GMAT Club
July 26, 2018
ColumbiaEMBA

Joined: Sep 29, 2017

Posts: 89

Kudos: 60

Self-reported Score:
720 Q49 V39

Manhattan GMAT CATs - decent at best

REVIEWER IDENTITY VERIFIED by post count [?]

I purchased the Manhattan GMAT CATs earlier this year with the hopes to have a very realistic experience of the GMAT. I took 3-4 of their practice exams (did not finish all 6). Here are my findings:

Verbal:

SC: they emphasize too much on the meaning. While I have found meaning related SC on the official exams, they tend to be less than 1% of the questions. More than 50% of Manhattan GMAT questions have something or the other to do with meaning and why the answer is incorrect because the meaning changed. What's more important that the same logic that I apply to the official questions would many times give me the wrong answer in MGMAT.

CR: their CR is relatively OK. The same logic that I apply to the official questions works on this so not much to say. Overall, they aren't difficult and are probably 600 level questions.

RC: similar to CR, their RC is just okay. I have found that sometimes more than 1 answer choice would make sense. This is something that will never happen on the official questions. While one could argue that I may not know the content (see what I did there? it's called quantifying...), I'm pretty confident in my English as a native speaker.

Quant:

PS: absolutely horrible. I learned nothing from this other than how easy it is to pull my hair out. Here's the trick: the official questions may seem hard, but can be solved very quickly no matter how difficult. It's a matter of finding the pattern and applying it. Here, it's 5 different steps required to get to the answer. Who has that kind of time? More importantly, how is this even relevant?

DS: same as PS. Too much work, no learning.

Overall: these exams will get you to a 600 maybe. The overall content isn't that relevant and I found these exams to be a waste of time and money. I have no gripes against MGMAT or the fact that I lost $50 - I just wish there was something that was very relatable to the official exam and so far I have found nothing to be close other than the official guides.

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