Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

The three-digit Total GMAT score is calculated from your performance on the Quant and Verbal sections of the test. The actual algorithm isn’t disclosed—but we’ve been able to “backwards engineer” the process via a lot of official score research, leading to our GMAT Score Calculator tool. (Thank you to all of our students who shared their official test score reports!) Read more

I am very excited to announce that our new GMAT® study app is available on both iOS and Android!

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I have some very exciting news to announce.

For the past several months, we have engaged Dr. Lawrence Rudner, former Chief Psychometrician of the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC, the makers of the GMAT®), to review our practice tests. Dr. Rudner is one of the world’s leading experts in item response theory, the testing principle on which the GMAT is based. He is the definitive authority on the GMAT examination.

And here’s what he has to say about Manhattan Prep’s practice exams:

“I conducted an extensive examination of student data for all of the Manhattan Prep test questions and I was very impressed. I can attest to the fact that very high percentages of Quant and Verbal items have excellent psychometric properties. I can further attest that Manhattan Prep’s GMAT practice exams do an excellent job of predicting a student’s score on the actual GMAT examination. Manhattan Prep’s GMAT practice exams can help you accurately gauge when you’re ready to achieve your goal score on the real test.”

– Lawrence M. Rudner, PhD, MBA

In short, our tests do “an excellent job of predicting” your score on the real GMAT. That’s great news!

I am particularly excited about the fact that our CATs were so strong that Dr. Rudner offered his endorsement without requiring us to change a single thing. Going into the review, we had thought that we would be given a required list of changes before he could give his seal of approval.

I do have to add a caveat: nothing is perfect and not everyone scores on the real test exactly what they scored on our test (or any practice test). No standardized test is that precise, including the real GMAT. There are also other factors that can negatively affect certain students, such as anxiety (you know your practice tests don’t really count) or mental fatigue (don’t study for 6 hours the day before the real exam!).

Caveat over. In general, you can trust our exams to help you know when you’re ready to get in there and take the real thing. I already felt that way before, but now I can say it with conviction, because Dr. Rudner has confirmed the accuracy of our exams.

I have to give a shout-out to all of our instructors who have worked so diligently on our exams over the years—you know who you are. We literally would not be having this conversation right now if not for your hard work and dedication to making our materials the best. Thank you for your love of teaching and your complete fascination with the GMAT. I’m proud to call you colleagues and friends.

And back to our students: Go forth and study! You can beat this test!

Do you work for a non-profit? How about promote positive social change? Manhattan Prep is honored to offer special full tuition scholarships for up to 16 individuals per year (4 per quarter) who will be selected as part of Manhattan Prep’s Social Venture Scholars program. The SVS program provides selected scholars with free admission into one of Manhattan Prep’s Live Online Complete Courses (a $1299 value).

These competitive scholarships are offered to individuals who (1) currently work full-time in an organization that promotes positive social change, (2) plan to use their MBA to work in a public, not-for-profit, or other venture with a social-change oriented mission, and (3) demonstrate clear financial need. The Social Venture Scholars will all enroll in a special online preparation course taught by two of Manhattan Prep’s expert instructors within one year of winning the scholarship.

The deadline is fast approaching: July 6th, 2015! 

Learn more about the SVS program and apply to be one of our Social Venture Scholars here.

Studying for the GMAT? Take our free GMAT practice exam or sign up for a free GMAT trial class running all the time near you, or online. And, be sure to find us on Facebook and Google+, LinkedIn, and follow us on Twitter!

Manhattan Prep offers instructors flexible hours and great pay ($100/hour for all teaching and $116/hour for all tutoring). As a Manhattan Prep instructor, you will have autonomy in the classroom, but you will also be joining an incredibly talented and diverse network of people. We support our instructors by providing students, space, training, and an array of curricular resources.

Our regular instructor audition process, which consists of a series of videos and mini lessons, usually takes weeks, even months, to complete. Through this process we winnow an applicant pool of hundreds down to a few people each year.

We are offering a one-day event on April 12th for teachers interested in working with us. Candidates who attend will receive a decision that day. The event will take place at our company headquarters at 138 West 25^th St., 7^th Floor, in Manhattan, New York City.  It is open to candidates who live in the tri-state area, have taught before, and are experts in the GMAT, LSAT, or GRE.

The day will include several rounds of lessons, as well as other activities. Each round will be pass / fail. The day will begin at 10:30 am. It may last as late as 5:30 pm for those who make it through the final round. Candidates will need to prepare lessons for some rounds; we will send more detailed instructions to candidates when they sign up for the event.

To register, please email Yanilda at auditions@manhattanprep.com by Wednesday, April 12. Please include in your email a resume including your teaching experience and a score report.

Are You Prepared for B-School Admissions?

Join Manhattan GMAT and two other leaders in the MBA admissions space— mbaMission and MBA Career Coaches

—for an invaluable series of free workshops to help you put together a successful MBA application, from your GMAT score to application essays to admissions interviews to post-acceptance internships. We hope you will join us for as many events in this series as you can. Please sign up for each sessions separately via the links below—space is limited.

