Best GMAT Math Prep Books (Reviews & Recommendations)

Top Best GMAT Quantitative Books




Common Book Combinations and Recommendatios
1. Need to figure out your weaknesses in GMAT math? Take a GMATPrep test or GMAT Club's free gmat diagnostic test
2. Rusty with Math or want to be very methodical - start with basics: Manhattan GMAT Foundations of GMAT Math
3. OK with Math but need a good review in a short amount of time: Kaplan Math Workbook + MGMAT Number Properties + MGMAT Word Translations
4. Need highest score and have time: MGMAT Guides + GMAT Club tests
5. Need specific question practice: PR 1012 (has some errors/typos), Quant OG, or use gmat club tags
6. Probability and Combinations review: combinations-permutations-and-probability-references-56486.html and MGMAT Word Translations

Book Bundles and Study Plans at a Glance
	Standard Plan	Advanced Plan	Ultimate Plan	Beyond Hardcore Plan
General Strategy Books Explain how GMAT works, provide general principles and strategies, give an idea about weaknesses, provide practice tests	Kaplan Live Online + comes with 6 practice tests	Kaplan Live Online + comes with 6 practice tests Kaplan GMAT Advanced - Poor guidebook, more of a question collection	Kaplan Live Online + comes with 6 practice tests Kaplan GMAT Advanced - Poor guidebook, more of a question collection GMAT Test Simulation Booklet + Great for practice	Kaplan Live Online + comes with 6 practice tests Kaplan GMAT Advanced - Poor guidebook, more of a question collection GMAT Test Simulation Booklet + Great for practice
Quant Books Refresh math principles, fill gaps, and learn patterns	Kaplan Math Workbook - missing probability and combinations	Kaplan Math Workbook - missing probability and combinations MGMAT Number Properties	5 Quant MGMAT Guides MGMAT Math Foundations	5 Quant MGMAT Guides MGMAT Math Foundations Probability and Combinations for Dummies
Verbal Books Refresh grammar rules, aquire CR and RC strategies	Kaplan Verbal Workbook OR: PowerScore Verbal Bible	CR: PowerScore CR or MGMAT CR RC: MGMAT RC SC: PowerScore SC or MGMAT SC	CR: PowerScore CR or MGMAT CR RC: MGMAT RC SC: PowerScore SC or MGMAT SC SC: Kaplan Verbal Foundations	CR: PowerScore CR or MGMAT CR CR: LSAT Critical Reasoning RC: MGMAT RC RC: LSAT Reading Comprehension SC: PowerScore SC or MGMAT SC SC: Doing Grammar
Practice Questions Additional practice	Official Guide 12th + 900 retired real GMAT questions	Official Guide 12th + 900 retired real GMAT questions Verbal Official Guide + 300 retired verbal GMAT questions Quant Official Guide + 300 retired quant GMAT questions	Official Guide 12th + 900 retired real GMAT questions Verbal Official Guide + 300 retired verbal GMAT questions Quant Official Guide + 300 retired quant GMAT questions Princeton Review 1012 + Great target practice	Official Guide 12th + 900 retired real GMAT questions Verbal Official Guide + 300 retired verbal GMAT questions Quant Official Guide + 300 retired quant GMAT questions Princeton Review 1012 + Great target practice Paper GMAT Tests + Official Retired tests available from GMAC
Tests Simulated Practice GMAT tests	GMATPrep, Kaplan, Free tests	GMATprep, Kaplan, MGMAT, some GMATClub tests	GMATprep, PowerPrep, GMAT Focus, Kaplan, MGMAT, GMATClub tests	GMATprep, PowerPrep, GMAT Focus, Kaplan, MGMAT, PR, GMATClub tests

1. GMAT Math Books


1. Manhattan GMAT (MGMAT) Guides
Recommended for best results if you have the time.
Strengths:
1. Good balance between test taking strategies and background theory explanations
2. Single-topic focus of each guide allows the student to purchase only those guides that pertain to his/her weaknesses
3. Covered concepts are illustrated with examples that are conveniently assigned to either PS or DS section.
4. Access to 6 Online CAT's (same for each book)
5. Additional online practice question banks (different for each book)
Weaknesses:
1. Time and Money
2. Books themselves do not contain many practice questions (though online and OG 12 references more than compensate)
Notes: most often recommended guide is the Manhattan GMAT Number properties and MGMAT Word Translations



