Total Page : 216
Publisher : Wiley
Publication Date : 2009 09 08
>> unfortunately you need to buy this book
For anybody with serious plans to improve their GMAT score this book is an absolute must Regardless of your level of skill this book will be at least somewhat useful Nothing can substitute for official GMAT questions and this book will help any student get the hang of the GMAT s quirky style and learning to deal with that style is arguably as important as learning the math itself
That said this book has tons of imperfections First there really aren t enough tough questions in here especially on the problem solving side My students seem to struggle much more on the data sufficiency but a 650 GMAT student will have limited opportunities to break a sweat
Sadly GMAC has also cheated us a little bit There are only 74 new questions the cover promises 75 new questions and yes I was silly enough to count them all and they really don t break much new ground from the 1st edition As always the explanations are often incomprehensible and rarely explain the best way to do a particular math problem And many of the new questions also appear in the GMAT Focus tests so you might end up paying for them twice
Pretty annoying but this is still a necessary supplement to the official guide Grumble if you must but buy a copy anyway
>> A must for GMAT math prep
Bought this to prepare for the GMAT My math skills were not up to par and this is an excellent source of practice problems I worked every problem in the book at least twice and ended up with a score of 700 in the GMAT
If your math is weak and you want to improve your score this is the book for you
>> Decent GMAT Math practice but not enough difficult questions
I self studied and scored a 770 on the GMAT Here are my thoughts on the Official Guide Quant book
OVERVIEW
The Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review is the math supplement for the Official Guide series published by GMAC the creators of the GMAT As is the case with The Official Guide for GMAT Review 12th Edition and The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review 2nd Edition this book contains retired GMAT questions and as such is a great source of practice problems
However the concepts section of the quant supplement is not worth your time It is virtually a copy paste of the equivalent section in The Official Guide for GMAT Review 12th Edition in itself undoubtedly insufficient for anyone looking to get a high score in quant Although the math skills tested typo in the supplement the authors wrote test instead of tested on the GMAT test are quite basic as the book suggests in one of its Myth vs Fact information boxes basic math can and will be tricky on the GMAT The book contains
176 Problem Solving
124 Data Sufficiency
PROS
Retired GMAT questions will familiarize the test taker with commonly tested question patterns on the GMAT Unofficial questions sometimes lack the structure of actual questions this is because test prep companies have not succeeded in replicating the GMAT official style in their own practice problems
At a little over 10 on amazon com it s great value for your money particularly useful for GMAT hopefuls having trouble with Data Sufficiency since 124 extra practice questions of this GMAT specific type of problem will be valuable
Questions are ordered in increasing level of difficulty so if you are interested in a particular level say advanced you can just focus on the corresponding part of the book
CONS
Does not provide many advanced practice problems so if you feel you have a solid quant background it s sufficient to go through the regular Official Guide for GMAT Review book
Tips/strategies section is below average so expect to spend some money on a guidebook or two that provides better GMAT concept overview
Explanations are not as high quality as those found on The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review 2nd Edition You might notice that there are easier or faster ways to solve some of the problems presented
BOTTOM LINE
The Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review is a great resource for practicing easy/medium difficulty questions but not much else If you re shooting for a high score and/or have little time to prepare this is not the book for you you will be better off investing some time in other material or the primary Official Guide for GMAT Review book However if you ve been out of school for a few years and believe that you need to practice the basic stuff go for a general strategy guide or a quant specific guide and then use this quant supplement as a practice question resource
IMPORTANT NOTE The second edition of the Quantitative Review was released in the summer of 2009 but there are few significant differences between this book and its older version only 74 new questions or close to a quarter of total The only notable difference between the two editions is a greater emphasis on geometry in Problem Solving and word problems in Data Sufficiency Do not fret if you have the first edition already It s just as good and costs mush less A complete list of new problems
Problem Solving 1 2 7 13 41 60 61 62 64 67 68 69 70 71 72 76 78 80 81 83 86 102 103 108 112 117 131 135 142 145 146 147 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 160 162 173
Data Sufficiency 1 6 7 9 11 13 14 16 21 22 24 33 43 48 51 66 70 73 79 82 85 96 102 104 107 111 116 117 122
Good luck on your GMAT prep
About me Dana Jinaru 770 GMAT scorer expert at Beat The GMAT a community serving 100K GMAT students/month
