I took a 9-session, live online course with Stacey Koprince and Brian Birdwell at Manhattan Prep. They are FANTASTIC. Not only are they subject matter experts, but they are engaging and bring the material to life. Moreover, they made themselves available to answer my questions and always responded promptly, day or night.

While there are many GMAT instructors out there, one of the things that really differentiates Stacey and Brian is their ability to provide tailored guidance to people in all score ranges. When I started out my scores were in the mid-600s. By the end of my preparation, I was scoring in the high-700s. They were able to provide me with foundational tools and guidance that were vital to breaking the 700-barrier and test strategy that helped me reach the upper-700s. Without their guidance, I never would have reached these milestones.

The bottom line is Manhattan is a great test prep company and Stacey and Brian are two of the best. If you are serious about test prep (and you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t) I HIGHLY recommend using their services. If is one the best investments you can make.

Read More

A little about me: I'm an American male aerospace engineer living in the southern US. I received a decent GRE score (Q168/V158) ~710 GMAT equivalent I used for entry to my master's program at UCLA. I found GMAT material to be slightly tougher than GRE material, and needed all the help I could get in the midst of this supposed 'GMAT arms race' amongst the top schools. I have recently been accepted to one top-15 school and one top-10 school despite some crummy grades I had in undergrad because I lacked maturity (and still do!) The GMAT was doubly important and ended up proving to be a much-needed bright spot on my application.

I recently received a 730 (Q49V41) GMAT score after a 6-month journey. I owe some of this success to Stacey Koprince and the Manhattan GMAT live online course, which gave me an excellent introduction to some of the key principles that are paramount for successfully handling the GMAT.

I enjoy structure in my life and usually work harder when there's human interaction and accountability involved in some way. I used Manhattan live online for my GRE prep, and found it to be great. I thumbed through some reviews and found some very positive stuff about Stacey Koprince, and enrolled in her live online section.

Since time is finite, studying efficiently for the GMAT was important. I feel the direction MGMAT offered was essential, with weekly homework assignments on key problems in their excellent guide books. When I first started with the verbal section, I usually had no strategy and ran out of time and couldn't find any rhyme or reason to why the right answers were the right answers. Stacey changed this. Stacey is a seasoned veteran who had a talent for explaining in the simplest language possible what was happening in the verbal section with respect to sentence correction and choosing the best answer for the RC/CR. If I was hung up on some caveat with sentence correction like parallelisms, she intuitively knew how I was thinking about the problem and was able to explain it and shift my focus to the 'correct' way of approaching the problem.
On the quant side, Whitney (the co-instructor of the course) offered some good tips and timing strategies that I ended up using to get my 730. The course and the practice tests were good at exposing where I was most weak in the quant sections, so I could focus my study time to those areas.
A couple of areas that weren't as strong in the course and experience were the MGMAT practice tests, and difficulty of the questions presented during the class sessions.
The MGMAT practice tests were good for practicing timing on the quant, but the truth is nothing can mimic the elegance and inherent trickiness that real retired GMAT questions have. Thankfully the course provides the OG, which is the best place to practice for the quant. Top schools require top quant scores, so heavy exposure to algebra-intensive problems is important, and during class sessions the pace can sometimes be a little slow- so I would just dive into the OG and start doing stuff until the class moved on. In defense of the course, they've got a lot of cats to herd.

Lastly, I want to say that I enjoyed my experience and the social interaction with Stacey, Whitney, and the other students in the course. I found myself looking forward to my Monday night GMAT course. The GMAT can be a long and painful journey, but Stacey encouraged me to not take it all too seriously and that persistence is what was important. Having the expert guidance and interaction with the MGMAT crew definitely put some wind in my sails:)

Read More

I found that self study was the most effective use of my time given limited time to study, so I stopped attending the online classes after a few classes. The only reason I purchased online courses was that my employer sponsored the purchase.
However, there are pros and cons to the classes, the pros being especially relevant if you have ample time and financial resources to spend on maximizing your GMAT score.

Pros:
1. You learn different methods of approaching quant problems from peers. Some of the students in the classrooms occasionally had very creative shortcuts to approaching a quant problem, which I would not have otherwise known to take because they were not the approaches Manhattan GMAT taught.
2. You can ask submit questions and get them answered immediately.
3. You are given a set schedule for class and therefore more incentivized to study.
4. It is a virtual classroom, so you can do the dishes or fold laundry on the side if the concept being explained is already familiar to you.
5. The teachers are actually GMAT rockstars.

Cons:
1. Proficiency levels of students in the same virtual classroom are different, so the teacher may spend a lot of time explaining concepts you already know.
2. You are not actually spending the 2 hours (or however long each session is) practicing the GMAT. If each class is 2 hours, you could have finished more than half an entire practice GMAT in the same amount of time.
3. Most if not all of the concepts/strategies taught in the course are already covered in the Manhattan GMAT prep books.

