The quick answer is that the structure of the lessons depends entirely on each student's strengths, weaknesses, interests, and needs. You're (presumably) looking for a tutor because you want somebody who will efficiently teach you exactly what you need, rather than wasting time with a one-size-fits-all class.

Keep in mind that each of the exams we tutor (GMAT, GRE, EA and the LSAT) are extremely nuanced. We'll look for the most efficient ways to help you gain points, and that inevitably means different things for different people.

For a deeper look into our tutoring process, check out the long-winded pages about GMAT tutoring, GRE tutoring, EA tutoring, and LSAT tutoring. Or watch this video on how to get the most out of GMAT tutoring — even if you’re taking the GRE, EA, or LSAT, the video will still give you a good snapshot of how we help our students move forward with their studies.

We require two-hour tutoring sessions in most cases, simply because most students need a little bit of time to get fully "warmed up" for learning, and we always have tons of ground to cover. Sessions longer than two hours usually suffer from diminishing returns, but we've tutored some intense students who manage to survive three or four hours of non-stop tutoring fun.

So in very rare cases, we're willing to consider longer or shorter session lengths, but it's safest to assume that two-hour sessions will be the best way to move forward efficiently.

For the GMAT, EA, and GRE, we offer dozens of sets of practice questions that we've developed over the years, but these sets are only designed as supplements for students who need extra practice with certain question types. All of these exams have their own unique question styles, and there's absolutely no substitute for using official materials.

For the LSAT, we’ll stick to the official materials in your tutoring sessions and homework. The creators of the LSAT have published far more official questions than their GMAT, EA, or GRE counterparts, so there’s no shortage of official LSAT practice questions.

So the answer is yes, we do provide our own practice materials to our students. But we would be crappy tutors if we pretended that our materials were somehow better than the materials developed by the people who actually write each of the exams.

Yes, though the name "GMAT and GRE Ninja" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

The nice thing about the GRE is that it tests many of the same concepts as the GMAT, and much of our GMAT expertise translates comfortably to the GRE. Several of our tutors have earned perfect scores on the GRE, including our founder, who has done so on several occasions.

If you're not sure whether you should take the GRE or the GMAT, you might consider reading our series of articles on the GRE vs. the GMAT. This video on the GRE vs. GMAT decision might also help — it was filmed in 2019, but the general punchlines still hold well in 2023, even as both exams are undergoing an overhaul.

Alternatively, if you’re applying to law school and are wondering whether you should take the LSAT or the GRE, you could read our article on whether law schools prefer the LSAT or GRE.

Yes, we do! It would be a bit tough to call ourselves “GMAT/GRE/EA Ninja,” but we do in fact offer tutoring for the EA. For more information, check out how we approach EA tutoring, our GMAT Ninja tutors, or the other FAQs on this page. The nuts and bolts of our approach is consistent across the GMAT, GRE, and EA.

Yes, though the name "GMAT, GRE, Executive Assessment, and LSAT Ninja" is just a bit silly, right?

For more on the LSAT and how we help students with its ridiculous time pressure, check out this page about LSAT tutoring.

In many ways, the heart of our tutoring is always the same: we look deeply into our students’ minds, and figure out what’s REALLY holding them back from their target scores – even if it’s not something that you might expect.

When they study on their own, test-takers tend to focus on concrete issues like math formulas, but in many cases, their struggles come from more subtle behaviors, such as rushing through easy questions, getting stubborn on harder questions, failing to focus on the author’s purpose in an RC passage, or struggling to eliminate distracting thoughts during an exam.

In other words, we pride ourselves on making deep diagnoses of our students’ strengths, weaknesses, and mindsets, regardless of which exam they’re taking.

That said, the tests are obviously very different from each other in key ways, so we can’t reasonably approach them in exactly the same ways. For example, GMAT and EA quant questions often require deeper layers of reasoning than GRE questions, so we emphasize different approaches when we’re tutoring those exams – you’ll have to be great at solving “quant puzzles” if you want an elite GMAT or EA score, but fundamental quant content will usually get you a bit farther on the GRE.

