From mid-600s to 720; Working with GMATGuruNY

[ddnyc12]

I wanted to provide a review of my experience working with Mitch Hunt (@GMATGuruNY) as I prepared for and took the GMAT.

Before working with Mitch, I’d taken a Manhattan Prep course and saw improvement in my overall knowledge of the material covered on the test and general test strategy. Manhattan Prep was helpful as a starting point for my test journey, but it was not getting me anywhere close to where I needed or wanted to be. After my Manhattan Prep course, I still scored in the mid-600s in practice exams and slightly higher on my first official test. Working with Mitch for ~2 months helped me overcome my testing stagnation, and I saw a strong jump in my score as I achieved a 720. I’ve laid out my favorite parts of working with Mitch below but simply put, I cannot recommend Mitch highly enough. Mitch is simply the best tutor you can work with; I wish I had started working with him sooner. Had I done so, I know my score would have been even higher.

This is when I reached out to Mitch and a handful of other tutors for introductory calls. Mitch stood out very quickly amongst the tutors I reached out to for two reasons.

1)He asked for my login info for my Manhattan Prep materials (the practice exams) and my official GMAT practice exams before our first call. He scoped out my pacing, the types of questions I was missing or getting right, etc. No other tutor did this! Our intro call wasn’t simply me asking him about his tutoring style, how we could do this virtually, and his success with other clients. A lot of our call was actually Mitch asking me questions about what I’d done to prepare to that point, what types of questions I was good at and where I thought I needed help, how I prepared for each practice exam, etc. Again, no other tutor did this!

2)He was realistic about how many hours we’d need to meet each week. This may sound like an odd reason, but the other tutors I met with told me we could meet for 1-hour a week. Mind you, I was taking the test again in ~2 months and have a busy work schedule, so 1-hour sounds nice. But realistically for the amount of material I wanted to cover and the improvement I wanted to make, meeting 1-hour per week was not going to cut it. Mitch was straightforward and told me we’d need at least 2-hours a week based on not only the timing of my next test but also his assessment of the materials I needed to cover. Again, this showed me a level of thoughtfulness that other tutors did not have.

Ok, so a few things I loved about working with Mitch:

1)First off I did all my sessions with him virtually via Zoom. He records every session and sends you the file afterward. Having these to go back and watch as I practiced was terrific. Especially for specific quant areas where I wasn’t as strong at first, having these recordings to re-watch as I did practice questions was super helpful.

2)He makes you keep an error log. For all questions I got wrong on practice tests or homework assignments, he has you keep a log including why you got the question wrong, what your takeaway is, and how you can make sure to not repeat that error. I was somewhat skeptical of this at first but I actually found this really helpful. Not only in understanding why I got questions wrong, but it helped me to go into our sessions each week with a set list of questions I could ask if I didn’t understand something.

3)Mitch has a great repository of material. Every week after our session he’d send me a list of tailored practice questions to complete on the topic area we were focused on.

4)Ok now my favorite part. Mitch really helped me understand how to take the test and strategize. Manhattan Prep was good for some test-taking strategies, but they overly relied on memorizing formulas and algebra. Mitch forced me to change how I approach the test for the better. We constantly practiced different ways to solve problems and how to recognize when a particular strategy would yield a better result than algebra/working something out with an equation. I can’t tell you how much time this saved me on problems and helped me score higher, especially in Quant.