I took my diagnostic in June and scored a 600. I was ambitious about a good score, and I had to do it in about 2 months amidst a very heavy workload. I needed a good coach and that's when I enrolled in the Manhattan GMAT 9 session course.

First of all, this is a very detailed and demanding course. From the first look at its curriculum it was pretty clear to me that this company knew the art and science of turning a novice into a master on this exam. The material is exhaustive and intuitive - it really captures the naunces of the varied thought processes that different people follow while solving a problem, and then tells you how to hone your unique way of thinking. I found that particularly helpful as most people have a particular style of doing things, and some approaches resonate with that style while some don’t.

The classroom course does not take the traditional theory-to-questions approach. Mind it that you would be expected to do the formal studying yourself. The classroom sessions explore the theoretical aspects of the course mainly through carefully chosen questions that well-exemplify the concepts involved.
Personally, I liked this approach as concepts are presented and learned un-detached from the contexts and situations where they'll be applied to, and are thus easier to remember.

The course is ultimately about honing your intuitions to razor-sharpness and set you up with a viable plan on how you're going to attempt your exam. The best thing - there's always a plenty of help available around for whatever you might need it.

My instructor was not only a master of the subject but also very involved with my success. He gave me some very good advice with some unique problems that was keeping my score low in the exam while I was coming out with flying colours while attempting practice problems. I finally took the exam on 8th of September and scored a 730.

I would highly recommended score for anyone seeking to score a 700+. And lastly, there's a lot of free stuff that'll come along with the any course - classroom or self study. They conduct a lot of free sessions, not just on GMAT but the whole application process. It's expensive, but totally worth the money!

Read More

I took the mbaMission's application bootcamp in August and its a short, rigorous program that drivels down every generalist nitty-gritty of the application process into your head in a very short time. The class size was small so there was plenty of room for personal interaction.

Our instructor was Angela Guido whose extraordinary energy and depth of knowledge seemed a little intimidating at first, but she turned out to be extremely friendly and helpful. So in a nutshell, here's what you'll walk out with after taking this course -

1. Learn the factors that would help you pin down a healthy and balanced list of schools that you would want to apply to. Before knowing these factors, my choice of schools seemed pretty 'random'. Not only choosing a school for the right reasons very important in realizing your ambitions, but you're also able to convince the admissions committee a lot more convincingly that you're the right choice for them.

2. Learn how to write effective and powerful essays. Essays, of course, are the most important part of an MBA application and gives you an unlimited opportunity to shine. But its also the most slippery road down the path to a B-school. This course acquaints you with different kinds of essays and shows you how to brainstorm ideas, stories from your life etc. to create a powerful self-character and bring it across in the essays. Then there are numerous do-and-don'ts in the essays which can make or break an app. Angela conducted extensive practice exercises to help put us in ad-com's shoes and understand why what works, works and why what kills an app does so. This was very enlightening!

3. Learn the do' and don'ts of an effective resume, in a way similar to the essays.

4. An personal one-on-one essays analysis and critical feedback.

Ultimately, this course made me realize just how much work goes into preparing an surefire application but also gave me some very effective tools to work with. I've just started applying to schools and I use these tools everyday while preparing my applications.

The program could be a bit of a pinch in the wallet but I do believe that mbaMission are the best in what they do, and with Angela as the instructor I think it was worth the money. I would highly recommend this excellent program to anyone who is serious about getting into a top-10 B-School and wants a cheaper alternative to complete start-to-finish packages.

Read More