Manhattan Prep offers excellent preparatory material for the GRE – probably the best in the industry in terms of quality and variety. Their GRE study guides and the Manhattan 5LB book, are the best resources after the GRE official guides to study for the exam. A few students studying for the GRE are aware that Manhattan offers six full-length adaptive tests. One of these tests is free, and you can buy the remaining five through Manhattan’s website.
Given that there is a shortage of full-length GRE practice tests similar to the actual GRE tests, these six mocks are a welcome addition. That is not to say that these tests are like the GRE’s actual level. They are undoubtedly second best after the ETS Power Prep Exams – and I would not hesitate to say this, but they are much better on the quantitative sections than the two FREE PowerPrep tests. However, the PAID PowerPrep tests are number one when it comes to quality mock exams.
In this Article
What are the Manhattan’s Six GRE Practice Exams?
Manhattan Six GRE Practice Exams are full-length Adaptive Online Practice Tests designed to help students simulate the actual GRE test environment. More specifically, they are must-have for students who want to go the extra mile to build four-hour-long stamina and focus on the real GRE test. You can use these exams after you are done with your prep and are a few days away from your actual test. Students aiming for perfection must use these tests.
Each test consists of 5 GRE sections; Two Math sections, Two Verbal sections, and One Essay Writing section. The tests do not include the GRE Experimental section. All of these exams cover all the topics tested on the GRE. No subject area is missing from these tests; therefore, they are exhaustive in terms of the content. Each test includes the following:
- An interface that is just like the real GRE
- An online calculator, which is similar to the one that you get on the GRE.
- A detailed explanation of each question
- Questions ranging from the least to the highest difficulty level
These exams are adaptive, and their difficulty level changes with your performance, just like the actual GRE.
The Good and the Bad Things about Manhattan’s Six GRE tests
There’s certainly a lot to love about these six exams. Here are the biggest pros and cons of using these tests as part of your preparation.
Quality of Quantitative Questions
Overall, the Math questions on the Manhattan tests are somewhat close to the actual GRE. Some question types such as data interpretation and word problems are much more convoluted and time-consuming than what appears on the real exam. This is good because they over prepare you for the test. But it isn’t useful in a way as well. Such lengthy calculations cause unnecessary mismanagement of time and can lead you to make random guesses. Nevertheless, the questions are beneficial for practice and consolidate 70% of the things that the GRE tests.
The first Math section on the Manhattan exam is nearly the same level of difficulty as the actual exam. However, the second Math section on the actual GRE is tougher and trickier than Manhattan’s. So, on the GRE, you will encounter more involved questions on the second Math section. The real GRE makes you think about a lot of subtleties, whereas Manhattan makes you work on lengthy problems that aren’t too common on the exam. In my view, Manhattan needs to update the second section Math questions to mimic the real GRE.
Quality of Verbal Questions
I feel Manhattan lacks here significantly – many of the Text Completions and Sentence Equivalence are straightforward in terms of structure; they do require some thinking, but the sentence structure is not that tough as the actual GRE. Moreover, the vocabulary that you would see on the Manhattan full-length tests is not what you will see on the actual GRE. Except for a handful of passages, most of the Manhattan reading passages are more straightforward than the real GRE, and the questions are also direct, and their options are not too close to one another – something that the GRE loves to trap students with.
The text completions and the paragraphs may be long but not that convoluted or as artfully crafted as the actual GRE. I am surprised that Manhattan has not improved their GRE practice exams verbal section over time – they have not spent too much time updating their verbal content and writing better questions and complex sentences. Most of the questions are helpful and won’t hurt your preparation.
What does this all mean? Well, the verbal section of the Manhattan online tests is not standardized. So sometimes you will get hard questions and very long passages while at other times you will get much more accessible stuff. So if you are looking for better verbal material, then the best sources are the GRE official guides and the power prep mocks. Nothing beats the official content when it comes to the verbal section.
Adaptive Scoring Algorithm
Since ETS does not openly disclose its GRE Scoring algorithm, the estimated GRE score you get at the end of the Manhattan exams is just a prediction. As it is with all predictive models, they are not accurate and reliable. The same is the case with Manhattan’s GRE exams. The scores that you get at the end of every Manhattan GRE test are not reliable, and you should only use the Power Prep exams to estimate your actual score.
Detailed Explanations
Each question is accompanied by detailed and lucid explanations that are well written. So if you have trouble with any question, you can easily understand it.
However, some questions can be explained much more efficiently with better methods. For example, Manhattan explains a lot of Quantitative comparison questions using plug and play approach. Most of these questions can be solved using algebraic methods which are much quicker.
Summary
In short, the Manhattan practice tests are the second-best GRE practice tests after power prep exams. The quantitative is somewhat up to the mark of the actual GRE and is an attractive way to prepare well for the exam. Nevertheless, the quantitative section needs a reboot since the actual GRE questions have now become harder. Moreover, the verbal section questions are not an imitation of the real GRE verbal questions and are somewhat time wasters.
I collected some data to determine a correlation between Manhattan scores and the actual GRE scores. For 736 students that I analyzed, I saw a 60% correlation between the scores. Around 60% of the students scored plus-minus 2 points of their Manhattan scores. So lately, Manhattan hasn’t been that great at predicting your actual scores.
So should you buy these? You should. Practicing six adaptive tests will build your stamina of taking a grueling 4.5 hour-long exam. It will give you the confidence to sit through a hard exam under difficult and stressful timed conditions. Moreover, there are not many official tests to practice from, and Manhattan has the best unofficial exams out there, so it is better to practice these than not doing them. They are affordable and worth your money.
Quantitative Overall: 6/10
Verbal Overall: 3/10
How to Buy 6 Manhattan GRE Online Tests for less than $20?
Manhattan sells its Online GRE adaptive mock exams for approximately $50. By using this link, you can buy these for less than half of that price, i.e. less than $20.
Simply buy any one of Manhattans eight GRE guides (Paperback) from here. Once the book arrives at your place, scratch the code at its end. Then follow the instructions given at the end to register your book and get access to the 6 mocks for less than $20. This book includes FREE access to 6 Manhattan Practice tests.