Should you use Manhattan Prep for the GRE? Reviews!
Manhattan Prep is the most successful and widely used GRE prep company. But should it be? Is its reputation well-deserved?
Short answer: for the most part, yes. Manhattan Prep is a pretty good choice for GRE prep.
For the long answer, keep reading.
Table of Contents
Is the Manhattan Prep 5 Lb. book worth buying?
The Manhattan Prep 5 Lb book is probably my favorite product of Manhattan Prep, because it plugs a significant hole in the GRE material.
The quant in it is especially good, while the verbal is ok.
There’s no substitute for using the official GRE material for your studying. You have to go through the Official Guide, the supplements, and the practice tests in order to really get what the test is about.
But, the material isn’t very organized in the official material and there’s not a lot of it. It’s really just some random official GRE questions thrown together.
That’s why I’m a fan of the Manhattan Prep 5 Lb book. It’s organized by topic and there are a ton of questions, which makes it easy to dive deep into specific problem areas.
My only problem with it is that the verbal questions aren’t as high quality as the math. They’re ok, but I’d recommend the ETS verbal over Manhattan verbal any day.
Are the 6 Manhattan Prep GRE tests worth it?
These are my second favorite Manhattan products. The tests are pretty good, but not great.
The most accurate tests are always going to be the official ETS PowerPrep tests. Those have the highest quality questions and are going to be most indicative of your actual score.
But, there are only two of them for free, and two more for pay. It’s pretty easy to burn through them.
The Manhattan tests are ok for predicting your score. Their quant questions are good, but too difficult, and their verbal questions are ok, but sometimes off.
So, they’re an imperfect substitute for the ETS tests. Definitely go through the ETS tests before you move onto Manhattan.
Are the Manhattan GRE courses worth it?
This is when it starts to get iffy. Not really, in my experience.
Manhattan GRE classes are massive info dumps. They basically try to say “Here’s everything to know. Go for it!”
This is really overwhelming, and not really helpful for most people. If you’re weaker on the material, it’ll go too fast. If you’re strong on the material, the course will move too slowly.
The short version is that I’ve never met anyone who was ready to take the test after taking a course. Meanwhile, I’ve had a lot of tutoring clients who needed significant amounts of tutoring after taking the course.
Is a Manhattan Prep GRE tutor worth it?
Nope. Not at all.
Manhattan Prep charges a lot for GRE tutoring (like a minimum of $233/hr). It’s crazy expensive.
What do you get for that? Well, you get to work with someone who tutors the GRE part-time and may have taken it 10 years ago.
Not to toot my own horn, but you could get a GRE tutor who charges less than that, is way more qualified, and teaches test-prep full time if you just, um, contacted me.
No pressure.