Manhattan GMAT Blog

Manhattan GMAT’s exclusive GMAT preparation curriculum was designed in accordance with our philosophy of test preparation for this unique test. The philosophy centers on a balance between two competing emphases: test-taking strategies on the one hand, with in-depth content understanding on the other. In our experience, many test-prep companies offer the former without the latter, an approach that often leads to disappointing results. We have encountered many students who have learned certain “test-prep tricks” but do poorly on the actual exam because, without sufficient content understanding, they misapply these tricks. Additionally, sometimes tricks actually take more time than deriving a solution using learned mathematical and verbal principles. Finally, since the GMAT is a computer-adaptive exam with questions of varying difficulty levels, to perform well, one must be able to accurately answer very challenging questions; this is only possible with deep content knowledge.