If you're reading this, you're likely deciding on choosing a GMAT tutor. Fair warning: I am going to heap praise on Brian Prestia. So much so that you might doubt the authenticity of this review. If you have any doubts about Brian, the GMAT, my story--anything--I encourage you to message me. I am the kind of person that the GMAT chews up and spits out. I am not a great test taker. I'm not even a good test taker. At best, throughout academia, my success has been equal parts hard work and luck. Beyond that, to say that "I'm not good at math" is akin to saying "the US hasn't had the best response to Covid"--it doesn't even begin to detail how bad the situation actually is. When I took a cold GMAT in February of this year, I got a 630: Q39, V35. I took a ManhattanPrep class, which didn't really help much, but by April, I understood a) how the GMAT worked and b) if I wanted to score above 700, I'd have to invest considerable time and resources. In that light, I found Brian on Yelp and we had our first meeting in early April. Outright, if you went to school in the American school system, Brian is very likely the best tutor for you. There are courses out there, like TTP and Magoosh, that walk you through every nook and cranny of the GMAT quant section algebraically. I know because I tried both courses. Unless you went to school in India, China, or are naturally outstanding at algebra, it is wholly unnecessary to re-learn and master algebra for the GMAT. It's also, I can imagine, incredibly time consuming (at least moreso than the 3-4 months I spent studying). The GMAT is a reasoning test, not a math test, and it rewards people who understand how to play the game. Brian shows you how the game works, what the GMAT is looking for, and most importantly, provides structure and sense to an otherwise unstructured, frustrating process. Brian is immensely patient, and he's adept at sensing where weak spots are. His approach to verbal is smarter and easier-applied than every other approach I've seen in other courses. If I could have created a GMAT tutor in a lab, it would come out looking a lot like Brian. I studied like a crazy person, and each session with Brian helped crystalize my learning. In my last few practice tests leading up to the real thing, I was consistently scoring Q50. That's a sentence I never thought I would type. Q50 is reserved for robots and weird kids with social issues that smell like cheerios and go to math camp. Or so I thought. Come test day, I got a Q49, V40: 730. A 100 point increase. Again, I don't believe I'd be typing that sentence if I hadn't worked with Brian. What's crazy is that I'm taking it again, because I know I can score higher than that. The GMAT has been my life over the past few months. I've read so many threads and posts from GMAT takers that would benefit from Brian's approach. If you can put in the work, and you have the time and resources to do so, Brian is the best option out there. read more

Brian is both a phenomenal tutor and a phenomenal person. His approach to tutoring his students is unique in that he does not drill into quantitative or grammar heavy rules, forcing you to learn difficult math and complex sentence structure, but rather relies on testing strategies that are become intuitive as you work with him. I was able to hit my target GMAT Score after several months of working with Brian because I could be strategic and pliable on complex questions, number pick and look for patterns when required, and even make educated guesses in a matter of seconds to narrow down especially hard problems into a 50/50 shot. In addition to his fantastic study approach, Brian is just a good guy. Wow no one enjoys studying, Brian would make every session entertaining, keeping me motivated and eager to continue the work. I always felt as though he was just invested in my personal process as I was myself. While I'm incredibly happy with the results from using Reason Test Prep as a tutor, I'll genuinely miss my weekly sessions. Could not recommend Reason Test Prep any more!!!! read more

Working with Brian entirely changed my experience preparing for the GMAT. I had been studying with another tutor's help for 4 months before I admitted to myself that these sessions were not only not helping me improve on the test but were actually diminishing my confidence in my own abilities to achieve the score I wanted. Making the shift to work with Brian saved me from what had become an entirely negative and painful studying process. Brian is like the favorite teacher you had in school; he is kind-spirited, relaxed, and genuinely invested in not only your success but also your well being. With Brian on my side, my stress level about the exam went down by 10 fold. Within 2 sessions with Brian, I saw marked improvements on my practice scores and 6 weeks (5 sessions) after getting set up with Brian, I achieved my goal score on the official test. I literally could not wait to tell Brian, who honestly may have been more excited for me than my own family and fiancé as he sees the work that goes into studying and truly understands how much his students want to achieve their goals. Brian's assistance not only gained me the score I wanted to submit for my MBA applications, but it rebuilt my broken confidence in my ability to commit myself to a goal and achieve it. I truly cannot recommend working with Brian enough. read more

My experience with Brian was amazing. I am an international student so English is not my native language. Before I met Brian my maximum score on the GMAT verbal part was 24 and after 3 or 4 sessions I took the GMAT again and I finally scored a 34. For a non native speaker who couldn't score above 24, 34 is a pretty good score. I know that if I had continued I would have done even better but I didn't need à better score so I decided to stop. I was also surprised by how fast I increased 10 points on the verbal. The best part about Brian is that he cares about the people he tutors, it has been 1 year after my tutoring sessions and he still sends me emails to know if everything is going well. We still stay in touch and that is amazing and rare. This is my first review in yelp ever. Believe me if I'm giving a review it's because I really do think he is worth it. read more

