Prospective student making some enquiries

[demolao799]

Hi,

Am actually considering using the manhattan on demand course package to prepare for my gmat as i do not live in states. I have a few questions/ concerns as the case may be and would appreciate if i could be provided with good feedback.

1) Am planning on taking the gmat in 8 weeks that is end of october as such will be taking 2 months of unpaid leave off work to prepare. My question is this, as someone with very limited knowledge is it feasible to use your service and achieve a score of within the 700 mark within 2 months?

2) due to my perceived limited knowledge am very scared of even taking the diagnostic test cos i know i could use logic for the verbal bit bit for the quant bit, if you don't know it you don't know. You can't make an educated guess if the basic knowledge required isn't there.

3) To be honest i've been considering manhattan and veritas but leaning towards manhattan due to it's interactive style classroom i watched via the trail version presented to me and i know a lot of work to achieve whatever i want is down to me essentially but how much help can i really get from you guys? as i live in Nigeria and it's a huge financial commitment on my side hence my slight concern. I have magoosh but its not really giving me what i need.

4) from what i read on your site, i can see purchase of the $799 on demand course comes with 10 books which include foundations of maths and english which should probably be the most important thing i read firstly but was wondering how i would work through 10 books, watch videos, do homework's and cat tests within 2 months? i guess what am trying to ask is if you have a study guide for a two month period for a beginner really?

I have a lot of questions as you can see and even much more but i would really love to get an instructor perspective and also current or past students on what i need to do really within 2 months to achieve my score goal which is around the 700+ mark.

Your feedback would truly be appreciated?

Thanks guys:)

[StaceyKoprince]

Hello! Thanks for your questions. I'll answer in order.

(1) I can't tell whether you (or any one person) will be able to achieve a 700 in 2 months of full-time sudy. There are too many factors that go into that equation. What is your starting point? How much of the material is stuff you learned before (so you're re-learning now) vs. how much is completely new for you? How effective is your study process? (A lot of people study a lot but don't make great progress—I call this the "quantity over quality" approach.)

Most people study on the order of about 3 to 4 months, but most people also do not take off of work to study full-time. So it's possible that 2 months will be enough, but I will also caution you on something: I find that a larger percentage of people who study full-time have difficulties making progress in their studies. One of two things tends to happen:
(a) They study 6-8 hours a day and fall into the quantity-over-quality trap. They overload their brains and, as a result, don't learn any of the material very well. Most full-time studiers who find they're not making good progress fall into this category.
(b) The flip side can also happen: They feel like they have all the time in the world, so they procrastinate. Or they get sick of studying all the time and having nothing else to do and so they lose motivation. And then they just don't study enough to achieve their goals.

So I just want to warn you about your plans to study full-time. I'm not saying that you should not do this—but I want you to watch out for the potential pitfalls.

(2) This is exactly why you should take a practice test ASAP. The longer you wait, the more scary the test will become—the anxiety will continue to build and the whole process will become much more stressful than it needs to be.

It's also crucial to take your first practice test early for two other reasons:
(a) You need to know your starting point so that you can better plan. For instance, if you tell me your starting point is 400 and you want to get to 700, I'm going to tell you there's a good chance you'll need more than the 8 weeks you're planning. If, on the other hand, your starting point is 550, then I'd tell you, okay, there's a chance you can make it in 8 weeks. Either way, you want to know—so that you can plan accordingly.
(b) You need the data from the practice test to help you prioritize your studies. You may not know a lot about the test now, but you have strengths and weaknesses just like everybody else. You want to know what those are because you'll use that to help you to customize / prioritize your study plan.

(3) As an Interact self-study student, you have unlimited (included) access to our full Ask an Instructor forums and to our student services team. Since you are in Nigeria, you'll probably interact with our student services team via email, not phone—but they keep up with emails / answer questions in the same way.

I will point out that the Interact self-study program does not include direct one-on-one access to an instructor—your ability to ask questions of instructors is mainly via the forums, so there will be a delay in getting a response. Usually the delay is anywhere from a few days to a week or so, depending upon the level of traffic we're getting at that time. (The higher-priced classes and other programs do include direct access to an instructor, if that's something that you want. I do have students in my online classes from other countries—a student in Australia is in one of my classes right now. That's a matter of finding a schedule that works for you based on the time difference. And, of course, live classes are more expensive.)

