Earn your target score and achieve your MBA goals with personalized, 1:1 instruction from one of our expert tutors.
You might have noticed other GMAT tutoring services boasting about their “5,000+ practice problems” or their “hundreds of instructor-led videos.”
But do you really want to spend your evenings staring at the computer doing thousands of homework problems?
If you’re like the MBA applicants we know, you are balancing your GMAT self-study with a demanding job, extracurricular activities, and writing your MBA applications and you want a great score in the shortest possible time. And you probably don’t need remedial instruction in math or grammar, anyway.
We designed our GMAT tutoring exactly for busy students like you. We help you quickly achieve a high score by:
Don’t just take our word for it.
Don’t waste your time and money on ineffective GMAT test prep. Instead, learn why our GMAT tutoring is more effective than the tutoring offered by other companies, along with some of the ways we can help you the most.
Plenty of GMAT tutors did superbly on the test. But that doesn’t mean they’re any good at teaching you their strategies—or at helping you apply them to the toughest GMAT problems.
The test prep industry is full of test-smart people who are inexperienced teachers.
We don’t hire their kind.
Our GMAT tutors are experienced educators first, test whizzes second. We look for tutors with a proven track record coaching students who raised their GMAT scores at least 100 points.
We even ask each potential GMAT tutor for documentation of their track records that we can check. How? The same way you would—by calling their students.
No other firm in the test prep industry evaluates potential tutors as rigorously as we do. But that’s just for starters.
If you ever worked with a GMAT tutor from a Big Test Prep firm, you might have heard an infamous phrase at the start of your lesson:
“What shall we work on today?”
Trust us—nothing optimal ever develops from a private GMAT tutoring session that starts this way.
Why? Experience demonstrates that GMAT students typically make lousy judges of which strategies and concepts yield the largest score gains on the GMAT.
Think about it: How could someone with limited GMAT familiarity ever know which topics the Graduate Management Admissions Council tests most frequently? Or which strategies solve the broadest range of GMAT problems most efficiently?
They can’t know. It takes a GMAT tutor years of experience to understand the trends and nuances among GMAC’s difficult test questions. That’s why GMAT students are usually the people who would least understand how best to allocate their tutoring time.
The greatest value an experienced private GMAT tutor delivers stems from their experience teaching the highest expected value strategies and concepts each individual student needs to master.
To do that, our GMAT tutors employ a proprietary structured process that’s taken our test prep vice president Chris Kane nearly 20 years to develop and refine. His process encompasses three main components:
Through this proprietary process, Chris and the team at Menlo are on a mission to change your paradigm about the value students should expect from a great private GMAT tutor. Students like you deserve that value because, after all, you’re paying for it. And you shouldn’t settle for anything less.
The team takes that mission seriously. According to Chris:
“In my experience since 2000, far too many students have been willing to let their GMAT tutors get away with acting like slackers. If you think about it, private tutors who passively expect students to ask for topics and bring in all the test items result in the students’ doing extra work they should never be doing.
“Compliant and enabling tutors like these do their students a disservice because this practice can actually lower their overall GMAT scores by distracting them with suboptimal expected-value strategies and concepts. It’s a major reason you find so many tutors whose students don’t perform as well as they should on the exam. Private GMAT tutors like these don’t recognize that such an unstructured approach fails to align with well-known pedagogical best practices that optimize the effectiveness of the tutoring process.
“Instead, it’s the professional responsibility of the tutor to structure each student’s optimal curriculum and learning plan, and to adjust it to reflect a student’s progress. That function is not the responsibility of the students; they shouldn’t be doing that work. It’s just not their job.
“Outside of the GMAT tutoring team we’re building here at Menlo Coaching, I’m not aware of any other GMAT tutoring program within the industry that currently offers students such a structured and comprehensive proprietary process. Because 98 percent of GMAT tutors still fail to work our way, Menlo’s proprietary process could very well disrupt the test prep industry. Besides, our process might appear innovative, but it’s not entirely new. I based this process on a consistently effective approach that I’ve applied in my work as an expert GMAT tutor over the past 20 years, and plenty of outstanding reviews online from all my students prove that effectiveness.”