Similarly, we approach Reading Comprehension very differently for LSAT students – who face extreme time pressure on that particular exam – than we would for test-takers who are trying to improve their verbal scores on the GMAT, EA, or GRE. On an adaptive test like the GMAT – which happens to have far less time pressure on the verbal section – we encourage a systematic, methodical approach to RC. On the LSAT… well, it’s still wise to be systematic, but you’ll have to keep the proverbial gas pedal anchored to the floor, and be prepared to make some decisions before you’ve finished processing the questions.

We could go on and on with examples. The bottom line: our tutoring approach is inevitably different for each exam, but we always fight to understand our students deeply, and seek personalized solutions to their struggles – even if their struggles aren’t necessarily what they expected.

Of course. Just ask.

If you want some instant references from people who have worked with us, feel free to check out our reviews on GMAT Club or Yelp. We also have a plenty of random, solicited testimonials floating around elsewhere on the internet, including this random corner of the GMAT Club forum, this MBA applicant blog, and Beat the GMAT (here, here, here, or here), among many others.

Unfortunately, we can't promise that we'll be able to answer questions from applicants who have no interest in hiring us as their tutor or admissions consultant. We'll try to help if we can, but please don't be offended if we don't respond to requests for (unpaid) advice, particularly during the test-taking and MBA admissions frenzy that runs from June through January each year.

We do, however, serve as the resident verbal experts on the GMAT Club, so we'll do our best to help you over there if you post your questions publicly in the verbal forums. We also regularly respond to questions in the comment sections of our YouTube videos.

Nearly all of our students meet with us online, usually via Skype. We’ve offered online tutoring since 2009, and by 2019 — before COVID-19 forced us all into hiding — 99% of our tutoring was conducted online.

During an online tutoring session, you'll be able to see a (virtual or physical) dry-erase board and anything we type on our computer screen, so the experience is a pretty solid replacement for a live, one-on-one tutoring session. A few nuances are inevitably lost via the internet — for example, we can always see your reactions, but we generally can't see what you're writing down in your notes — but we’re very accustomed to tutoring students online, and it works really, really well.

Our essay editing and MBA admissions consulting services are also offered online. We have worked remotely with applicants in dozens of countries worldwide, as well as locations throughout the United States.

A longer rant about the benefits and drawbacks of online GMAT tutoring can be found here, and everything we’ve said about the GMAT in that article can be applied to the GRE, EA, or LSAT.

The only things you absolutely need are a good internet connection and free Skype or Google video conferencing software, though online tutoring usually works best if you have a webcam (so we can see your reactions as we work through questions) and a decent headset (to minimize audio interference during our session). If the Skype or Google software misbehaves, then we can discuss alternatives (Polycom, WebEx, Zoom, FaceTime, Teams, etc.) -- but Skype usually works well for online tutoring.

For the video feed to work correctly during tutoring sessions, you typically need to maintain upload and download speeds of at least 500 kbps (0.5 mbps), but things usually work best if the connection is consistently a little bit faster -- at least 1.5 mbps is best. If you're not sure about the strength of your internet connection, try visiting www.speedtest.net, and run five or six tests of your internet connection at different times of the day. If any of the tests are under 1 or 1.5 mbps, you might want to consider upgrading your internet service before you begin tutoring.

If you're interested in online tutoring and you're not sure about your internet connection, feel free to contact us, and we'll do our best to help you figure everything out.

In our post-COVID world, it’s exceedingly rare for our students to prefer in-person tutoring sessions, but we’re certainly open to it.

If you’re interested in in-person tutoring, check out our tutors’ bios to see if any of our instructors live near you. If one of them seems like the right fit geographically and you decide to contact us for tutoring, just let us know that you prefer in-person tutoring, and we’ll do our best to work out the logistics.

Nearly everybody asks this question, and our answer is always the same: it depends.

For example, if you've never touched a GMAT or GRE or LSAT prep book but dream of admission to Harvard or Stanford, then you might need more tutoring than somebody who is just fine-tuning her approach after months of self-study. If you've taken only a single practice test and your score was significantly lower than your goal, then you might need a whole lot of time with a tutor. Everybody learns at their own pace, some people are better about doing homework than others, and some people have set more challenging goals than others.