Read More

I had two courses with Manhattan GMAT. The first one was the online course with Stacey Koprince. Before the course, I took the GMAT and scored 550 - I quickly realized that I had been out of school for quite some time! My goal was to learn the basics and get introduced to the GMAT through that course, and it was an excellent introduction for me.
After the course, I studied for a couple of months. At that point, I could score about 600. I knew that I needed a customized classes, so I had about ten sessions with Stacey and eventually scored a 690! I think this score would not have been possible for me without Stacey for a couple of reasons:
1. Expertise - she knows in an out of the world of GMAT. She has seen all sort of questions, and as soon as she looks at one, she knows the common traps.
2. Dedication - the private tutoring is hourly and is expensive. Stacey was beyond generous with her time with me, and I cannot thank her enough for that. She made sure that my questions are answered in each session before we ended our class. Also, she responded to my lengthy emails all the time, and she provided very detailed answers.
3. Flexible teaching style - I enjoyed Stacey's teaching styles because I think that she is very flexible to my needs. Her articles are amazing sources of insights about everything related to the GMAT.
She went above and beyond what I had paid to make sure that I have gotten the value out of my classes. She checked upon me between our classes and gave me motivation and positive energy when I was stressed and tired. Overall, an excellent instructor who truly cares about her students' success.

Read More

I signed up for this course with some hesitation for how much this would help me. I was scoring roughly around 650-670 on practice tests before beginning the course, with my goal just to get to 700. But man, did the course exceed my expectations!

The course does a great job of laying out what you should expect for the test, which is great for those with little to no idea what's on the GMAT. It takes you through each of the various question types for each topic, breaking down various strategies to approach each one. This is ideal as not everyone learns the same, so you can find the method best suited to you and your strengths. Even if you are familiar with the GMAT or are scoring pretty high, the various tips and strategies will provide you with opportunities to bump up your score. Beyond just tips and strategies, it also provides the foundation of knowledge you will need to do well.

Stacey was a fantastic teacher who was both engaging and extremely patient. Even though you are part of a class, she makes the time to get to relate to each and every one of you and she is never to busy to help you out. She understands the concepts extremely well and delivers the class in an understandable and concise manner.

Read More

I signed up for MGMAT’s private tutoring services after failing 10-20 point short of breaking the 700 mark. Since I have gone through most of the materials and tests myself and consider myself pretty well-versed at them, I was looking for guidance more on my approach and mindset than the actual content.

On our first session, Sarah stated a very important point that shifted my mindset. She mentioned that GMAT emphasizes on one’s decision making skills as much as it does an individual’s knowledge on the materials. GMAT is a test against perfectionist; to do well on the test, one has to be able to give up questions, the same way a good executive decline projects with only average return, and make educated guess, as what business owners do daily. This has a profound impact on my approach to the test – instead of thinking giving up/ guessing questions as a last resort, I now think of that as one of my testing strategies to preserve my mental energy for other questions.

Another great point that Sarah made was on my problem solving approach in quant. She mentioned GMAT wants us to simplify problems and to break them down, not to make things bigger. Therefore, think factorization, not multiplication. This single twist in my approach has helped me in numerous questions, especially in DS.

On top of that, Sarah taught me some techniques on making an educated guess. And it is also helpful to go through my approach on each question with her, so that she she can pinpoint any concept mistakes or point out ways to fine tune my approach.

Overall, I believe working with Sarah is significant in raising my score through the 700 mark. I will definitely recommend her to anyone looking into GMAT private tutoring.

Read More

I had 9 week online courses with Stacey Koprince and she was immensely helpful during the sessions and even until my 3rd re-rake. She was always sharing excellent, spot on advices and articles with me. And Ron, another guru of GMAT highly contributed to my success. His videos lifted my scores from 620 to 720; he boosted my verbal from 28 to 39. I had one tutoring session with him that helped me shift my focus to my weaknesses. Also MGMAT CAT Exam questions were top quality. After you master these tests, you can be sure to beat the gmat comfortably. I can`t be more thankful to MGMAT for their extraordinary service, top quality exams and books.

Read More

I was looking for a GMAT course and I chose Manhattan GMAT after reading good reviews online. I couldn’t be happier with my choice. Working long hours in finance, I really had to maximize my studying in order to get a good score.

My teacher was Stacey Koprince. She is dedicated, communicates the material very well and makes the entire experience enjoyable. I had difficulties managing my time properly during CAT exams and Stacey gave me several good tips on the matter. Also, she helped me a lot on how to approach +700 questions within 2 minutes.

Manhattan GMAT books are very good. They cover the material efficiently and will provide you with great insight about the exam. Also, the CAT exams are great at spotting your weaknesses and working on your timing.

Overall, I had a great experience with Manhattan GMAT and Stacey is a Fantastic teacher. Thanks to them, I improved my score and got 700 on the GMAT!!!!

Read More