Work with one of Menlo Coaching’s expert tutors to achieve your test prep and MBA goals.
Hailey emphasizes a strategy-driven approach to GMAT preparation centered around each student’s unique background and learning style. She takes a structured approach to GMAT coaching that constantly recalibrates in response to student performance. This technique has allowed Hailey’s students to stomp out stubborn plateaus and achieve top-tier scores in as little as a few hours.
Since first preparing for the GMAT in 2007, Ron has been passionate about GMAT minutiae, converting his love of tutoring students into a full-time career in collegial education. Specifically, with a decade of private GMAT tutoring experience at this level, he has seen the structures and traps employed time and again by the GMAT to snare students. And Ron can show you how to avoid these traps efficiently.
Throughout his 12 years of university-level teaching experience, Dave has come to realize that the key to mastering the GMAT is to gain a deep understanding of the fundamentals being tested and not to focus on tricks. His teaching style helps students to break down complex problems into simple, manageable pieces so that the concepts can be understood at a fundamental level and solutions can reveal themselves.
Travis brings more than a dozen years of experience of private tutoring for the GMAT, GRE, and Executive Assessment exams, and he’s seen it all. An award-winning instructor, he has worked with hundreds of test takers across multi-student classrooms and individual tutoring. While Travis has helped students with starting GMAT scores ranging from the 200s to the 700s, his expertise lies in identifying the underlying causes for score plateaus and helping students break through them.
Over his 20+ year teaching career, David has acquired more than 10,000 hours each teaching and tutoring for both the GMAT and GRE exams. As a result, he has become an expert in the industry, with his sole focus being improving the lives and future careers of all his tutoring students. David now focuses his private tutoring on assisting world-class MBA candidates applying to top-tier MBA programs in achieving the highest possible score on the GMAT exam.
Through over a dozen years teaching the GMAT and GRE, Craig has seen that the best outcomes result not only from focusing on mastery of fundamentals, but also from understanding the importance of test strategy, timing strategy, and having a systematic (and positive) approach to studying. With this in mind, he aims to deeply understand the test skills of every student he works with, to better understand what mix of preparation will lead him or her to an ideal score.
For the past 9 years, Chris has guided hundreds of students through the fundamentals and nuances of the GMAT, and he enjoys asking a lot of questions in order to get students to engage with the material, instead of letting them passively take in information. Whether you are just starting out with the content or are trying to get those last points to earn a 99th-percentile score, Chris will identify any sticking points that are holding you back and will teach you how to overcome them.
Mike studied Engineering at M.I.T., worked as a Nuclear Engineer, and successfully got into Harvard Business School while still in the Navy—in short, he knows how important it is to maximize your valuable time! That’s why Mike emphasizes efficiency in his work as a GMAT tutor: he’ll help you identify the skills that will yield the most “ROI” for score improvement, and which drills or problem assignments are most efficient to strengthen those areas. (But he also has a great sense of humor and makes each session engaging – and he may even throw in an occasional Simpsons quote or 90’s movie reference.)
Dave is a seasoned tutor with over ten years of experience in academic and test prep tutoring, as well as university teaching. His approach combines a structured curriculum with personalized test-taking strategies, adapting his extensive problem-solving experience into practical, test-ready techniques. Committed to tailored coaching, he fosters a laid-back but rigorous learning environment, ensuring each student feels singularly valued and motivated to excel.
All tutoring packages include complete access to the Menlo Coaching GMAT curriculum:
Because the GMAT is one of the factors considered when MBA admissions committees award merit-based scholarships, numerous Menlo Coaching GMAT students have gone on to win $60,000, $100,000 or even full-tuition scholarships after first achieving a great GMAT score.
Interested in GRE tutoring? Click here for more information.
