Below please find an article by Chris Ryan about how to study for the GMAT in a hurry in a structured way.  Some of the tips may be useful even to those who have a little bit more of a runway .

How to Prepare for the GMAT in 14 Days (If You Absolutely Must)

by Chris Ryan, Director of Instructor and Product Development, ManhattanGMAT

You are under the gun. Maybe you’re on a waitlist, and the school wants a retake. Or you really need to apply this round, and you’ve been putting off the GMAT “ but now you’re facing the music.

How do you prepare to take the GMAT in just 2 weeks?

Let me clearly state that more time would be better. You can’t just cram for the GMAT, because you’re not just learning facts; you’re learning skills, and skills take time. I do believe that you can quickly cram in a lot of material, but ideally, you’d have substantial recovery time (just as your muscles need, after a workout) to absorb and to practice, so that the material becomes your own.

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GMAT Strategies for the Math-Challenged

by Chris Ryan, Director of Instructor and Product Development, ManhattanGMAT

The thought of algebra gives you hives. You’d rather discuss any topic but prime numbers. And you bitterly wonder why geometry is tested on the GMAT “ the Graduate Management Admissions Test, after all. It’s not like you want to be an architect.

Well, the GMAT is what it is: a hoop to jump through for business school. Whether knowing rate times time equals distance translates to academic and financial victory (or not!) is a moot question. You want to get an MBA. And crouching between you and that degree is the giant spider of middle- and high-school math.

You’re not alone. Many other b-school candidates share your apprehension. But in order to beat the GMAT, you’re going to have to revisit some math skills that you likely haven’t had to use in 5 “ 10 years.

What are math skills? There are three types, all tied together:

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A front-page article featuring the founder of ManhattanGMAT in Today’s New York Times:

Would six-figure salaries attract better teachers?

A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools.

The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.

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While the monetary rewards of business school can be tremendous, oftentimes the cost to get there can be great (and we don’t just mean the emotional trauma of grueling work). However, for those applicants looking to ease the financial burden of b-school, look no further. Without further adieu, we present to you the Beat the GMAT Scholarship:

ManhattanGMAT is proud to announce that we will co-sponsoring the annual Beat the GMAT scholarship once again this year!

Beat The GMAT is an MBA discussion community dedicated to helping business school candidates achieve their full potential on the GMAT and in the b-school admissions process by connecting them with the best resources available. To this end, Beat the GMAT has teamed up with ManhattanGMAT and Stacy Blackman Consulting to provide scholarships for the third year in a row. The 2008 program will provide over $15,000 worth of prizes to 5 deserving individuals. Prizes include GMAT registration subsidies courtesy of Beat the GMAT, admissions consulting services provided by Stacey Blackman Consulting, and free enrollment in a 9-week ManhattanGMAT prep course.

It is the hope of Beat the GMAT and our sponsors that the scholarships will make a profound impact on the lives of five deserving individuals, said Eric Bahn, founder of Beat the GMAT.

Applications are due May 1, 2008, and winners will be announced May 22. To be eligible for the scholarship, applicants must meet the following requirements:

¢ Finished college, or in final year of college
¢ Plans to redeem awards in the next 12 months
¢ Has a PayPal account to receive cash prizes

For further details on how to apply, visit //www.beatthegmat.com/scholarship.html.

The primary difference between ManhattanGMAT and Kaplan/Princeton Review is the nature of the Instructors employed by each Company.

ManhattanGMAT was founded by a Teach for America teacher, Zeke Vanderhoek, who believed that the teacher is the most important component of any educational experience. Accordingly, Zeke sought to attract and retain the best possible teachers when he started MGMAT.

To represent this commitment to superior teachers, MGMAT pays $100/hr plus yearly bonuses plus a $1,000 signing bonus. This is approximately 3 – 4 times the rate paid by Kaplan or Princeton Review (approx. $25 – $40, depending upon a number of variables).

In order to be considered for employment with MGMAT, Instructors need to have scored a 99th percentile on an official exam, now a 760+ out of 800. For reference, the average score for students at Harvard Business School is a 720, and the score requirement for Kaplan is a 90th percentile, a 680 (Princeton Review does not have a score requirement). Candidates also need to have prior teaching experience in order to be considered for a position with us.

Applicants who have both the score and teaching experience must go through an audition process here in New York; approximately 1 in 5 candidates makes it through the audition round, based upon personality and teaching skill. After receiving an offer, Instructors still must undergo 100+ hours of training before seeing any students.

As you can imagine, it takes a pretty distinctive individual to get through this process. You can read the bios of all of our Instructors here.

