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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Dear All,

I have used Manhattan tests for my last GMAT exam. Here goes the feedback -

I found the questions are good but very tough. Both Quant and Verbal questions are hard to solve. The questions need more time than avg of 1.5-2 min to solve in both sections, which was not the case with actual exam. If you practice these CATs you should end up scoring more on the real GMAT test than in the Manhattan tests. So MGMAT can act as a benchmark for improvement or as a morale breaker, depending on how you want to see it. There was +50 score difference between manhattan and original test for me.
Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Sapna

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I registered for Manhattan Prep GMAT Test before my first attempt of GMAT (3rd October 2017).
Comparison with other CAT test series -
Before joining Manhattan I was giving Princeton Review test series. According to my experience Princeton review Test series is not as matching to GMAT as Manhattan test.
CAT test detailed Analysis -
After giving the CAT test in Manhattan, You can get detailed analysis of the test. You will also get Your percentage of correct answer category wise (for example they will show You that You did 60% parallelism question correct in the test). This helps to analyse Your level more accurately.
Manhattan also gives detailed explanation of all the questions and I found all the explanations pretty good. They were easy to understand.
Comparison with GMAT -
I think for predicting Your score on actual GMAT, Manhattan test series is the best resource. During my tests before GMAT i was getting score of 620-640, and in GMAT I got 640. And in exam I was feeling that GMAT is almost same as Manhattan CAT tests. I think most of the people will get their GMAT score within variation of 20 from Manhattan tests.
So before giving attempt to GMAT is best to analyse Your level through Manhattan test series.

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The CAT exams are great for applying your learnings in a real test-taking scenario. I treat mine like the real tests, taking them all the way through and at the time of day my real GMAT is scheduled. They are especially helpful because they are timed and you can generate assessment reports that help you understand your strengths and weaknesses. The Manhattan navigator allows you to combine assessments from multiple CAT's at once, which helps you really understand where you can make improvements. Time is also broken down by question, so you can see how your timing correlates to the answers you had right or wrong.

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I took Manhattan's Prep's CAT's after enrolling in a live Manhattan course. I was surprised by the quality of these tests.

Firstly, these tests are not very comparable to the GMATPrep tests. For example, I found the quant to be daunting. The entire quant section was unbelievably wordy and far more complex than anything I had seen on GMATPrep quant. With that being said, Manhattan Prep's quant section could be useful in terms of skill building, but it is far too unrealistic to the GMAT quant. (Fair warning: these tests made me question my quant ability, and really drained my confidence, take with caution).

Lastly, I felt the Verbal portion was slightly easier on average. The SC and CR are on par, but the RC passages are not too difficult to read, I felt the GMATPrep readings were a bit more cumbersome.

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MGMAT CATs are probably the best non-official CATs out there.

1) Verbal questions are pretty good and represent the official questions to some extent. The one thing you would realize is that as you get better in your conceptual knowledge and patterns in official questions, you'd start doing good in MGMAT CATs too, simply because the MGMAT verbal questions are made using the official questions as a reference (true for any other non-official GMAT prep company).

2) Their Quant is definitely very calculation intensive, unlike GMAT Quant. BUT, it can still be helpful if you are targeting 49+. If you analyze the Quant questions and try to learn from every question, instead of focusing on how "hard" the question is, then you'd start realizing the value of their Quant questions. The main thing is to have a conceptual clarity of the concepts used.

3) My recommendation would be to take these tests in between your GMAT Prep tests as the GMAT Prep tests are limited and are closest to the actual test, and must be used wisely. Use the MGMAT Tests to pinpoint your weak areas, work on them and then take an official test to gauge your level/performance. These tests will definitely help you build the stamina for the real test.

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I have used Manhattan Tests in past. My personal experience was not satisfying. My average mocks score was 650 in Manhattan, but my score used to drop in Gmac original mocks. No doubt the questions in Manhattan both for quant and verbal are the best in the market, but the score calculating algorithm is what i have trouble with. I personally feel that even if you get consecutive wrongs in Manhattan your score would still not fall, on the other hand if you get wrongs in a row in Gmac mocks your score would drop. Manhattan mocks tend to give you an inflated score. So this is the only problem i have with Manhattan mocks.
I would say again the questions both in verbal and quant are the best out in the market.

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Manhattan GMAT CATs are really great. Quant section is really great. Quant is tougher than the GMAT quant. If you get >46 in Manhattan quant then you most probably get 49 or 50 in GMAT.
Manhattan mock CAT score will be close to your actual GMAT score. Analyzing the tests is also very easy. Explanation is given to every problem. Difficulty levels are also mentioned. If you finish all the tests and buy them again , you will get same tests again. My friend had bought them again and then he saw same tests were available. Then he contacted the company and they returned his money. Tests are worth the money I spent.

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After the official material that is provided by GMAC, these tests are the best indicators of GMAT performance that I have come across. The results that are projected by these CATs understate you true abilities by a small margin generally but the analytics that come along with them is priceless; they allow people to drill right down to the sub-topics that need work and can help people identify weak spots fairly quickly.

Having said this, I would also like to state that the quant section on these CATs are lengthier than the actual thing, not more difficult but longer, so time management is critical in these CATs.

I would certainly recommend these CATs to anyone aiming for a high score!

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Hi,I've taken 3 MGMAT tests and,here is my review.
Verbal:It is at par with GMATprep Tests but I will prefer official tests provided by GMAC over Manhattan Verbal. The Scoring algorithm and the test Structure is highly accurate.
Quant Section: A lot of questions tested are way beyond scope of GMAT. Although ,they are good to build up your testing Stamina and improve your timing.
One shouldn't be disheartened by his/her Manhattan quant scores.
Here,a score of Q44 -46 is equivalent to Q48-50 on the actual gmat.
Conclusion: Spend your time on these if you are done with official material and looking for alternate resources.

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