Students can purchase tutoring with Menlo Coaching’s GMAT curriculum creator and Head of Test Prep, Chris Kane. Chris has been tutoring one-on-one and leading group courses since 2004. By working directly with Chris, you’ll benefit from his long experience teaching and deconstructing GMAT problems and his intimate knowledge of the Menlo Coaching curriculum.
We do not offer larger packages up front because most of our clients already achieve excellent GMAT score improvements within 20 instructional hours or fewer. If you need additional hours, we can add those for you later at the equivalent package rate. For GMAT students requiring extensive remedial instruction a larger package is available after consultation with a tutor to be sure that such a package is actually required.
We also offer GMAT prep courses if you feel like you could benefit from a group classroom environment.
Four groups of GMAT examinees should consider private tutoring. These groups aren’t mutually exclusive; some examinees fall into more than one of the following categories. You might be one of them.
Examinees Who Needed a Good GMAT Score—Yesterday
The first group includes those who need a good GMAT score as soon as possible. For students who don’t have at least two to three months for one of our prep course sections, our private GMAT tutoring offers an ideal option. Learn about our GMAT prep scheduling alternatives in the FAQ below titled Which should I choose: your GMAT prep course or GMAT tutoring program? Help me decide.
GMAT Prep Course Students
Second, Menlo Coaching students currently enrolled in our GMAT prep course who would like more practice than the course offers should consider tutoring. As we explain below, even a few sessions with one of our private GMAT tutors can amount to a worthwhile score-boosting investment.
Examinees who Seek to Surpass Their Good GMAT Score
Third, we frequently work with students who already scored well during previous GMAT attempts, but they seek to raise their scores even higher.
Now, why would an examinee who already scored at least a 700 on the GMAT try for an even higher score? Two very compelling reasons exist:
They want to win admission at an M7 school, or they need a scholarship.
M7 Applicants
The M7 comprises the world’s most popular business schools. Each year, more candidates apply to these “Magnificent Seven” business schools than to any others around the world.
The M7 includes:
Only minor differences exist in the GMAT averages among MBA students enrolled in these programs. Other things equal, these super-elite schools prefer GMAT scores from their applicants roughly in the range of 720 to 740. And believe it or not, some of their MBA admissions committees seek even higher scores from certain categories over-represented within the applicant pool.
Why? That’s because when evaluating candidates who represent categories flooded with a glut of applicants, such an admissions committee can afford to be even more selective when considering GMAT scores.
For example, our sense is that these committees probably need about a 750 GMAT score to justify admitting MBA applicants such as:
Although GMAT scores that average about 730 might at first sound stratospheric, many fail to realize that with instruction of the calibre we provide, a score that high is definitely within range for most examinees who had scored between about 650 and 700 during an earlier GMAT attempt.
Scholarship Applicants
In addition, these days many student debt-conscious MBA applicants seek to raise their scores in order to maximize their chance of winning scholarships. This trend applies to candidates applying across all MBA programs, and not just at the top ones. Nevertheless, a high GMAT score is especially likely to win a scholarship offer from a top business school that’s known to “buy” high GMAT scores to fortify its U.S. News and World Report ranking.
Learn more about how average GMAT scores drive modern MBA rankings in our popular article, What is a Good GMAT Score?
Students with Skill Challenges
Fourth, some students seek to shatter the 700 barrier, but they experience skill challenges with one or more of the critical subjects required for strong GMAT performance. In many cases, that’s because the quality of a student’s pre-college education negatively impacts their GMAT preparation and performance.
Of particular concern are the students for whom the quality of their education in critical subjects was suboptimal during primary or secondary school. On the GMAT, critical subjects include:
Common reasons this might have happened include:
Scoring well on the GMAT is certainly feasible for students motivated to aggressively overcome skill deficits in these critical subjects. However, for a student experiencing challenges with a critical subject like algebra, effective GMAT preparation will require more time, effort, and resources. What’s more, this preparation may be overly challenging or impractical without capable and comprehensive tutoring support like ours.