Perhaps the most important part of having such strong Instructors is that it enables us to offer a curriculum that focuses on the actual academic content tested by the GMAT. In other words, instead of teaching methods, tips and approaches (e.g. backsolving, trial and error, guessing strategies), we can teach the actual math, grammar, and analytical principles tested on the GMAT (e.g. prime numbers, subject-verb agreement, finding assumptions). We have found that mastery of the content underlying the GMAT is the only path to consistent high scores on the test.

Last, we teach and research only the GMAT. This is in stark contrast with Kaplan and Princeton Review, which offer test prep services for every major standardized test. The GMAT is, in our experience, unique and complex. We believe that our singular focus enables us to provide a much stronger offering than the course provided by the larger, all-in-one test prep companies.

For more information regarding ManhattanGMAT, click here.

We are often asked to compare and contrast MGMAT to Veritas. The primary difference between ManhattanGMAT and Veritas is that the two organizations have vastly different approaches to Instructor hiring and training. We have several Instructors who have had direct experiences with both companies – their accounts follow below.

“The quality of any business is reflected in its hiring process. Manhattan GMAT’s excellent hiring process is the main reason I decided to work for it rather than for our competitor, Veritas Prep. Before applying to both companies, the only thing I knew was that they both advertised in Craigslist seeking instructors. I soon found out that the similarities end there.

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Last month, GMAC hosted a seminar to brief us on facts, data, and trends from the test-takers out there. Here (somewhat belatedly), are some of the key points that they presented:

1.  Scores are creeping upwards – the average in 2007 was 537, 12 points higher than in 2005.

2.  The Number of Hours spent studying correlates to Higher GMAT Scores – people that achieved a score of 700 or higher reported studying an average of 114 hours for the test. In contrast, people that scored between 500 – 540 reported studying for 84 hours.

3. The Number of Weeks spent studying correlates to Higher GMAT Scores – 50+% of the people that studied for 7 weeks or more received a 600 or higher. This number dropped to 43% for those who studied between 4 and 6 weeks, and 37% for those who studied between 1 and 3 weeks.

4. Taking the Test more than once Tends to Result in a Higher Score – the mean score increase for someone who takes the test a 2nd time is 31 points. It should be noted though that this tends to be inflated by a couple of self-selection factors (i.e. the numbers tend to reflect people who underachieved on the 1st test relative to their college ranking, didn’t finish the quantitative section, etc.). 30% of re-testers saw no increase (or even a decrease). 40% of test-takers had their score increase 50 points or more, and 10% had results increase 100 points or more. I think ManhattanGMAT is responsible for some of that 10%.

From the above, it’s clear that even the administrators of the GMAT realize that this a test that you can prepare for in order to improve your performance. So your scores are certainly not fixed!

GMAC also reaffirmed once again that spending extra time on the first 10 questions does not help your score, and tends to hurt your score by ruining your time management throughout the section. There is enough variability in the algorithm such that some early mistakes are not necessarily critical to your score – you can quickly push yourself up to higher levels by getting later questions right.

These were the main points. They’re working on a new diagnostic test that can be downloaded, and the next edition of the Official Guide is targeted for late ’08. Still, this would not affect the average student substantially.

Last, they also indicated that most people rely upon word-of-mouth for choosing a test prep firm. That was possibly the best news of the event for us here at ManhattanGMAT!

We at ManhattanGMAT are pleased to announce that our very own Chris Ryan, Director of Product and Instructor Development, was recently featured in a BusinessWeek article about – you guessed it – the GMAT (more specifically, the quant section). From the article:

TAKE A COURSE: If you need a little nudging and a place to ask math questions you haven’t asked since eighth grade, opt for a day-long course like Manhattan GMAT’s new Foundations of Math. “We realized that a portion of our students were having some trouble and missing the basic skills you need for the GMAT,” says Chris Ryan, director of product and instructor development at Manhattan GMAT about creating the course. “You have to suck up and say: ‘This is what the GMAT requires of me, and the last time I saw this stuff I had a locker.'”

Zing! But seriously folks, if your basic math skills are a bit rusty and you need a refresher, look into Foundations of Math.

As a special deal, we’re offering $50 off the class to anyone who uses the discount code FDR2MGD when they sign up.

ManhattanGMAT has produced an excellent short video with testimonials from real students discussing our superior teachers, curriculum, and support staff. Help us bump up the view count and rating on YouTube by viewing the video, located below!

Of course, leaving high ratings for us on YouTube is always better…

ManhattanGMAT is now offering a FREE GMAT Computer Adaptive Test to absolutely anyone and everyone who wants to take one. This FREE test is one of the 6 CAT exams that we offer to students enrolled in our 9-session classes and draws from the same pool of questions. This is a great FREE opportunity to take a ManhattanGMAT practice exam and see for yourself how our Assessment Reports, continually updated and re-calibrated Question Pool, and detailed solutions to every single question can help you master the GMAT. As if you needed another reason, did we mention that it’s FREE? Just click on any of the above links and follow the on-screen instructions to sign up!