Session 1: Assessing Your MBA Profile and GMAT vs. GRE  

Tuesday, March 24, 2015 (7:30- 9:00 PM EDT) SIGN UP HERE

Session 2: Selecting Your Target MBA Program and How

to Study for the GMAT in Two Weeks

Tuesday, March 31, 2015 (7:30- 9:00 PM EDT) SIGN UP HERE

Session 3: Writing Standout B-School Admissions Essays

and Advanced GMAT: 700+ Level Sentence Correction

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 (7:30- 9:00 PM EDT) SIGN UP HERE

Session 4: Five Pre-MBA Steps to Landing Your Dream Internship and

Advanced GMAT: 700+ Level Quant Strategy

Tuesday, April 14, 2015 (7:30- 9:00 PM EDT) SIGN UP HERE

Session 5: Questions and Answers with MBA Admissions Officers

Tuesday, April 21, 2015 (7:30- 9:00 PM EDT) SIGN UP HERE

Manhattan Prep offers instructors flexible hours and great pay ($100/hour for all teaching and $116/hour for all tutoring). As a Manhattan Prep instructor, you will have autonomy in the classroom, but you will also be joining an incredibly talented and diverse network of people. We support our instructors by providing students, space, training, and an array of curricular resources.

Our regular instructor audition process, which consists of a series of videos and mini lessons, usually takes weeks, even months, to complete. Through this process we winnow an applicant pool of hundreds down to a few people each year.

We are offering a one-day event on March 1st for teachers interested in working with us. Candidates who attend will receive a decision that day. The event will take place at our company headquarters at 138 West 25^th St., 7^th Floor, in Manhattan, New York City.  It is open to candidates who live in the tri-state area, have taught before, and are experts in the GMAT, LSAT, or GRE.

The day will include several rounds of lessons, as well as other activities. Each round will be pass / fail. The day will begin at 10 am. It may last as late as 5:30 pm for those who make it through the final round. Candidates will need to prepare lessons for some rounds; we will send more detailed instructions to candidates when they sign up for the event.

To register, please email Rina at auditions@manhattanprep.com by Thursday, February 26. Please include in your email a resume including your teaching experience and a score report.

Manhattan Prep offers instructors flexible hours and great pay ($100/hour for all teaching and $116/hour for all tutoring). As a Manhattan Prep instructor, you will have autonomy in the classroom, but you will also be joining an incredibly talented and diverse network of people. We support our instructors by providing students, space, training, and an array of curricular resources.

Our regular instructor audition process, which consists of a series of videos and mini lessons, usually takes weeks, even months, to complete. Through this process we winnow an applicant pool of hundreds down to a few people each year.

We are offering a one-day event on March 8^th for teachers interested in working with us. Candidates who attend will receive a decision that day. The event will take place at our Boston center at 140 Clarendon St., Main Fl (Back Bay), Boston, MA 02116.  It is open to candidates who live in the Boston area, have taught before, and are experts in the GMAT, LSAT, or GRE.

The day will include several rounds of lessons, as well as other activities. Each round will be pass / fail. The day will begin at 10:30 am. It may last as late as 5:30 pm for those who make it through the final round. Candidates will need to prepare lessons for some rounds; we will send more detailed instructions to candidates when they sign up for the event.

To register, please email Rina at auditions@manhattanprep.com by Thursday, March 5. Please include in your email a resume including your teaching experience and a score report.

Manhattan Prep is holding a two one-day auditions for new GMAT, GRE, and LSAT instructors in Dallas and Fort Worth! Come join us February 7^th  in Dallas or February 8^th in Fort Worth at 10:00 AM and transform your passion for teaching into a lucrative and fulfilling part-time or full-time career.

Manhattan Prep offers instructors flexible hours and great pay ($100/hour for all teaching and $116/hour on all tutoring). In addition to teaching classes, instructors can work on other projects such as curriculum development.

Our regular instructor audition process, which includes a series of video, online, and in-person mock lessons, usually takes weeks, even months, to complete. However, we are offering one-day events on February 7^th and on 8^th for teachers interested in working with us. All candidates who attend will receive a decision that day.

The events will take place in Dallas and Fort Worth at the locations listed below. It is open to candidates who live in the area, who have teaching experience, and who are GMAT, LSAT, or GRE experts.

The audition will include several rounds of lessons, as well as other activities. Each round will be pass/ fail. The day will begin at 10 AM and may last as late as 5:30 PM for those who make it to the final round. Candidates will need to prepare lessons for some rounds; we will send a more detailed instruction packet to those who sign up for the event.

Dallas, TX (Saturday, February 7, 2015)

Meridian Business Center
3010 LBJ Freeway, Suite 1200
Dallas, TX 75234
 

Fort Worth, TX (Sunday, February 8, 2015)

Courtyard Fort Worth at University
3150 Riverfront Drive
Fort Worth, TX 76107

To register, please email Rina at auditions@manhattanprep.com. Make sure to include in your full name, an attachment of your resume detailing your teaching experience, and an official GRE, GMAT, or LSAT score report. We look forward to meeting you in February!