So we know that the answer is unsatisfying, but until we know a lot more about you and what you're trying to achieve, we can't predict how much tutoring you'll need. Sorry.

You’re persistent, huh? I like that.

This might be too generic to be helpful, but if you’re looking for improvement on both quant and verbal in the GMAT, EA, or GRE, and if you’re able to keep up with our recommended workload (~15 hours per week, with tutoring sessions roughly once a week), then it’s reasonable to expect your learning curve to “flatten out” after about 12 weeks.

The weekly workload recommendations are a little lower for the LSAT (~10 hours per week, with tutoring sessions roughly once per week), but the amount of time before you should reasonably expect your learning curve to “flatten out” is roughly the same (12 weeks) as for the GMAT, EA, or GRE.

Here’s the problem: your learning curve might flatten out exactly at your goal score, or it might flatten out long before you reach your target score… or you might wildly overshoot your score goal if you study for 12 weeks. So it isn’t unusual at all for a student to reach their goal in far less than 12 weeks, or for us to discover that it’s going to be a long, hard, uncertain fight to achieve a particular score.

We can promise this, though: we’ll provide honest assessments every step of the way, even if it’s not what you want to hear. So if you start working with us, we’ll do everything we can to make sure that you understand where the process is headed, and what the prognosis is for improvement.

As a starting point, we expect our GMAT, Executive Assessment, and GRE students to complete about 15 hours of homework per week: roughly two hours per weekday and three or four hours per weekend day, depending on your exact situation.

For the LSAT, we expect about 10 hours of homework per week: roughly one and a half hours per day for the full week.

More hours than that can easily lead to careless errors and bad habits, and fewer hours might prevent you from making progress as quickly as you'd like.

Again, everybody is different, but if you decide to work with us, be prepared for somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 hours per week of heavy lifting (10 for the LSAT), ideally spread somewhat evenly through the week. If you’re not prepared to work hard toward your goals, then we probably aren’t the right tutors for you.

In most cases, we strongly recommend regular, weekly tutoring sessions. If you’re doing the required 15 hours per week of homework (10 for the LSAT), a two-hour tutoring session is going to fly by really, really quickly — and anything less than weekly sessions is unlikely to give us enough time to address the weaknesses that we see in your homework results.

For students who have time on their hands for doing extra homework, we’re open to meeting more frequently, but we definitely don’t recommend anything less than weekly sessions if you’re serious about making progress quickly.

You probably know what we're going to say here: it depends on your talent, your study habits, your starting score, and your exact strengths and weaknesses.

Everybody wants to hear us guarantee massive score improvements, but the honest truth is that it can be really, really hard to make a big leap on the GMAT, EA, GRE, or LSAT.

For example, very few people ever manage to increase their GMAT scores by more than 200 points. Don't get us wrong: we've seen it happen a number of times. One of Charles's favorite students went from a 380 to a 670, but it took him a long time; that particular student had a limited budget and didn't rely too heavily on his GMAT tutor, but he had one heck of a work ethic. Mike's very first GMAT student improved from a 380 to a 630 after a few months of tutoring. So it happens, but it certainly isn't easy.

Also, keep in mind that it's a lot harder to improve your score if you already have a reasonably high score. A 150-point improvement might be a realistic GMAT goal for somebody who starts in the 400s (we've seen this happen quite a few times), but it's a tall order for somebody whose initial test score is above 600. If you're starting in the 600s, even a 100-point improvement will require some heavy lifting from both you and your GMAT tutor. So yes, we see it happen fairly often, but it isn't easy to do.

We pride ourselves on brutal honesty, so if you’re interested in working hard to achieve your goals, tell us your story here, and we’ll respond with an assessment of your odds of achieving your goals on whichever exam you’re taking — without any sugar-coating or empty promises.

It depends on your exact weaknesses, but odds are good that we'll be able to help you, even if you've already suffered through a long, painful relationship with your particular exam. We love searching for creative, interesting ways to help students improve, and if you’re starting to think that you’re completely hopeless, we’ll probably really enjoy finding new ways for you to approach your test. New challenges make tutoring fun for us, so we're always excited to meet prospective students who are in unique and difficult situations.