(4) The Interact self-study (on-demand) course comes with a full course syllabus—don't worry! You will be given a whole series of assignments that will cover all of your resources! I do recommend working through the Foundations of Math and Foundations of Verbal material first, wherever you feel that you need that information. (Again, your first practice test will help you to know where you might need that foundational-level material.)

[demolao799]

Hi Stacey,

Thanks so much for your very honest opinion. It is truly appreciated as a lot of other companies could be more interested in selling their product over anything else.

To be honest with you, my heart really is with you guys but its such a huge financial implication on me as a result of the exchange rate between the dollar and naira and i've being looking to see if i could get some sort of discount to help reduce the burden

I'm happy you've also informed me of the dangers of rushing through the syllabus and will surely ensure that i do not fall into the quantity vs quality trap.

I have actually being experiencing the slow response rate from your student services and info@manhattan. I wanted to know the shipping cost to Nigeria. Sent the mail over 3 days ago now to no avail. My only issue is with the response rate in taking days or a week like you said. I tried out the magoosh product and i must say one of the things i enjoyed about them was once i sent a mail about any question, i got a response within 24 hours except weekends. My fear with taking days or a week in responding is i might have challenges with a topic and might not feel comfortable moving forward without gaining full understanding but if it takes such a long time to respond it may delay my study plans significantly. I was thinking you were superwoman and would actually come to my rescue anytime i have a problem.

Anyways Stacey i would be happy to learn more and see in what ways you could be of assistance to me as i want to prove to myself and you that it can be done in 2 months. A positive mindset is always key. Realism is also important but am always told am too negative or realistic as the case may be so i want to trust in myself to achieve this awesome achievement in a short period of time.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Apologies for the slow replies you've had from our Student Services team. Please feel free to call them up anytime (calling via Skype or Whatsapp may be easier if you're based in Nigeria).

Further to what Stacey said, I'd strongly recommend that you sign up for a free trial lesson with one of our online classes here: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/classes/ I see that Jonathan has one tomorrow. This will give you an opportunity to see how we teach, plus there's lots of useful content in that class. You'll also be able to ask for advice about your study schedule.

[demolao799]

Hi Sage,

Thanks for your response. I have been able to watch your first first videos on your gmat interact via the 7 days trail version and was pleased with it.

The problem am having with your package is simply this- i was expecting that if i have to pay more for an online course i should be able to have access to instructors even if it's just via the email platform which is the minimum a student should get in my opinion.

I plan on writing the exam in 2 months and Stacey pointed out to me that responses could be delayed by days or even a week due to the volume of questions you get asked on your forum. I feel this would not be appropriate for every student especially one's that have limited time to prepare and as such can't wait for a week for instance to get a response form you guy's.

i would suggest you look for ways to improve your response time as this would definitely increase your customer base. i loved your teaching style for instance but the fact that Stacey said time line for response could be delayed and am paying a lot of money, then i think it's unfair on the student part. Providing the possibility for students to send mails and get response between 24- 36 hours would make your package a lot appealing.

I live in Nigeria and don't have access to in person classes so i would want a package that takes into consideration my need for urgent responses as it is inevitable for students to have questions i think.

Hope you consider my observation. Just a penny though.

[StaceyKoprince]

Thank you for your thoughts; I appreciate you taking the time to give us feedback.

I do also want to make sure that you have the right details about our offerings—I'm not quite sure based on what you've said.

We hold both live in-person and live online courses. Both types of courses do include both live classes and email access to your instructor or instructors. We hold live online courses 7 days of the week and at different hours of the day eastern time (early morning, morning, afternoon, evening), so there are courses that will work for people in various time zones across the world (though, admittedly, someone in a very different time zone might not have as wide a variety of reasonable / workable options as someone who lives in the eastern time zone).

The curriculum for our live online courses is identical to the curriculum for our live in-person courses; you can find details and specific courses here: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/prep/complete-course/ (and you can search for live online course dates/times by typing "online" into the "city or zip code" box)

The Interact program is an on-demand, self-directed, self-study program. This does not include any live classes or direct email access to instructors; students choosing this program are choosing to study on their own, for the most part (though you can ask questions on the forums or via our student services team). You can find more details on this program here: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/prep/on-demand/

The live online courses are more expensive than the Interact self-study program. One primary reason for this: the live online courses do include both live instruction and direct access to your specific teacher outside of class. We have discussed offering some kind of direct email access to teachers for people doing the Interact program, but in order to pay for that service, we would have to raise the Interact price to a level that surveys indicate most people would not like / accept...so we have not done so.