I had quite a long journey with the GMAT, which spanned over the period of about a year and a half. Initially, I took the GRE, and only gave myself about 5 weeks to study for the exam. I reached out to Manhattan Prep to schedule some tutoring time since I was under the gun and I wanted to maximize my learning time. My expectations were far exceeded with Chris. Not only does he know the test inside and out, but after reviewing my strengths and weaknesses he quickly asserted that I should consider taking the GMAT instead of the GRE. I took a practice test cold and scored slightly above what I was scoring on the GRE practice tests, which I was familiar with. Fast forward a year later, I went to Chris again before taking the GMAT. His ability to laser in on what each question type is really simplifies what you're looking for when you get each question. This helped me immensely with the critical reasoning, which I sometimes went around in circles with on the hard question types. More than this, Chris has a way of imparting wisdom in metaphors that stick with you. He noted my weaknesses and told me a few anecdotes and sayings that literally repeated in my head on test day and made the difference between me staying on track time-wise and taking too long on certain questions (I tend to want to double/triple check that I have a question right, which you cannot do on the GMAT). Overall, it's not only Chris' ability to hone in on what you're weak in, but also his outlook on the test that really makes him invaluable. The private tutoring is an investment, but I couldn't have been happier with it. I only give 4 stars for math because we didn't work on the math as much as the verbal. He recognized that the verbal was where I was really going to be able to raise my score, so we focused on that.