I had a great experience working with Mike! He is an insightful, efficient and supportive tutor who has a real gift for identifying weaknesses and providing concrete strategies to overcome them. He is very methodical in helping students tackle the test and his prep work and testing strategies made a big difference for me on test day. I enjoyed our sessions very much and felt our time together was always productive. His friendly nature and clear articulation of challenging concepts made studying GMAT content less overwhelming. Mike genuinely cares about the success of his students and I would highly recommend him to anyone in need of GMAT support!

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Here are the major milestones from my GMAT prep journey...

1. I took my first diagnostic exam and got a 530. I was pretty disappointed. As the editor of my school journal and an engineering major, I didn't necessarily think I was going to ace the test my first try but I also didn't think I was going to have to fill a gap of 200 points to reach my goal score.

2. I spent 4 fruitless months studying on my own with MPrep books. At this point, I had plateaued to around 660 (Q44/V38). Quant-wise: I was spending all my time trying to understand the NUANCES of the HARDEST quant questions. Afterall, the questions weren't hard, I just needed enough time. I couldn't figure out why I could understand complex engineering calculus but not a simple GMAT trig question. Verbal-wise: I honestly had no idea what I was doing. I spent every night doing bricks of 10 questions and making literally 0 point progress from my initial diagnostic exam. Not going to lie, by this point I thought maybe I wasn't cut out for the GMAT...

3. I finally bite the bullet and signed up with Mike. After 3 months, I jumped 70 points and scored a 730 on my first official GMAT exam! I ACTUALLY cried in the car on my way home that's the amount of relief I felt. Quant-wise: Mike helped me realize how ridiculous it was I was spending insane amounts of time on the hardest questions and then shooting myself in the foot on the easy questions. Verbal-wise: Mike taught me to eliminate answers based on clear grammatical mistakes, which means, sometimes the most incoherent answers may still be grammatically correct!

Honestly, Mike is a life saver! His help allowed me the freedom to apply to virtually any MBA program I want to and the time to finally see my family and friends again. I'm forever grateful - thanks Mike!

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The team at GMAT Ninja are real professionals when it comes to GMAT prep, and take a tailored approach to their tutoring strategies and studying recommendations to best suit the individuals they're working with.

I worked with Mike Maietta for about a month prior to taking the GMAT for the first time. Mike started by analyzing the problem sets I had already done independently, and asking me the right questions to hone in on the areas I had been struggling with. Although I was fortunate to be starting off in a good spot (710 and 730 on previous practice tests prior to tutoring), Mike helped identify low hanging fruit in sentence correction and certain categories of quant where I was struggling, so that we could spend our time most efficiently. During tutoring sessions, Mike was able to figure out my thought process on questions I was getting wrong, and helped show me techniques to improve my percentage on these particular problems. I took the exam twice after working with Mike, and was able to get a 750 each time.

Working with Mike and GMAT Ninja gave me a lot of confidence when I first sat for the exam, and I was extremely pleased with the score improvement. I would highly recommend GMAT Ninja to anyone who is looking to improve their score, and willing to put in the time and effort to do so.

If you need another reason to work with GMAT Ninja, they write their own word problems for their worksheets, most of which are hilarious and entertaining. I would've had a hard time imagining I would ever be smiling while studying for the GMAT!

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I used Michael from GMATNinja and really enjoyed working with him. From being supportive when I needed him to and providing tough love when I needed to hear them, Michael was fantastic. Especially so because I was going through some tough personal challenges and Michael was supportive and understanding.

I was approaching the GMAT with some false preconceived notions as a test of intelligence and going by instinct/brute force. Michael explained the psychology of the test, helped me build a structured plan to study and kept me on track. This structure was especially key as I was very inconsistent in my study habits and because I was racing against time to get a decent score before the R1 application was due.

Highly recommend Michael and GMATNinja for anyone who is starting out their GMAT prep or is frustrated at not being to crack a higher score.

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I would highly, highly, highly recommend the GMAT Ninja. It is really a no-brainer, they will help you get the best version of yourself! As mentioned it is thanks to them that I got into HBS. I know for a fact that several friends to whom I recommended Charles and Mike had a similar experience and made it into their dream schools. I primarily worked with Mike in order to get the best GMAT score possible. Mike was very structured, extremely professional, and incredibly patient with me. English is my third language and thanks to him I got a 42 (96%) in the verbal section. He was instrumental in the quantitative part as well. The various techniques he taught me made me very effective at using the limited time available. Overall it was a real pleasure to work with him, we have remained in contact ever since, as on top of being the best coach he is also a phenomenal human being. Working with Charles and Mike will be amongst the very best decision you make in your life! Don't hesitate, just go for it!

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Before meeting Harry Duthie from GMAT Ninja, I had studied independently for over 6 months and was unable to cross my desired 700 barrier on my first exam attempt even though my 4 practice exam attempts were all in the early 700s. I had a real mental block as I felt I had done all I could and couldn’t figure out where I was going wrong. As someone who feels more naturally at ease with words than numbers, I was disheartened that I couldn’t once cross the V40 barrier in any of my practice tests. My confidence in my quantitative abilities was low and I struggled with silly errors.
Harry was instrumental in helping me get past my mental block. In particular, he helped me to reconstruct my thought process and make my exam technique much more efficient. Specifically:

Quant:
- He advocated a question answering process that helped me to almost entirely eradicate silly mistakes;
- He trained me to be much more intrusive and disciplined when it comes to my time management, providing me with confidence to bail on questions EARLY when I couldn’t figure out a path to answer a particular question;
- His bespoke worksheets on particular topics helped me to attack my weaknesses and learn from my mistakes
- Drilling me to work 15 hours a week+ helped me to internalise my question answering processes and eliminate weaknesses
- In the past, I would not always pick the most efficient path to answering questions. His guidance on certain question types (conversions, geometry and statistics in particular) helped me to save time on easier questions and set me up for success on harder questions
- A focus on methodology and discipline over “trickery”
- Fantastic advice on alleviating exam pressures/stresses and also eradicating any cobwebs/preconceptions about quantitative ability.

Verbal:
- Drilled into me to read for meaning not detail (but without missing important details!);
- Advocated using harder LSAT materials – these were a life saver for critical reasoning and reading comprehension. Going through passages/questions I got wrong/found difficult with Harry and having him continuously challenge my thought process was instrumental in improving my verbal scores
- Previously I was finishing verbal sections with 10/15 mins to go – Harry helped me to read in a more targeted fashion to fully utilise my time. Small tips like deep breaths before critical reasoning questions allowed me to concentrate on passages more
- Instilled critical reasoning question technique discipline – this was crucial. Test prep companies/books seem to advocate 1000s of different techniques for every time of critical reasoning question. Harry’s advice was simple – identify the conclusion precisely! It’s the key to any type of question and completely decluttered my mind!

As a result, I pushed my practice test scores from 700/710 to 740-760. I finally achieved my desired my 700+ score in the actual exam, achieving 710 (Q46, V41) vs 680 (Q43, V40) which massively helped me get into my dream business school, INSEAD.

What can’t be summarised about GMATNinja with just data however is how much they truly care about their students. Whether it was a query about MBA applications, stress, exam technique, interviews (before and after my GMAT sessions with Harry), Harry and Charles would go out of their way to get back to me as quickly as possible. To this day, 7 months on from my GMAT exam, they continue to stay in touch and offer their help which speaks volumes for their character.

I can’t recommend GMATNinja and Harry enough.

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