On February 3rd, the team at Manhattan Prep joined together and wore red for the National Wear Red Day. This annual event is sponsored by the American Heart Association. Additionally, Manhattan Prep held its first Give A Heart drive. Throughout the month of February, Instructors and staff donated money towards the purchase of paper hearts. All funds were donated to the America Heart Association.

Manhattan Prep is a proud supporter of heart health, in addition to overall wellness. The company promotes an active and healthy life-style, encouraging employees to participate in company exercise initiatives and organizing healthy lunch programs each month. We are proud to support such a wonderful cause. Thanks to all that were involved!

Former Manhattan GMAT President Andrew Yang was featured in full-page article in Time Magazine about Andrew’s new endeavor, Venture for America! Added bonus: Manhattan GMAT gets a shout out in the first paragraph!

Below is a screen shot of the post. You can read the whole article over on Venture for America’s site.

We are excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for our Winter 2012 Social Venture Scholars (SVS) program. For those unfamiliar with the program, it was launched in 2007 with the goal of making GMAT prep more accessible to MBA-hopefuls working in the non-profit sector. The very first SVS class was taught by our founder, Zeke Vanderhoek. Over the past 5 years we have run 6 SVS programs and helped dozens of deserving individuals get a step closer to business school. Past SVS students have gone on to gain admission to competitive business schools (such as Columbia and Duke), and have used their degrees to advance and found organizations dedicated to positive social change.

Recipients of our SVS scholarship receive free enrollment into a dedicated Live Online GMAT prep course (a $1090 value). Up to 25 scholarships will be awarded to applicants 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. This year’s SVS course will begin on Monday, February 20th.

For complete details and application requirements, visit our Social Venture Scholars page. Applications for the Winter 2012 program are due on February 1st. Good luck!

This December, the team at Manhattan Prep ran its first holiday season food & toy drive. Manhattan Prep staff, Instructors and students at our New York City headquarters contributed games, stuffed animals, food items, and spare change to the efforts. In just over two weeks, we collected over 100 items of food, donated to City Harvest, and over 40 toys for Toys for Tots.

The United States Marines’ Toys for Tots program collects toys between October and December every year for children who otherwise wouldn’t have any gifts to open during the holidays. City Harvest, a New York-based nonprofit, collects food year-round to support its many community programs aimed at feeding New York City’s hungry. We’re thrilled to be supporting such worthy organizations. Thanks to all who contributed!

On Saturday, November 12, 2011, the Gilda’s Club New York City Associate Board, a volunteer board of young professionals supported by Manhattan Prep staff member Jessica Trujillo, hosted a day of lectures and workshops geared towards health and wellness at the Manhattan Prep headquarters. These lectures and workshops, free to all GCNYC members, promoted techniques for healthy living and included activities for the whole family. The Health and Wellness Day incorporated everything from meditation sessions, nutrition lectures, hair and beauty makeovers and family portraits. Gilda’s Club New York City creates welcoming communities of free support for everyone living with cancer “ men, women, teens and children “ along with their families and friends.

The following is written by Manhattan Prep College Marketing Associate Kristen Pittard.

New York Cares Day is a day dedicated to service for in-need elementary schools around the five boroughs, where people volunteer their time to renovate schools by painting, restoring playgrounds, organizing libraries, planting flowers, etc.

Last month, a group of Manhattan Preppers made their way to PS 137k, a school that has served the Brooklyn community for over 100 years, to participate in the rejuvenation of the interior by focusing on repainting the main hallway. With rollers and paint brushes in hand and a mint green color picked by the school principal, we were ready to go. After nearly 7 hours of painting, we had transformed an intense red and yellow hallway, into a calming mint green one, just in time for the students to arrive back to school the following Monday. Though we might be better at Data Sufficiency and Reading Comprehension than painting, it was a great experience for our staff to get together on a weekend to give back to the community.

New York Cares Day was a perfect fit for Manhattan Prep due to our core belief in helping students reach their educational goals – and who better to help than the children of New York? If you would like to get involved with any future New York Cares’ projects, they have thousands of projects listed on their website, which range from children’s education to working with the elderly of New York.

We are excited to announce the release of our newest Strategy Guide, the GMAT Roadmap! Consisting of articles and essays written by our 99th percentile instructors, this book was created to help students navigate the complex and often frustrating waters of GMAT prep. Unlike our other strategy guides, the GMAT Roadmap is not designed to teach you content. Instead, we wrote it to address a need not often met.

Many a time we have seen students dive into their GMAT preparations headlong, without pausing to consider what and how they should study so as to best improve their scores. Yes, you can study everything from start to finish, but do you need to? Sure, you can review every day for ten hours a day, but will that improve your comprehension and retention? The GMAT Roadmap answers these questions by offering the guidance and structure you need to maximize your GMAT preparations.

