I live in a city that doesn't offer many in-person Manhattan GMAT courses but was told by friends it is the best course to help prep for the test. So I signed up, a little warily, for the online course.

It was fantastic! It was super convenient to just log in from my home computer once a week, and I had an especially engaging instructor. He made it fun and the course content kept you paying attention and on your toes - constant problem-solving, with easy tools for class participation in the online platform.

The syllabus was really user-friendly and outlined clearly what I should prepare for each week's course, and what I should study on my own if I needed more practice or harder questions in any area. The OG Archer tool was incredibly helpful - it was an analysis I could review at any point showing how I was doing on different question types and difficulty levels. It helped me understand where I was fine and where I should focus my studying efforts (I work full time so I had to use my studying time as efficiently as possible).

Though the GMAT math is supposed to be stuff you've learned in high school, I hadn't really done that kind of math for a while, and I'd also never learned some things like factorials. My instructor was great at walking us through concepts and the Manhattan workbooks and other resources also gave me great practice. I especially liked the easy online format for question practice, where I could set a timer for individual questions or a whole question set to practice budgeting my time per question (this was an issue for me at first - spending way too much time on some questions).

The Manhattan course consistently offers tips and reinforces the most important, like accepting that you won't answer every question correctly, not wasting energy studying for the essay and IR portions of the test, since schools don't look as critically at those as long as you are at a certain level, etc.

Manhattan also has partnerships with other organizations like MBAMission and you can look at free stuff like b-school guides for your top choices, to help you prepare for your actual applications. I also viewed a recorded webinar with essay writing tips that ended up being really helpful when I got down to the actual applications. Great set of resources all around.

I wasn't always set on business school, so I had to do a lot of research in a short period of time to get a handle on the process. Manhattan GMAT resources were a huge help.

Highly recommend the program!

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I took the Manhattan GMAT class in fall 2011 and had a great instructor, Rey Fernandez. We spent more class time on the math, and what was most helpful was his focus on pointing out common mistakes and strategies to remember concepts.

After my first time taking the test, I was disappointed with my verbal score and completed a post-test evaluation with MGMAT. The team was more than available and after a 30 minute call, we talked through my struggles and developed a game plan to get the score I was aiming for. This was incredibly helpful, and using only the books and materials provided by MGMAT, I was able to raise my score by 50 points.

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After the 9-Session Prep Course, I reviewed for a week before taking the official exam. I sat down confidently that day, believing that I would score at least a 680. However, soon after accepting my scores, I realized that my official score was a disappointing 590.

I took a three day break and re-planned my schedule again. I simply went over the whole set of books again. I wrote every piece of detail I did not know or understand on a note card. I reviewed the note cards at the end of each week and meticulously solved every problem on the OG13 and Quant and Verbal books. By the end of the ninth week, I had around 350 note cards of which I started discarding slowly. When taking the Practice Exams, I also realized that I did relatively well throughout most of the exam. My only problem was that I lost stamina in the second half of the Verbal section. I would get about 80 to 90% of the questions right on the first 20 questions but then nearly 50% of the questions correct in the second half of the questions.

These two changes in my strategy helped me reach a goal well above my expectation: a 740 (Q49/V41).

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Finished with my course about 4 months ago and took the GMAT in November, finally getting around to leaving a review.

The course was great, the main benefit of the sessions is the guidance they give in test taking strategies. This applies to both general things such as how to manage your time and what to bring to the test as well as strategies for all the individual types of questions (IR, SC, DS, etc.).

In addition, for those who can't make it to all the live sessions, Manhattan also has recorded sessions so you can make up anything you miss. This was huge for me because I missed 3 sessions during the 9 session course and was able to watch the videos later on.

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I spent about 4 months using the MGMAT books and self study method prepping for the GMAT. I scored a 630. During just a few hours with Chris over the course of the last 4 months, I was able to improve my score to a 730. I whole heartedly believe that his tutoring made breaking 700 possible. He had an excellent knowledge of the material, worked well with me specifically, was easily accessible, and was an excellent teacher / communicator. Without him, I remain convinced that I would have been struggling to break 650 and subsequently fighting to get into a my target grad schools. Thanks Chris and MGMAT.