Think about it this way: if you’ve already been through a few prep courses—or if you’ve spent hours hunched over a stack of test-prep books—then it’s likely that you’ve seen nearly every “standard” test-prep technique in existence. For whatever reason, the one-size-fits-all approach employed by test-prep companies isn’t right for you.

That happens. A lot. A majority of our students have taken the GMAT, EA, GRE, or LSAT at least twice before contacting us for tutoring, so we're accustomed to seeing students who have been thoroughly beaten down by the test. At times, we realize that we're the tutors of last resort: if typical test-prep techniques aren’t working for you, we might be creative enough to come up with something new that helps you achieve a breakthrough.

Again, no two students are exactly alike, and that’s exactly what makes tutoring compelling for us. If there’s a way for you to improve your score, we like to think that we’ll be able to find it—even if our techniques end up being unorthodox.

So even if you’ve struggled mightily in the past, there might be a path forward for you. If we don’t think that we can help you, we promise to be 100% honest about it. But if there’s a way for you to improve your score, we promise to do everything we can to find it, and we’ll probably come up with ideas that very few tutors would think of. Contact us if you want to discuss your exact situation in more detail.

Current rates for online GMAT, GRE, EA, and LSAT tutoring can be found on our rates page, along with rates for MBA admissions consulting and performance coaching. Please be aware that rates may change occasionally based on market demand.

And while we're on the topic of tutoring rates, you might be wondering...

Probably not, unfortunately. We don't offer any sort of "package" or "volume" discounts, and we charge a flat hourly rate for tutoring, performance coaching, and MBA admissions consulting services. We do, however, occasionally offer discounted rates to work with tutors-in-training. Please visit our rates and policies page for current details.

For students in our Test Anxiety Program, 10 tutoring sessions (20 hours) are included in the package price. For our regular tutoring services, we do not formally require a minimum number of tutoring sessions. But if you’re expecting a significant score improvement in just a few hours of tutoring for any exam, we’ll probably tell you that your expectations are unrealistic.

In general, we find that tutoring is the most effective when we meet with students regularly — usually once per week. Sometimes, our students are successful with less-frequent sessions, but if you’re looking for a really large jump in your score, we’re unlikely to move the needle without regular follow-ups.

If you plan to do a relatively small number of tutoring sessions, please let us know when you contact us, and we’ll give you an honest evaluation of whether you’re likely to achieve your score goals in that timeframe.

Life gets tricky sometimes, and we do everything we can to accommodate reasonable schedule changes. But the reality is that our lives get much harder when students cancel a few hours before a tutoring session: it means that we're able to accommodate far fewer students in any given week, and that's bad for everybody.

The bottom line is that we're much happier if everybody just shows up to their appointments as scheduled. If your life is suddenly interrupted by a terrible act of nature (swine flu, subway fires, blizzards, capybara attacks, internet outages), we'll cut you some slack. Otherwise, if you're just canceling for work or personal reasons without giving us a good 48 hours' notice, we think it's fair to ask that you pay for the slot that you occupied, since 48 hours usually doesn't give us enough time to offer that slot to anybody else. Sound reasonable?

For more, check out our rates and policies page.

Sorry, that’s not something that has ever really made sense to us, for all sorts of reasons.

For starters, score guarantees often feel like a sales gimmick, and they distort the student-teacher relationship in an important way: all of this works best when we approach this as a partnership, not a sales transaction. If you’re struggling on the GMAT, EA, GRE, or LSAT, odds are good that you’re having a hard time figuring out the underlying causes of your struggles – and we need to work WITH you to identify and fix your weaknesses. If you’re just sitting back and waiting for us to give you a “guaranteed” solution, that’s not nearly as likely to be successful.

Second, if we were to offer some sort of score guarantee, we would instantly be incentivized to “cherry-pick” our students. We’d avoid tougher cases, and that’s ridiculous and counterproductive for everybody. If we think that you’re going to have a really, really hard time achieving your goals, we’re going to tell you that honestly – and then if you still want to strive to achieve them, we’ll do everything humanly possible to help.

