• Very hard on quant
• Slightly easier on verbal
• Value for money
• Inaccurate algorithm

If you are using any one of Manhattan’s products for your GMAT prep, it is pretty evident that you must be eyeing their 6 GMAT practice exams. After all, practice makes one perfect, and these exams can be an enticing purchase. Manhattan provides one free full fledge test and a set of 5 paid exams.

Manhattan’s exams can be reset and retaken as many times as you like. To some students, this might sound appealing, but reattempts are never accurate representations of your actual performance. On the other hand, since the GMAT is an adaptive exam, it means as you get better with more straightforward questions, the test can throw tougher ones. So, you can retake the same exams and have a different experience and question problems. Nevertheless, retakes are never an accurate representation.

Before making the purchase, it is quite natural that you may have some of the following queries:

• Are these exams accurate?
• Is their scoring algorithm reliable?
• Is their difficulty close to the actual tests

Let’s try and answer these questions.

1) GMAC, the creators of the GMAT exam, do not reveal any information regarding the GMAT scoring algorithm. Test prep companies have worked hard to crack the code, but none have been able to perfect it. So, expecting Manhattan to give a 100% accurate prediction of actual scores is merely a deception.

Manhattan does give an excellent and thorough analysis of your performance to gauge your strengths and weaknesses, but that’s it. Their scoring algorithm is not accurate or reliable. Except for the official GMAT prep exams, none provides a precise scoring.

Generally, they underscore you on the quantitative part and overscore you on the verbal section. Hence don’t put your faith in the scores that you see on Manhattan exams.

2) Manhattan has a vast pool of questions, which has been tested on thousands of past students. Each one of these questions has detailed explanations for your self-learning.

Unfortunately, the questions are too harsh on the quantitative part, which can get ridiculously complicated. Demoralizing to an extent. They start throwing 700-800 level questions relentlessly and right at the beginning, unlike the GMAT style. Manhattan tests a lot of long, wordy, and computationally unnecessary problems. GMAT prep, on the other hand, is more about subtle tricks and having rock-solid concepts.

The real GMAT tries to mix up the topics. Hence, you cover as much of the material as possible, but MGMAT keeps it one-dimensional.

The verbal section has problems as well. It is just a tad easier than the actual GMAT. Passages are good – long, dense, and have subtle traps. Critical reasoning is a bit off. The critical reasoning questions also get unrealistically tricky as the level goes up. There is a lot of emphasis on grammar and little reliance on subtleties of the meaning in the sentence correction.

In a nutshell,

Pros:

• MGMAT is very hard on quant, and somewhat similar on verbal. So it can be good practice if you are aiming for a really high score.
• Manhattan has excellent analytics, explanations, and user interface.
• Value for money. For less than 50 dollars, you can get six exams.

Cons:

• Quant questions are unnecessarily complicated. For an average test-taker, this can be devastating.
• The inaccurate scoring algorithm can lead to unrealistic scores.

Recommendation:

Take these tests in between your GMAT Prep tests as the GMAT Prep tests are limited and must be used wisely. Use the MGMAT tests to evaluate yourself and then work on your weaknesses before moving on to the GMAT prep tests to see any improvements.

In short, if you want to feel the heat of the GMAT exam and be harsh on yourself, then MGMAT exams are helpful. But judging your own real GMAT capabilities with their results, it will be a little off-target.