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I went to Manhattan GMAT because I had taken the GMAT twice and scored 650 both times with good verbal (95%) but poor quant (50%). I had one last shot at the GMAT before the admission deadline.

For my first 650 I had done quite a lot of preparation but on the day I misjudged the quant timing so I was not hugely surprised when I got this score. However, the second time I took the test I had worked very hard to learn all the mathematical principles, do hundreds of OG practice questions and focus on my timing. I was very disheartened to get a score of 650 again.

I called up MGMAT who put me in touch with Sarah. We booked a session right away. In all, I had three sessions with Sarah, two face to face and one online, and we focussed solely on quant.

I talked her through my approach and immediately she identified that I should modify my study technique so that I placed much more emphasis on reviewing in detail every question which I practiced. Previously, I had only reviewed the questions which I answered incorrectly. I had also not really understood that a good review involves understanding the principles of each question and critically thinking 'how could they have made this question harder?', 'what have I learnt from this?'. After my first session with Sarah, I reviewed every question whether I had answered rightly or wrongly.

Between our lessons I noticed the difference immediately. My review process became more sophisticated and I began to 'see' how to rephrase questions very quickly and understand the potential traps that each question presented.

Sarah also showed me that certain concepts such as prime factorisation could be used across whole ranges of questions. This seemed to unlock a lot of questions which I had been unable to do previously in the 2 minute time limit per question.

One critical point that Sarah taught me was the importance of strategic guessing. I had done very little of this in my previous attempts because it felt so unnatural to approach a question knowing that you were going to have to strategically guess. This really unlocked the quant section for me. In each question after 45 seconds if I was not certain that I could get to the answer in time then I would put all my energy into making the most intelligent guess possible. At first, I felt very uncomfortable doing this but after a while it made a significant difference to my practice test scores.

The day of my final test came and I incorporated everything that Sarah had taught me as well as all the principles that I had learnt in my practice reviews. I had to guess quite a few of the questions in the test but unlike before I actively narrowed down the potential answer choices. The final few questions of the test were quite challenging so I felt cautiously optimistic that the section had gone well.

Then came the moment of truth and 740 appeared on the screen. All the work had paid off.

I wouldn't have been able to do this without sessions with Sarah. She never promised that I would get over 700 or sell me something that she couldn't deliver on. Instead she gave me lots of encouragement and was very patient when I had any difficulties. Although I still had to do lots of work she made sure that I did the right type of work which would actually benefit my score. I'd recommend personal tuition even for a few hours to anyone who feels stuck with the gmat like I did. Now on to the next stage!

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First of all, MGMAT is the course you want to take when studying for GMAT. I have taken GMAT before I took the course from MGMAT and I scored 620. After taking MGMAT and of course following their instructions, I increased my score to 720.

Both instructors I had were very helpful and were very willing to help. Any question we had, they always answered with clear and specific answers. They never left us with unclear responses. Additionally, they always showed us different routes we could take to solve the questions in quant section and gave us very helpful tips and encouraged us to solve the questions in different ways, which helped me very much.

The course structure itself was very clear and it was administered in the most entertaining way possible so that we were not bored or we lost focus.

Personally, when I needed help, I emailed either of the instructors and always had a very good response. They did not hesitate to go out of their way to help.

So for those of you out there looking for a good GMAT course, I highly suggest MGMAT because it definitely offers value for the price you are paying. It is worth every penny.

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I studied for the GMAT for a year before taking my first official exam. I spent the first ten months reviewing Manhattan GMAT's two Foundation supplements and eight Strategy guides. I did every problem in these books and in all three official GMAC guides. In addition, I spent time re-learning grammar (always good to know). I spent 1-2 hours a day on this material.

I spent the last two months taking the six Manhattan GMAT exams as well as the two free official GMAC practice exams. Sometime during the content learning stage, I took the official diagnostic exam. I was scoring above average on all but one category. I never actually took a full practice exam from start to finish. One day I would do the essays and math sections of the exam and then do verbal practice and review. The next day I would do 1-2 hours of math problems and then take the verbal exam. After completely finishing the exam, I would review all the problems, an effort taking several hours.