The newest GMAT Strategy Guides have hit the shelves! We’re really excited about these new books, the perfect stocking stuffers to make all of your dreams come true. (Well…your GMAT-related dreams, anyway.)

Yesterday, we talked about the Quant Guides and today I’ve got the Verbal scoop for you. Let’s start with Sentence Correction.

The SC Guide begins with a new strategy chapter that discusses our 4-Step SC Process and lays out drills that you can do to get better at such skills as the First Glance and Finding a Starting Point. We’ve also significantly expanded the Subject-Verb Agreement chapter to include a full treatment of Sentence Structure, an area that has been becoming much more commonly tested on the GMAT.

We’ve added important segments to Modifiers, Parallelism, and Verbs and we’ve woven relevant Meaning topics into every chapter in the book.

Finally, we’ve streamlined the Idioms material. The main chapter contains a strategy for tackling idioms as well as the most commonly tested idioms found on the GMAT. A separate appendix contains the less-commonly-tested idioms. We recommend taking the time to memorize the ones listed in the main chapter, but to use the appendix more as a resource to look up the correct idiom when you struggle with a particular problem. (It’s impossible to memorize every idiom in a language; there are thousands, if not tens of thousands!)

What about RC and CR?

Glad you asked! Our Reading Comprehension Guide was re-written from scratch. We’ve streamlined the process for reading passages and added lessons designed to help you wade through these dense passages and extract the kernels you need to answer questions. We’ve also expanded our lessons for each question type and provided you with end-of-chapter cheat sheets that summarize what to do for each question type and what common traps to avoid. (I’m most excited about this book; students often complain that RC is hard to study, and I’m hoping that this book will change your minds!)

Of all of the books, Critical Reasoning has changed the least, although we did add more information about Fill-In-The-Blank question types. This Guide also provides you with end-of-chapter cheat sheets that summarize how to recognize each type of question, what to look for in the argument, what kind of characteristics the right answer needs to possess, and how to spot the most common trap answers.

What is the best way to use the books?

Here’s how we typically study each topic in class:

Sentence Correction

First, we learn how to use the SC Process and we discuss the main topics being tested (grammar and meaning); these correspond to chapters 1 and 2 of the book. Then, we work through one new chapter a week, starting with Chapter 3 (Sentence Structure). The order of chapters in the book is the same order we use in class.

You can use the same approach mentioned for quant (in the first half of this article): do some end-of-chapter problems first to see what your skills are. If you know that you don’t really know this material, then you can also skip this step. After you’ve finished a chapter, try some of those end-of-chapter problems to ensure that you did actually internalize the concepts that you just learned. Then, if you have the OG books, follow up with some questions from the OG Problem Sets, located in your Manhattan Prep Student Center.

Reading Comprehension

The class contains three RC lessons. First, we learn how to read. Bet you thought you already knew how, didn’t you?

Of course you do know how to read, but the way you read in the real world may not work very well on the GMAT. You’ll learn a new way to deal with the short timeframe we’re given on the test. After that, you’ll learn how to handle General questions, the ones for which you need to wrap your brain around the main ideas of the passage.

Then, you’ll move on to Specific Questions, including Detail, Inference, and Purpose questions. The test writers are asking us to do something a bit different for each one, so you’ll need to learn how to recognize each type in the first place and then how to handle it.

In class, we finish off with a Challenging RC lesson. You can create something similar for yourself by tackling harder and harder OG passages.

Critical Reasoning

Critical Reasoning begins with a thorough treatment of argument building blocks and the 4-Step CR Process. After that, you’ll learn about each question type (do actually use the order presented in the book). Pay attention to what the book says about frequency of each type; some types are much more common than others (and those types should obviously get more of your attention).

For both CR and RC, tear out or photo-copy the cheat sheets and use them to quiz yourself. Alternatively, put the material onto flash cards yourself (the act of rewriting the material will help you to remember it better!) and drill while you’re sitting on the subway or waiting for that meeting to start.

Is that all I need to do?

That will certainly keep you busy for a while. As you get further into your studies, note that you also need to lift yourself to the 2^nd Level of GMAT Study. Yes, of course, there are lots of facts, formulas, and rules to memorize, and your brain will be focused on those areas at first. It’s crucial, however, for you to learn the various strategies presented in our Guides, as well as your own decision-making strategies based on your own strengths and weaknesses, and timing strategies.

In short, get ready to make a commitment. Think of studying for the GMAT as a university-level course: you’re going to spend hours every week for about 3 to 4 months to get ready for this test. With a solid plan, you’ll achieve your goals.

Visit our store and be the first to own the full set of our brand new Strategy Guides. Happy studying!

Studying for the GMAT? Take our free GMAT practice exam or sign up for a free GMAT trial class running all the time near you, or online. And, be sure to find us on Facebook and Google+,LinkedIn, and follow us on Twitter!