Manhattan GMAT vs. Kaplan GMAT

Manhattan, it's solid.

I took Kaplan's self-directed on-line course. Pretty good if you just need to refresh a few topics and learn the basic strategies. It also offers a bunch of practices (9 in total), plus a very deep quiz bank, and one practice at an actual test center. You can also design your own targeted quizes for areas of improvement. I highly recommend, especially if you are pressed for time (Manhattan's courses are as long as 8 weeks IIRC).

Yeah, the 6 weeks thing might make taking a full course tough. That being said I would HIGHLY recommend picking up the Manhattan GMAT quant books on any topics you find yourself struggling with.

I took a long look and both Kaplan and MGMAT and if you are looking to get 700+ I think the MGMAT quant books are set up much better to help you get there. They also have advanced topics in the back that are great for the tougher questions you will see if you are scoring high.

If you had the time, I would suggest taking the MGMAT full course. Since not, I'd say the Kaplan verbal had a slight edge and MGMAT quant was far and away better.

I agree with the posts above. If you're self-studying and are looking for some challenging practice problems, particularly in verbal, look at Kaplan's GMAT 800. Manhattan GMAT's class is quite extensive (my friends are taking it right now) so I'm not sure you have enough time to complete it, but consider a course called the GMAT Pill if you're really pressed for time. It's got some fundamental strategies that you might find helpful (it's about $350 right now for the full course).

Good luck

I took Kaplan (classroom + online), Manhattan, and Knewton. And I took the GMAT each time in between...scoring 640, 690, 760 respectively.

I thought Kaplan was garbage. Manhattan was good. Knewton was great.

MGMAT is the best out there. Their guides are quite good, esp. the quant ones. If the course seems expensive to you, you can buy only the books. I don't think that not taking their classes would make much of a difference - their guides have all you need to crack the GMAT. Kaplan has good math quizzes that you can purchase separately. Also, check out GMATClub's problem sets - a good representation of the high-level Q problems that you'll see on the GMAT. When you've been through all that prep material, you can take GMATFocus, which is prepared by GMAC and gives you some additional real-GMAT math problems and estimates the most likely score you'll get on the quant portion.