of 700.
Highly recommend this package. MGMAT self study plus was very useful for me since it let me pace my gmat preparation in my own way as it provides the previously recorded sessions.
Each one is unique. I chose this product as I can pace my own prep schedule. I rushed through the 9-session course in a month or so(about 5 weeks) and spent another 5 weeks on focussed preparation and then gave my gmat. I was good in quants and really went for this prep course to focus on my verbal skills.
I was consistently getting 640-680 score in MGMAT practicve test. I was hoping to cross atleast 700. Luckily, I got 730 on the real gmat and i'm excited about it. I took gmat for the first time about 8 months ago and had scored 640.
The self-study course helped me improve my GMAT score by more than 100 points. The coursework and syllabus provide a very structured approach to learning the necessary material. I appreciated that the coursework is very easily adapted to best meet individual needs. Specifically Manhattan GMAT has created a problem tracking tool, OG Archer, that provides students with a very qualitative overview of performance over time, broken down by subject matter, difficulty, etc. In addition, the detailed problem explanations, labs, question banks, and CAT exams were all helpful.
If you are planning to use the self-directed program, I STRONGLY recommend that you get the package that includes access to recorded lectures. The lectures provide invaluable insights about how to use study time effectively, approach challenging problems, deal with test day stresses, and much more. My recorded lectures were led by Emily Sledge and Stephanie Moyerman, both of which were fantastic.
For those of you interested in the numbers:
I scored a 760 on test day, a 100 point improvement from my initial CAT (660)
Cat 1 - 42Q / 38V - 660 (7/14/12)
Cat 2 - 45Q / 45V - 730 (8/26/12)
GMAT Prep - 47Q / 38V - 690 (9/15/12)
GMAT Prep - 45Q / 45V - 730 (9/18/12)
Cat 3 - 45Q / 45V - 730 (10/10/12)
Test Day - 48Q / 47V - 760 (10/11/12)
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.