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The Official Guide for the GMAT 2017 Book Review

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As you may be aware, GMAC, the folks who create the GMAT, recently released three volumes of The Official Guide for the GMAT 2017. I will review these new editions of the Official Guide for the GMAT in this book review.

The Official Guide for the GMAT 2017

The three new volumes are as follows:

the official guide for the gmat 2017, OG 2017, official guide for the gmat book review

1) The Official Guide for the GMAT 2017 (white cover)

2) The Official Guide for the GMAT Verbal Review 2017 (pink cover)

3) The Official Guide for the GMAT Quantitative Review 2017 (blue cover)

As it turns out, #1 was littered with mistakes.  We have a blog about the corrections to this guide.  GMAC found all the mistakes, and put out a new version that (theoretically) has everything corrected.

corrected-og-2017

4) The Official Guide for the GMAT 2017, Corrected (green cover)

FACT: Each one of #1-3 of these replaces a corresponding 2016 version published about a year ago.

FACT: Each one of #1-3 has about 25% new content, compared to its 2016 correlate.

FACT: Version #4 has no new content, just the same content as in #1 but with no typos!

Another new Official Guide?

As readers of this blog may know, I have the highest respect for the GMAT exam as one of the finest standardized tests in existence. As a consequence, I have the highest respect for the content creators and psychometricians at GMAC who design this test. I have met some of these people, and they are quite impressive individuals.

Having said that, GMAC is a company, and like any company, it has a tendency to leverage what it has to generate profits. In the “old days” (up until a couple years ago), they would publish a new OG every 3-4 years, and often they would have a particularly good reason to do so.  For example, they published the OG13 when they were releasing the then-new Integrated Reasoning section in 2012: that was a 100% legitimate reason to update the OG.  In the past couple years, they have started publishing a new OG every year, and they are rushing each new edition out so fast that the last one (version #1 above) was full of mistakes.  Thus, if you bought the #1, they would be happy to sell you #4 as well, even though the content is identical.  This new-OG-every-year rhythm is clearly being driven much more by pure profit chasing, rather than by any legitimate pedagogical concerns.  It’s basically a ploy to separate the vulnerably anxious test-taking population out there from as much of their money as possible.   Caveat emptor.

I will point out that the newest OG 2017, like the OG 2016 and OG 2015, have all the questions in the book also online, if you want to practice them on a computer rather than from the print version.  Furthermore, that online question bank is where they keep the practice Integrated Reasoning questions.

Should I buy the new Official Guide?

Putting the criticisms aside, I will address the most pertinent question to an individual test taker reading this blog: should I, the student studying for the GMAT, buy these new books?

Here’s what I’ll say. If you are just starting your studies for the GMAT, if you haven’t bought any official materials yet, then yes, by all means, you should buy some version of the GMAT OG, and you might as well buy the newest one available.

If you already have an earlier edition, the OG 2016 or even the OG13 or OG2015, and are already working through it, then I would say that definitely is good enough. If you master everything in either one of those volumes, that’s still enough for a high 700s score. After all, the GMAT itself hasn’t changed since the introduction of IR in 2012. The new OG may be marginally more GMAT-like, but I am NOT going to say that it’s so revolutionarily better that you should throw away the previous edition and run out to buy the new one. Undoubtedly, some marketers at GMAC would love it if a large number of students thought that way, but with all due respect, I want to discourage this line of thinking.

If you have already finished working through the OG2016, and need more practice questions, that would be another reason to buy the new guide, because about 25% of the questions are new, not repeats from the previous edition. Similarly, if you exhausted an earlier edition studying for a first take of the GMAT, and now you need to study for a retake, then the new questions in one of the earlier editions would help you.

What about the Verbal Review and Quant Review?

These are similar enhancements over the earlier editions. If you only have about a month to study for the GMAT, you probably wouldn’t have time to do any questions other than the OG questions. Even in some of our three month study schedules, folks barely have enough time simply to learn and review just the content they need to master: they don’t have time for these extra questions.

If you are a practice-question maven who has already raced through the OG and you need more official questions, or if you exhausted the OG on your first take and now you want to practice for a retake, then these books are an excellent source of more official practice questions.

If you already have the earlier editions, by all means, use those first. Only buy these new books if you don’t already own the earlier editions.

OG 2017 Book Review: Summary

Understandably, most students studying for the GMAT want to do everything in their power to prepare. By all means, use the best resources, follow proven study schedules, and pursue the habits of excellence (without which the resources & study schedules are considerably less valuable!) All that is very important. Nevertheless, don’t feel compelled to leap for your credit card every single time GMAC publishes a new edition of something. The OG 2017 is a collection of absolutely excellent GMAT practice questions, but the same description also applies to the two previous editions. If you are starting from scratch, you might as well start with the newest. If you already have an earlier GMAT OG, trust the one you have.

If you have any experience with using any of these new books, we would love to hear from you in the comments section below.
 

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March, 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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