Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding. Select your test to sign up now.

This past week, several of our instructors emailed me a recent Economist article, Teaching the Teachers. One of the main ideas of the article is that great teachers are not born—they’re made. Read more

If you have ever downloaded our popular free GMAT flash cards, you might have been one of the many individuals who requested that we make this resource available as an iPhone/iPod Touch app. You also probably heard us tell you that we were working on developing this very app and were excited over the prospects of a mobile version of our flash cards. That apparently wasn’t good enough for you guys because you flooded our phone lines with requests to get the app out faster and with more features such as flagging cards right or wrong and shuffling the deck. We added those features to the docket, but it still didn’t prevent you from following us out of our office, clamoring over this flash cards iPhone app. “Create an interface that is enabled for gestures so you can flick the cards!” “Create an iPhone-friendly version of the Manhattan GMAT website!” “Build in functionality to cast spells, like Harry Potter!”

While we were baffled by the spell request, we implemented the other two suggestions and produced a flaggable, gesture-realistic, and self-contained version of our flash cards that is now available in the iTunes app store for free!

We hope this is finally enough for you guys because our email server is about to explode from all your flash cards requests. However, we know this isn’t the case and in a few months from now, you’ll probably be asking us to make a new version for the iPad. Well, we hope that these flash cards keep you busy for at least a little while.

Also, please remember to rate the cards in the app store!

Looking for advice on evaluating your practice exams? Be sure to check out this article too.

First Steps

If you are just beginning to look into the GMAT, we recommend reading through The GMAT Uncovered before continuing. The same information can be obtained by attending our in-person or Live Online GMAT Open House Sessions. You can read more about these programs here.

If you feel like you have a good understanding of the exam, then it’s time to take a practice test! Until you’ve taken a full practice GMAT, there’s no way of knowing exactly how much you need to prepare for the exam. Fortunately, ManahttanGMAT makes this easy by offering a free computer adaptive exam that will serve as a useful diagnostic tool. Before you continue to structure your prep program, it is important to take a full exam. Additionally, in the scope of your business school application, it’s important to know the average GMAT score of the schools you are applying to. Here is a list of the top business school programs and their associated GMAT scores to get you started.

Read more

Emily Sledge, one of our veteran Instructors who also serves as an Instructor Developer, is moving from sunny California to St. Louis!

Emily first joined MGMAT back in 2005 and has helped literally hundreds of students achieve their GMAT score goals.  Before then she earned an engineering physics degree from Cornell, an MBA from UCLA, and a 790 on the GMAT.  Whew!

We know the students in Orange County will miss Emily terribly.  On the other hand, this is fantastic news for Missouri!  If you’re in the St. Louis area and would like to get on our mailing list for upcoming courses later this year, click here.

Best of luck with the move Emily!

Manhattan GMAT’s award-winning flash cards (okay, they don’t give out awards, but if they did . . . ) are now available online.  They’ve actually been downloadable for print for quite some time, but we went ahead and made them web-friendly as well.  With the new interface, you can ‘flip’ the cards onscreen, flag the cards that were tricky to you, and save your progress to return for another session.

You can, of course, still download and print them for a more corporeal experience.  To choose either flavor, click here.  However you choose to make use of them, we hope you find them handy!

Some big news – Robert Wilburn, one of our veteran Instructors, is moving to London!  That means that Manhattan GMAT will shortly be offering in-person classes on the other side of the Pond!  This is Robert’s second jaunt in the U.K.; he was a Sloan Fellow at London Business School a while back.  Robert has taught for MGMAT for several years, including classes at Bank of America and Duke University.

If you’re in London, this is what you’ve been waiting for!  If you’d like to get on the waiting list for our first set of courses, click here.

Have a great time over there Robert!  Send us back some fish and chips (though I guess they wouldn’t travel very well). 

We receive many requests from students asking, “When are you coming to [City X]?”  Here at Manhattan GMAT, we take on a new location only when we’ve found an experienced teacher with a 99th percentile score who’s up to our standards in the relevant market.

It took us the better part of a year to identify, enlist, and train Instructors in each area, but we’re very happy to announce our first classes in San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, and Ann Arbor!  If you’d like to meet the Instructor(s) in your area, just click on the link and sign up for a free trial class or open house.  We think you’ll agree that he/she was worth the wait.

Businessweek.com presented a very interesting and informative write-up of the GMAT prep landscape earlier this week.  We’re glad that Businessweek included us, and grateful that many of our core values (top Instructors, rigorous curriculum, organizational focus) came through in the article.

Here in Manhattan, Time Out New York is THE source for fun, practical information. So we here at MGMAT were excited to be included in the latest issue in an article about finding jobs.

On a related note, MGMAT IS hiring.  Click here if you’d like more info on currently available positions.  Warning – we’re very picky!

Here at Manhattan GMAT we are incredibly proud of the exploits of our founder and chairman, Zeke Vanderhoek.  Zeke departed MGMAT in order to found TEP, a charter school in Washington Heights dedicated to attracting better teachers to the profession. TEP is paying its teachers $125,000 per year plus bonuses to teach underprivileged children.  The school has generated a lot of attention as a result of its innovative approach; the New York Times has been covering TEP every step of the way (here and here).

Imagine a world where teachers are paid handsomely (without increasing overall costs, TEP pays higher salaries by removing administrators and asking more of its teachers).  More talented young people would choose and stay in teaching as a profession.  Better teachers would produce better outcomes.  In a generation or so, we’d be in a lot better shape!

Now, TEP is only a month away from opening its doors to 120 fifth graders.  TEP will be making use of a temporary facility for the first several years, but will need a permanent home by the time it expands to its full-size of four grades.

To help TEP in its drive for a permanent facility, Manhattan GMAT is proud to donate 10% of the Company’s revenues in the month of August to TEP.  The donation will be made early next year.  We’re tremendously excited to support Zeke’s vision, as we know from experience that if you pay teachers more and expect more out of them, they’ll deliver results! 

Here’s to TEP, higher pay for teachers, and improving the American educational system by making teaching the attractive profession it should be for the best and brightest!