Start with the first few chapters to learn about the GMAT, organize your study plan, and gauge your current skill level before diving into your preparations. Then, as you progress in your studies, dip back into the Roadmap when needed for strategy advice on the Quant and Verbal sections, tips on how to improve your time management, guidance on how to manage test anxiety, and a run-down on what to do before test day.

Success on the GMAT requires far more than content knowledge, and we want all GMAT students to achieve the score they’ve been working towards.  If you are looking for that extra boost to get you to the score you are looking for, or maybe just a little guidance along the way, the GMAT Roadmap is for you!

Interested in learning more? We’ve been posting samples of the GMAT Roadmap to our blog for the past few weeks, so check out the articles listed below for samples of the content covered in the GMAT Roadmap.

Determining Your Trajectory Up the GMAT Mountain: Developing a GMAT Study Plan
Determining Your Trajectory Up the GMAT Mountain: Working Within Your Timeline
How to Use Your Strategy Guides
Breaking Down Two Minutes: Time Management Within a GMAT Problem

Ready to dive right in? We are giving away the first two chapters of the book for free! Just click here.

Looking for a little extra? Sign up for our free GMAT Roadmap Webinar!

The London Business School recently interviewed Manhattan GMAT instructor and Director of International Development Robert Wilburn. Below is an except.

Q: Are their any common misconceptions about the test you can provide clarity on?

There are a lot of misperceptions about the exam! Perhaps the most common one is that you should spend more time on the first 10 questions. This has floated around the Internet for years. GMAC, the organisation that produces the exam, explicitly discusses this in its Official Guide book, claiming that it is a myth that the first 10 questions are more important for your score. But, students still don’t buy it and want to spend more time on the first questions! The problem is that this leads students to run out of
time at the end of the exam, for which there is a severe penalty, in the words of the GMAC.

There are some great sites out there on preparing for the GMAT, but even with the best sites, you have to be careful of the advice you get.

If you haven’t been a good test-taker in the past, you won’t score well on the exam. I’ve seen lots of students hit 700 through hard work, despite struggling at first with the exam. At the same time, I’ve seen many students who just try to rely on intuitive skill, and don’t score well because they never take the time to prepare for the exam.

The exam is biased towards native-English speakers. We work with a lot of students whose first language is not English, and actually, often these students know English grammar better than the native English speakers! The GMAT recently announced that over the past year it has been deemphasising idioms on the Sentence Correction part of the exam. This is good news for non-native English speakers (Note “ it doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be idioms on the exam anymore, just that they will be tested more infrequently). While you certainly need to have a strong written Englishlanguage capability, I’ve found that most students applying to top business schools have sufficient English skills that they are not at any noticeable disadvantage on the exam.

You can read the whole interview HERE.

Andrew Yang, our former President here at Manhattan GMAT, recently left us to pursue his own vision: creating a non-profit organization which aims to place college grads with start-ups across the country, following the model for Teach for America. Below is Andrew’s description of his new idea, Venture for America:

When a company has a serious problem, it sends its best people to solve it.

Right now our country has a serious problem – we need to create more jobs. And yet, our top college graduates are often not heading to innovative start-ups and early stage companies that will generate jobs and produce new industries. In 2010 over 50% of Harvard graduates went to work in financial services, management consulting, or to law school, with fewer than 15% going to industry, which includes companies big and small. The same picture holds true at other top college campuses.

Despite the numbers, many graduating seniors would have a strong interest in working for a start-up that had the potential to grow. It’s an ambition that’s commonly expressed among students. But there are significant obstacles for a senior looking to pursue this sort of opportunity: Read more

Recently, Chris Ryan, our GMAT instructor and Vice President of Academics, realized that helping our students through the GMAT just wasn’t enough. “When I had students come up to me and tell me their GMAT score, I was thrilled,” said Chris, “but I wanted to help them more.”

Although Chris considers the two years he spent at Duke Fuqua to be some of the most incredible of his life, he realized that, had he had a leg up when he had arrived, he would have immediately felt more comfortable. Many of his former GMAT students felt the same way.

That’s where Eric Caballero came in. After Chris and his co-writer Carrie Shuchart received great feedback and reviews for their book, Case Studies and Cocktails, Eric wanted to help Chris bring his lessons for pre-MBA students into the classroom.

And so, on Saturday and Sunday, July 23 and 24, Manhattan GMAT will be hosting its first ever pre-MBA Boot Camp. This two-day course will provide enrollees with a refersher of Economics, Statistics, Finance, Pricing and Accounting, all applied in the context of a B-School case study. The course takes place in New York.

In addition, the course will be free if students provide feedback about their experience.

Inetersted? If so, email ecaballero@manhattanprep.com/gmat/ or check out more info here.