Frankly, we love working with “long-shot” students who face all sorts of headwinds. And those engagements aren’t very compatible with score guarantees.

We can 100% guarantee a few things, though. Our tutors will obsessively do everything they can to help you, and we only hire tutors who are freaking phenomenal – in our most recent hiring round, we extended offers to three tutors out of more than 1900 applicants, and we very thoroughly train and support the elite tutors that we do hire. And we can 100% guarantee that they’ll be honest with you about your progress – even if it means telling you things that you don’t want to hear.

Yes, but please be aware that there is much higher demand for tutoring during evenings and weekends, so you might need to schedule sessions well ahead of time, especially during the peak of MBA admissions season. We often have a lengthy waiting list for evening and weekend tutoring sessions, so please plan ahead if you possibly can.

Yes, we're always happy to refer you to another GMAT, GRE, or LSAT tutor if our schedules are too packed. We often have a waiting list (especially for evening and weekend sessions) and we know that not everybody can afford to wait for tutoring, so we're prepared with the names and emails of some of our favorite colleagues in the test-prep world.

We’ll warn you that all of the best GMAT, GRE, and LSAT tutors tend to have full schedules, but just ask if you need a referral, and we'll do our best to help.

This is a big part of how we’re different from other tutoring companies: all of our tutors are trained to the same ludicrously high standards, and we all collaborate frequently to make sure that we continuously improve as tutors. We all use the same materials and employ the same philosophies, and we’ve all trained — hard — to become nimble in our approach to tutoring. We’re also painfully selective in our hiring process: in our most recent hiring round, we extended offers to three tutors out of more than 1900 applicants.

Sure, we all have different personalities, but we work tirelessly to be similarly great at our craft, and we’re as unified as a collection of tutors possibly can be.

In other words: if you think Charles has some secret sauce as a tutor, rest assured that he has already shared every bit of it with the rest of the GMAT Ninja team.

Sure, no problem... though we can hopefully all agree that a perfect GMAT score does not, by itself, guarantee that anybody is a good GMAT tutor. On Charles's most recent attempt at the GMAT on July 13, 2011, he earned a perfect 800, and the official GMAT score report is available for anybody who wants to see it. (The GMAT Office of Test Security politely banned him from future attempts at the exam, unfortunately.)

We frequently start working with students and immediately notice a huge disconnect between their academic skills and their test scores. For most of these students, their disappointing test scores are caused by test anxiety, poor sleep, a flawed test-taking mindset, or other “non-academic” factors that harm their test performance.

We created our Test Anxiety Program to address these issues. By surrounding students with a team of performance experts who work hand-in-hand with a GMAT Ninja tutor, we offer the only program in the industry that comprehensively addresses all of a test-taker’s underlying performance issues.

The cost of the Test Anxiety Program is $8900.

This cost includes:

• A comprehensive, proprietary assessment of the mental, physical, academic, and emotional obstacles standing between you and your goal score

• A unique and comprehensive plan to address these obstacles

• 10 sessions with a GMAT Ninja tutor

• 5 sessions with a mental performance coach

• Consultations with a physical fitness coach, meditation coach, sleep coach, and nutritionist

• 5 additional sessions with one or more of these experts to address your individual needs

• A 45-minute MBA admissions profile evaluation

Meet our performance experts on our performance experts page.

Additional tutoring sessions are available at our standard hourly rates.

You can continue working with any of the experts at their standard hourly rates.

Absolutely! Just contact us if you're interested in working with one of them, and we'll happily connect you.

Yes, definitely! We provide comprehensive MBA admissions consulting services, and if we’re fully booked – or if you’d like a few other options – we’re more than happy to put you in touch with some of our favorite admissions consultants elsewhere.

If you’d like to work directly with us on your MBA applications, please start by contacting us here. And if you’d like a list of our favorite admissions consultants at different companies, please reach out via that same link, and we’ll get you set up.

We could probably write a full-length book on this topic, but since this is just a little FAQ section, we’ll stick to just three key pieces of advice.

