GMAT Prep: Reviews & Student Testimonials

Find the right approach the system and if able, the right person to help you guide you through the process. It goes far beyond just the content. There’s a lot of strategy involved. Figure out your own unique way of approaching the test is extremely important. I got 735 on the GMAT Focus. The first person that I texted right after my test was Dave, and I was, you know, really excited to share the good news, and he was really happy for me.

I felt like I was learning. Like, even those are really two hour videos, I felt like I was still getting a lot out of them. You kind of, like, get that solid foundation, like, through the units, with the online portion. And then, like, you have that support there if that’s tailored to you with, your tutor like I had with Mike. Mike was great. I highly recommend Mike. He’s super smart. Like, you can tell, like, engineering background, just like the way if I was, like, confused about something on math, he’ll just be able to, like, draw it out, like, from the very, like, basic elements of like what’s going on in the problem.

Now that I look back at it, every single second I dedicated to the GMAT was worth it. It’s a feeling that I really don’t think one can describe until you you experience it because you see all the hard work you’ve done, for the last couple of months, and it’s just an overall feeling of of satisfaction and being proud of proud of what you accomplished. Looking forward now to to sending the application saying, okay. This is done and done for good. Now I can focus on something else.

I made some really great initial gains, and my scores started to rise pretty rapidly until I hit a bit of a plateau in the sense of my my score was about the same. I understood the content well, but the score just wouldn’t get to that level I needed to until I really sat down with with Chris in terms of just ironing out the very, very last few sections that I understood, but I didn’t understand at what we called the GMAT speed level. For me, that was a huge thing. The pressure of the exam on exam day, and and all the thoughts that are going into it right before you click I’m ready to go.

I first started studying right after undergrad and worked with another tutoring service, but I was stuck in the low 700s and felt like my tutor didn’t really believe I could improve. That’s when I found Menlo Coaching and got paired with Hailey. From the start, she took a really personalized approach, diving into the areas I struggled with most and making sure I actually understood the concepts. With her help, I went from a 730 to a 760, and the one-on-one attention made all the difference.

When I first started studying for this test, I started around a 630, hovered around the high 600’s. Eventually I got a 700, then a 720 when I started working—that’s when I started working with Menlo and I saw that I was putting in a lot of effort to get above a 720. But with Hailey’s assistance, I was able to start getting above 720 on practice tests until I most recently got the 750 that I was targeting to get in the first place.

After tutoring I got 720. Yeah, I got a 720, which is super exciting. So that was great. My advice for starting GMAT, preparation is just work with Hailey. She’ll make everything easier, go smoother, and actually make studying, and taking the GMAT fun. So, just just work with her, it will be great.

I feel like after I came to Menlo with a 710 and after working with Craig over, a two-month period for six hours of session, I jumped to a 760, I felt very confident throughout the test. So, I knew that I was scoring, at least 730, I felt certain I would just repeat my score, but I think when the, the score came back and I was shocked and pleased, and I just I felt like I had put in so much work over, so many months, I had tried so many tactics, and to finally feel like, okay, I finally produced a score that I feel like is really representative representative of my ability and the time and prep that I put into this about.

I got exactly what I wanted out of the sessions and that was a more concrete way to approach verbal questions. And that honestly had two main benefits. I think, the first benefit obviously was that I got more questions, right. And also in April, a shorter amount of time. It also just gave me more confidence as I was taking a test.

So this was my first interaction or someone took, you know, took me one-on-one and was able to look at my strengths and weaknesses and develop a plan that was unique to me. Focus on what I had difficulty with and make sure that I was successful with the exam. So Ron really quickly, kind of honed in and found that at least for me, Data Sufficiency was my weakness. So we spent a lot of time on that and kind of looked into what we can do to fix that. He was very accommodating.

Is it really this easy? Or is, are they testing something harder? And those kinds of questions that Chris really pressed me on and got me to better understand helped me perform much better because I was able to recognize something you know that the tricks or the catches that they really test that are hidden upon first glance, when you, when you working with the questions. I really felt like he picked up on the specific areas that I needed to improve to get to, you know a 40 point improvement to get the score that I wanted.

Menlo basically will match you with a tutor that will meet whatever your needs are, whatever your strength are, and weaknesses are. They kind of match you up perfect for that. What I really liked about the process, the tutoring process with Menlo, especially Travis’s, he really took an interest in getting to know me before hopping into any of the prep and I think that’s important because he knew exactly what to what to say to me.

The biggest benefit I received was just the one-on-one tutoring session which I just covered with Hailey. At the very GetGo I told her that hey I’m probably operating at a 700 level already, but I reason I’m want to work with you is I want to shoot for that 767, 777, 780 score. And she was like, yeah, let’s do it during our one-on-one tutoring sessions.

Coming to Menlo, I quickly realized that the GMAT quant section is not a math test. I really learned that there are special strategies and methodologies for approaching different types of questions on the quant section and that doing long algebra isn’t usually actually the way to approach most of the questions. And so for me, that was a huge learning experience, especially with regard to data sufficiency questions, and also just all sorts of questions where there’s many more strategies you can use and a lot faster ways to approach problems.

Initially Chris really pushed for me to only do probably eight hours, which was quite the shock going price-shopping between tutoring companies who were saying, “Oh man, with your profile, “minimum 20 to 30 hours in order to get “to that 700-plus level.” With Chris, it only took 10 hours, which is absolutely amazing and quite the value. He really focuses on making sure that you get everything you need.