My first practice exam was horrible -- 9th percentile or so -- because I didn't finish on time. That was an extremely important lesson to always finish the exam. My other CAT exam scores ranged from 650 to 740, but most were above 700. My official practice exam results were in the high 600s and low 700s. On the official exam, I got a 650; I scored very high on each section except for math. I thought I had done pretty well on math timing and that I was dropping the hard problems. Further, I thought my math score was a fluke, so I quickly decided to sign up for a second official exam the next month. However, I decided to use another math strategy. Since I had often spent more time on the first half of the math section and rushed the last third but had done well during those practice exams, I thought I would stick to this other approach that I was more used to. My study strategy was to buy the recently released 13th edition of the official guide and complete all 800 practice questions. This took a lot of time.

In addition to this, I completed the Manhattan GMAT Advanced Quant guide. I took two official exams again, achieving the same results as before. On the actual exam, my scored dropped. My math score was identical. I quickly reasoned that I must have been fooling my self somewhere and that I would need help to identify and fix the problem(s). So the first thing I did when I got back home was set up a 20-minute appointment with a tutor. I'm glad I did and I'm glad that my request made its way to Liz Moliski. I just wished I had worked with her sooner.

Liz realized that I was studying too much and did not have a real timing strategy for math. Important for my confidence, she repeatedly told me that I was good at math. She advised me to study fewer hours and practice timing sets. The "watertight" timing set strategy is laid out in Manhattan GMAT Roadmap (Guide 0). Two to three times a week, I did 15 tough math problems in 30 minutes, making sure I was sticking to the 5 problems/10 minutes intervals. The point of this exercise was to learn to drop problems that I couldn't do quickly. This was also a way to practice guessing, which I was not good at. Once I got the timing down, the next step was to make sure that I focused on correctly solving the easy and medium problems and quickly dropping the hard problems that I probably could not do within two and a half minutes. I stayed warm on the verbal by doing a couple sets of 12 hard problems each week. I took two GMAT Focus quant exams and took one official practice test, which I did from start to finish. A few weeks before taking the third official exam, I began to make flashcards (about 40 in total by the end) using the example from Roadmap of problem types that appear often or had a useful "trick" -- an insight that unlocked the problem. I wish I had done this earlier.

The week and day before the exam, I didn't over study. I did spend several hours the day before reviewing my flash cards and some problems, but I made sure I didn't study in the evening. On test day, I got over 700!

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I recently took the 9 week online class training and found it extremely useful. When entering the class, i scored a 660 on my first practice CAT exam, and by the end i was consistantly scoring betwene 710 and 740 on the practice tests. I just took the GMAT a week ago and got a 740!

The teachers were both extremely helpful, and the collaborative approach helped teach students the topic matter as well as tricks and GMAT strategies, which were equally as important as the topics for me. The quantitative section was my focus and Manhattan GMAT really helped me improve here. I never really had a problem with the verbal sections, however after taking the formal GMAT it appears as though the training and CAT provided by Manhattan GMAT both were accurate in preparing me for the exam.

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I tried to study for the GMAT on my own because I thought the course was way too expensive and not worth it. But I ended wasting my time and money, because I didn't even write the exam the first time. I was hovering around 580 and I couldn't get my score any higher. I postponed the exam for 6 months. I sucked it up and enrolled with MGMAT after thoroughly researching several prep courses and attending each of their trial classes.

I had Avi as my instructor and he was absolutely amazing! He was such a dynamic instructor, he was able to make the course material interesting and fun(?). He was able to explain concepts in multiple ways so that if you are stuck on one method, he could save you with another. Not only was he available after class to answer questions, he also responded to emails during the week within an hour! I thought was true dedication of an instructor that cared about my success!

In the end, I am really glad I enrolled with MGMAT. They helped me improve my score by 100 points! If you are serious about going to business school, which is $100k in tuition, then another few thousand bucks is nothing compared to the gains that you will reap in at the end.

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