To those of you that have opened this thread, I very much appreciate it. I am in quite a pickle.

I started self-paced study using the manhattan prep strategy guides in July, and things were going great (even went from 530-580 in a month) until September when I took my first mba.com GMAT and scored 530. I lost focus entirely in September and up until now when I officially decided that self-study is not going to be the way I get to my dream score of 740 and have a strong application for a top-15 MBA program. I am most hesitant on which course to purchase: ManhattanPrep or Kaplan. I already scheduled my first GMAT for the day before Thanksgiving (it was scheduled back in July) so Kaplan's differentiating factor of 'test-day experience' is not a huge deal-maker for me. I have experience an online Kaplan lesson which was great, and I have signed up for two free Manhattan Prep classes with two different teachers to be able to better choose who I may pick if I go with ManhattanPrep, but I wanted to ask the people of this forum for more opinions.

Obviously it comes down to personal preference, but to go from ~540 to 740 (or anything above 700 really) which would be recommended. I do not want to pay all of the money for a personal tutor as I have heard great success stories strictly from the online courses. Is there an alternate option beside Kaplan or MGMAT that I should consider?

THANK YOU!