First, please be very wary of MBA admissions consultants who give you an overly sunny assessment of your admissions odds. Sure, maybe you have an amazing profile, and you’ll easily waltz into HBS or Stanford or whatever your top-choice schools are. But keep in mind that at most companies, MBA admissions consultants also serve as salespeople – so they’re often incentivized to make soothing noises during your initial consultations.

In other words: if an MBA consultant says things that sound too good to be true, they probably are. And you should look elsewhere for help with your MBA applications.

Second, you’ll want to make sure that your MBA admissions consultant isn’t overloaded with clients. Again, consultants at many firms are incentivized to take on as many students as possible, so please don’t be shy about asking about their client load. It’s a simple thing, but it can help you avoid an MBA admissions consulting disaster.

Third – and perhaps most importantly – chemistry matters. The whole point of MBA admissions consulting is that you’re going to hire somebody to help you tell your personal and professional story, and you’ll want to feel 100% comfortable brainstorming ideas with that MBA consultant, and telling them every potentially relevant detail of your life. When admissions consulting is at its very best, you’ll have a wonderful, intimate, creative partnership with your consultant.

When you’re choosing an MBA admissions consultant, it’s really easy to get caught up in things like the consultant’s academic background, or the type of company they work for, or how pretty their website is. But at the end of the day, we can promise that you’ll be happiest with whichever MBA consultant will be the best partner to help you tell your personal story.

That’s why we happily provide a lengthy list of names to our students, including several great MBA consultants at other companies – we want to make sure that you find the right fit, even if it isn’t with us.

Regardless of whether you need editing services for an MBA application or any other project, we never make changes directly to your essay. We'll make thorough suggestions using the comment feature in whichever word processing software you prefer, but it's up to you to execute on those suggestions. We'll happily provide plenty of help on both grammar and content, but the essay still needs to be substantially yours, so you'll always need to make the final decision on all edits.

Good question. If you're writing a bunch of essays for an MBA application, you want to make sure that you write your essays in a consistent style. We make sure that our suggestions for improvement do not disrupt the natural flow and voice in your writing, even if your essays need major changes. Other admissions consulting services may handle things differently, but we take extreme care to respect your authorship when offering improvements to your MBA essays.

No. Never. Not at any price.

We used to receive these requests fairly often, and find them insulting and unethical. We provide editing services, admissions advice, and general guidance regarding your candidacy for MBA programs. We're really not into plagiarism, and we think it's pretty lame to put your own name on somebody else's writing. If you want an MBA admissions consultant to write your MBA essay for you, please find somebody else.

Um, no. Your MBA letters of recommendation need to be written by somebody who has worked closely with you in a professional context. It makes absolutely no sense for an MBA admissions consultant to write one of those for you. And if your recommender wants your admissions consultant to write on their behalf… well, that’s lazy, unethical, and a little bit strange.

But don’t worry: if you’ve accomplished worthwhile things in your career, we can promise that good things will happen when you ask supervisors and colleagues to write recommendations.

For more, check out this article on what a great MBA letter of recommendation really looks like.

We always change the names of our students out of respect for their privacy, and we'll usually refrain from publishing specific details about them -- such as the name of their employer or the MBA program they attend -- to protect their identities.

You probably don't want your name plastered on an online article, especially if you've struggled with the process or if your employer doesn’t know that you're applying for an MBA. So whenever we tell a story about our students in our articles, we try to make sure that the students are completely unrecognizable to, say, their coworkers… just in case their MBA goals would ruffle feathers at the office.

This one is easy: apply for testing accommodations as soon as you possibly can.

We often meet test-takers who don’t realize that they’re eligible for accommodations, which often include extra time to complete your exam. Reasons for receiving accommodations include ADD/ADHD, test anxiety, certain differences in physical ability, dyslexia or other learning differences, and conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, among many others.

We also meet plenty of test-takers who think that testing accommodations constitute an "unfair advantage", and that simply isn't the case. Testing accommodations are legally required in the United States according to the Americans with Disabilities Act, and are only given to students who truly qualify. So there's absolutely no reason to hesitate if you're eligible.

For more on testing accommodations, check out the accommodations pages for the GMAT, GRE, Executive Assessment, or LSAT.