Among the many online GMAT and GRE courses available, among the best and most popular are those by Manhattan Prep and Target Test Prep. To be sure, these courses are beneficial, especially in building the content foundation that one needs in order to excel on the GMAT and GRE. But there are some downsides to using these resources, ones that most of the people who use these resources are unaware of. In particular, we see many students who have been “TTP-ized” or “Manhattan Prep-ized.” We’ll explain what this means and what you can do about it!
What’s good about using courses like Target Test Prep and Manhattan Prep?
Let’s start with the good. Online courses from TTP and MPrep (as well as some other good ones like Magoosh, etc.) provide a good foundation in the body of knowledge that serves as the basis for the questions asked on the GMAT and GRE. This is especially true on the quantitative side of the tests. For example, both the GMAT and GRE have questions involving exponents, percents, etc. Not knowing your basic exponent or percent rules is a sure-fire way to get a bad score on both tests. So, these courses are particularly good at building that content foundation. Because we are going to sound pretty negative in what follows, let’s just reiterate that: these courses generally ARE very good at building the content foundation that helps lead to success on the GMAT and GRE.
What’s Wrong with These Courses, Then? First off, TMI!
The first problem is that these online courses often provide WAY too much information! This is particularly true of Target Test Prep. But, you might ask, “Isn’t more information, more knowledge, better?” No. It is not. The amount of information that one must master to achieve a great score on the GMAT and GRE is already a lot, even overwhelming, for most people. The last thing you want to do is load even more information into your brain, especially when it’s stuff that you are almost certainly not going to need on the test. What ends up happening when you try to do that is that your brain ends up clogged with so much information that the stuff that really matters gets lost in the cacophony.
We’ve had many, many students come to us having first gone through a TTP course saying things like, “I still have a lot of things I need to learn…I still haven’t memorized all of the prime numbers up to 100.” Wait, what? What?!!! When I hear things like this, which I hear all too often, I know that something has gone horribly wrong. People, please, you do not need to know all the prime numbers up to 100! Honestly, 2, 3, 5, and 7 is almost certainly enough. 11 and 13 wouldn’t hurt, but that’s probably it. If you are memorizing many more prime numbers beyond that, you are misunderstanding the GMAT and GRE. This leads to the more important problem with these courses…
Ok, What’s REALLY Wrong with These Courses?
The GMAT and GRE are reasoning tests, not tests of content knowledge. Yes, it’s helpful to have a certain level of mastery of the content base that serves as the foundation of the tests, and the higher you’d like to score, the more comprehensive you’d want that foundation to be. But mastering the content foundation is NOT sufficient to score really high on the tests. More important than learning the content is learning how to excel at the higher order thinking skills that the GMAT and GRE are designed to reward. Without those skills, it is VERY hard to achieve a high score on either test, if not impossible. Furthermore, with enough ability in the domains of quantitative and verbal reasoning, problem-solving, and critical thinking, one can score very high on both the GMAT and GRE WITHOUT even having a great mastery of the content foundation. We have seen many examples of that over the years.
So, what happens to most people who go through these courses is that they come to believe that in order to do well on the tests all they need to do is master the content that is presented in these courses. And if they are not doing as well as they would like on practice tests or the actual GMAT or GRE, well that just means they need to learn more content! Since they haven’t mastered EVERYTHING that is presented in one of these courses, they need to redouble their efforts and try to really master ALL of it. Yikes. That is NOT the solution.
Part of the problem is that these courses have follow-up questions embedded in their modules that are designed to reinforce the lessons that they are teaching. But since the lessons are overly focused on the content, the questions that people practice on when going through the modules just reinforce this notion of the primacy of mastering content.
This is what we call becoming “TTP-ized” or “Manhattan Prep-ized.” You become so embedded in learning content and so convinced that that is what matters on the GMAT and GRE that you don’t understand why things are not translating on the official practice tests or actual GMAT or GRE. Again, since the questions and practice tests in these courses are designed to reinforce this emphasis on content and since many people ONLY practice with the materials provided by these courses, they are almost operating in a sort of synthetic bubble, oblivious to the reality of the actual tests, and are often in for a rude awakening when they finally transition over to the official practice tests.
For the record, this is not a new phenomenon. It goes all the way back to the days when Manhattan Prep was Manhattan GMAT and when live, in-person courses were the norm. Back then we would see many, many students who had clearly been “Manhattan GMAT-ized” and we would tell them so! The issue has only gotten worse with the rise of online, on-demand courses because it’s all too easy to just add more and more “content” and more and more practice questions designed to reinforce that content. When you had a 20-hour live course, it was a little harder to go overboard. With online, on-demand courses, companies like Manhattan Prep and Target Test Prep are no longer restrained. And because it often seems to people that more is better, the trend has moved in that direction. Target Test Prep, in particular, has SO much content and SO many practice questions embedded in their courses. But students don’t need more. They need better curation and a greater emphasis on what matters most on the GMAT and GRE.
What Can You Do If You Are Taking A TTP, Manhattan Prep, or Other Similar Course?
A few things. Before we explain, let us reiterate that it IS important to learn the underlying content that is tested on the GMAT and GRE and in some respects courses like Manhattan Prep and Target Test Prep do a good job teaching this content. So, such courses are not without merit and if you have enrolled in one, using these resources can be a very useful part of your prep. It’s just that it shouldn’t be ALL of your prep and even the way you approach leveraging the resources of these courses very likely needs to be modified.
First of all, you need to understand that the GMAT and GRE are tests of quantitative and verbal reasoning, not content knowledge, and that your emphasis should not be on learning every last bit of content knowledge presented in these courses. Much of what is presented is just not necessary to know. How do you know what is important and what is not? That can be difficult to discern. Answering this question leads to the next point/suggestion…
You MUST supplement these courses with official materials. MUST! And you should do it early on in the process and throughout. You do NOT want to wait until you’ve completed the TTP course to then start taking official practice tests, only to learn that late in the game that you should have prepared differently. You should be supplementing with official questions right from the outset. A few benefits will accrue from this…
First, using official questions is a great way to help you understand what content is important and what is less so. If you NEVER encounter any prime numbers above 7 on official questions, it’s a good bet that knowing that 61 is a prime number is not important.
Second, by practicing on official questions, you will get a window into how important quantitative and verbal reasoning are on the GMAT and GRE and how infrequently the problem, when you are struggling, is a lack of content knowledge. This is not to say that content knowledge is never the issue. It’s just that it often surprises people how much the questions really depend on reasoning and how little they depend on pure Math or pure Verbal knowledge. But you will only get a window into this truth by doing lots of official questions. And the earlier you have that realization the better, so you want to incorporate official questions into your process from the very beginning!!!