Brian is absolutely the best of the best. It physically pains me to refer to anything around the GMAT as fun, but Brian's warmth, humor, and psychology around the test completely changed my approach and altered my timing, and even made our sessions something to which I looked forward. I had struggled in the 600s for many painful months before I decided to give up on the GMAT. But when someone shared Brian's name and told me he was *the one*, I decided to give the beast one last shot. And thank god I did: after just a few weeks of working with Brian, my score finally went into the 700s. I have already highly recommended him to friends looking to do the same. read more

Brian is an excellent GRE tutor. I worked with him for about three and a half months and improved my score by several points. He first helped me understand the differences between the GMAT and the GRE, and is impressively familiar with the nuances of both tests. Not only is he an expert at the tests and how they work, he also is extremely skilled at identifying students' strengths and weaknesses, and creating a study plan to address them on a timeline that works. His wealth of resources was extremely helpful in providing me with practice problems, test sections, and full exams that allowed me to simulate test conditions and become comfortable with the material. It also helped me stick to a regular schedule, which was really valuable in this process. If you need a tutor for either the GRE or the GMAT, it doesn't get better than Brian! read more

Preaching to the choir by echoing the other reviews on here but I cannot stress enough, Brian is an absolutely fantastic tutor. Helping me immensely on Quant and Verbal for the past two months, I broke through 700 and have Brian to thank. I now constantly refer him to friends who are embarking on the GMAT journey. Perhaps more importantly, he is great guy and genuine good person who helped just as much with the material as with easing my anxiety about the test. He was equal parts tutor and psychologist which I couldn't appreciate enough! read more

Brian is unbelievable. He helped me raise my GMAT score from the mid 500s to the low 700s. What more could you ask for? I believe Brian's greatest strength is his innate understanding of the test which helps him equip his pupils with high level reasoning strategies that the test rewards. The strategies Brian recommended to me were personalized based on my strengths and weaknesses which definitely helped me absorb and utilize the material. He was very flexible with timing and accommodated my schedule well. We only worked together remotely and there were no problems whatsoever with the arrangement. read more

BRIAN IS THE BEST!! I started working with Brian about a month into my own studying. I had taken the GMAT exam two years prior and had just started to study again. Previously, I had used MPrep to study. Brian's approach to the GMAT totally turned things around for me and got my score to go above my goal where I didn't think I could score. Brian is so knowledgeable about the exam and different types of test takers, he really knows how to individualize the process. He would go above and beyond to send me materials, check in with me after exams and hop on the phone to discuss anything I needed to outside of our regularly scheduled times. He made our meetings fly by and makes a study plan that is realistic and works. I can't recommend Brian enough!! read more

Can I give 6 stars? I wish. Brian is an excellent tutor. He is patient, direct, and straight to the point. He doesn't BS and values your time. He supports and believes in you, but he's realistic at the same time. He is great at explaining topics, challenging you with problems as you start mastering material, and providing you with study guides to help you learn your stuff. I live in Seattle, WA (and Brian lives in New York), so all of our sessions were online. He was super accommodating in scheduling our sessions given the 3-hour time difference and my work schedule. We met 1-2x week for 6 weeks. My goal was to get a 700+ score before my wedding. Thanks to Brian's help, I achieved that score this week with three weeks to spare before my big day! I couldn't recommend Brian enough. If you're looking to learn material or just polish your understanding on certain topics, Brian is your guy. read more

Worked with Brian for 2+ months twice a week leading up to the GMAT. He sets the right improvement expectations for your skill level, he's patient, and direct with his tutoring methods. He structures his sessions so that they never feel tedious (every 2 hour meeting we had felt like they flew by). He helped me improve from a 710 on my first practice test to get a 760 on my actual test - I can't recommend working with Brian enough! read more

I highly recommend working with Brian for anyone looking to boost their GMAT score. I worked with him about once a week for 2 months and my score improved from 670 (43Q,39V) to 720 (47Q,42V). He taught me to approach problems in a different way that really helped with time management. On top of that, he makes the study sessions enjoyable and fun. I am sure I could not have improved to my ultimate score without Brian's help! read more

I started working with Brian after going through the 2.5 month MGMAT program and studying on my own for about 2-4 weeks. After going through the MGMAT program and studying on my own, I increased my score by only 60 points. After working with Brian for 3 weeks, I increased my score another 60 points. I met with Brian with the intention of only working on Verbal, but ended up working on quant for about one session. My average test score before working with Brian on the quant side was in the 46-47 range and my final GMAT score was a 49/51. My verbal also increased from a 26 to a 35. From my experience, and talking with others, programs such as MGMAT, Kaplan, Princeton, etc.. have these multi-step formulaic processes to answer all questions whereas Brian has a straight to the point approach which I found to be much more useful. He shows you way to answer quant questions without even "solving for X" and shows more efficient ways to read verbal questions. My favorite exercise with Brian was we worked on a reading comp passage where after each sentenced we stopped to discuss it's meaning in relation to the paragraph and whole passage. It gave me such a better perspective on how to approach reading comprehension passages and answer questions. Overall, Brian is able to figure out your weaknesses very quickly based on a few practice questions and then able to show you how to change your approach. I can guarantee that without Brian I would have never achieved the scores that I did so I highly recommend working with him. Also, I never physically met Brian because I could not find time so we only did sessions online and I was still able to improve significantly. read more