For that reason, we recommend tutoring to any GMAT examinee with such a skill challenge who seeks a 700-plus score. Typically, tutoring will emphasize the key topics identified by our proprietary diagnostic evaluation at the start of our tutoring program. We will then use our underlying resources to allow guided self-study to improve the rote skills, followed by one-on-one help tailored to the student’s learning style for the harder concepts.
Discover why our GMAT program emphasizes GMAC’s official resources by reviewing our GMAT prep course web page. There you’ll find explanations in two sections:
Although every student is unique, in general we recommend at least ten hours of tutoring.
For most students, reviewing results from the diagnostic evaluation along with their proposed syllabus requires much of the first session. Moreover, our experience suggests it’s unlikely that a typical student would complete and review with their tutor enough high-value exercises during fewer than ten hours that would substantially boost their GMAT score. For these reasons, our minimum GMAT tutoring package comprises ten instructional hours.
If you have read through our web pages but still aren’t certain, two factors should help you choose: Time and investment.
Time and Scheduling Factors
Scheduling is more of a factor for our prep course. Realistically, prep courses work best for students who have more time available. And typically, students in our GMAT courses need at least two to three months before they plan to sit for the GMAT.
Why? Our courses meet for five weeks. During 2021, five of these courses appear on our calendar. Recordings are available, but students should try to attend as many live sessions as possible, because live interaction with the instructor and fellow students is so important.
Furthermore, for a number of good reasons, usually we don’t permit students to join the course while it is in process later. So, working backwards, you’ll need enough lead time before your planned exam date to schedule all 35 hours of your course sessions, followed by at least 4 weeks to do numerous timed question sets and practice tests, as well as important review from the course sessions.
By contrast, scheduling for tutoring is more flexible. For example, students who for one reason or another have to take the GMAT in only three to four weeks pretty much need to rely on tutoring, because our courses run for five weeks. And even though our tutors have busy schedules, our tutoring sessions are usually easier to schedule than the prep course, which is much less flexible.
Investment and Value Factors
Now, let’s consider how the investments required for our GMAT prep course and tutoring compare.
As we point out on our GMAT prep course web page, our class is a great value because it’s a cost-effective solution. We price the prep course competitively on a per-instructional-hour basis, and we sell the course for a flat fee that makes budgeting straightforward.
And as we also emphasize on that page, our course can save you time and money—and in some cases, lots of time and money. That’s because the GMAT course provides a conceptual framework in an organized, systematic way that prevents most students from needing extensive private tutoring afterward. Furthermore, many students find that when they have questions, they can rely on collaboration with classmates through our discussion forums and learning management software, to which we provide access for course participants at no additional charge.
To compare, we sell our private tutoring on a per-hour basis. But for most students, tutoring will be a variable cost, meaning that the total cost varies according to how much time a student will need.
For example, students who had first finished our GMAT prep course tend to require the least tutoring (6+ hours). However, if a student did not or could not enroll in one of our prep course sections, comprehensive GMAT preparation through our tutoring program would typically cost that student much more than the GMAT prep course’s flat rate—plus any additional tutoring after the course.
Our experts couldn’t precisely predict how many tutoring hours you might need until after you completed our diagnostic evaluation, which is the first phase of our GMAT tutoring program. However, they’d welcome chatting with you informally to roughly estimate how many hours you may need. That’s always a free consultation, so there’s no reason for you not to chat with one of our tutors to discover how much time they believe would result in a good outcome for you on the GMAT, and to learn about answers to other questions you’d like to ask.
Nearly all of our students opt for online GMAT tutoring, which is safe, flexible and saves you the time it would take to commute to our offices. We use the Zoom and Adobe Connect systems to deliver our tutoring.
By offering our tutoring online, we are able to work with students all across the US.
In-person GMAT tutoring can be provided upon request; inquire for details.
GMAT® is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admission Council™. Menlo Coaching is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with GMAC.