3. Veritas Prep Guides
Rival of the MGMAT bundle though a bit higher priced.
Strengths:
1. 15 total guides + an intro book for quant + test simulation booklet
2. Practice questions. Every one of the 15 guides is packed with practice questions
3. Fresh questions; you probably have not seen them on forums/etc since these books have just been published

Weaknesses:
1. Price: $299
2. Spacing is a bit strange sometimes with only one question per page







3. Kaplan GMAT Math Workbook
A solid supplement to the Official Guide
Strengths:
1. Fairly comprehensive review of the basic math concepts needed for the GMAT
2. Structure of the book allows you to work from start to finish, building on previous skills learned
3. Sections devoted to Word problem and Data Sufficiency questions
Weaknesses:
1. Statistics, Combinations/Permutations and Probability are not covered
2. Questions do not reflect GMAT questions, but rather are designed to insure that the material is mastered
Notes: Recommended/most interesting problem compilation from Kaplan Math Workbook
Faster than going through the math MGMAT Guides, but also not as thorough



4. Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review
Great for additional math practice questions, but don't expect to find any strategies or math lessons here.
Strengths:
1. 300 real GMAT questions
2. Real GMAT questions retired from past tests
3. The practice questions are organized by level of difficulty
4. The practice questions follow actual GMAT test patterns - great to have one's ear trained.
Weaknesses:
1. The book does not contain any strategies
2. It does have a few short review sections but they are very weak
3. Mostly low and medium difficulty questions. Not very helpful to a person aiming to get above 700.
Bottom Line: this book is optional; usually OG 12 is sufficient by itself.

Notable Specialized Books - Arithmetic, Probability, Combinations, DS, etc

Combinations & Probability

Veritas Prep Combinations & Probability - added 08/24/10

Dedicated Combinations and Probability Guide considered by many to be the best
Strengths:
1. Good strategies
2. Plenty of practice questions
3. Well organized and laid out

Weaknesses:
1. Possibly crosses into non-gmat section but a very minor concern



.

5. Manhattan GMAT Word Translations Guide - added 11/11/09
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Contains material on Combinations and Probability
Strengths:
1. Coverage of combinations and probability
2. Coverage of Statistics and Overlapping sets problems
3. Comes with 6 MGMAT tests
Weaknesses:
1. As with all MGMAT Guides, lacks practice questions and relies on the Official Guide for additional practice. If you have covered the OG, you may have to look elsewhere for practice, such as GMAT Club's free collection of probability questions: combinations-permutations-and-probability-references-56486.html





6. Manhattan GMAT Foundations of GMAT Math - Added 2/5/2010

Great for refreshing math concepts and building confidence in math
Strengths:
1. Works well with other MGMAT books (structured in a similar way)
2. Best book for brushing up on long forgotten math concepts (fractions, powers, etc)
3. Comes with additional online practice questions
Weaknesses:
1. The book has 400 practice questions but they are not in a GMAT format, rather a math-textbook format
2. Long! 300 full-size pages - I think the expectation is that you skip parts that you know
3. No access to MGMAT tests that usually are included with all of the other 8 guides
Notes: recommended instead of the Kaplan Math Foundations. See a very detailed review of the Foundations of GMAT Math by a member

My view about MGMAT books except SC Guide is not that great. Other MGMAT books lack in number of questions.
No dount to start with very basics, these guides might be helpful.

Also, i am under the impression that all high scorers usually refer to KAPLAN series and OGs.

I have a question here, I haven't tried, practising 1000 series questions. How much useful are these??

2. Interesting Second Tier Books

2.1 Math Review For Standardized Tests (Cliffs Test Prep)
Great Mathematics fundamentals review book.Strengths:
1. Great for a zero-knowledge start or for those who did not deal with maths problems for a long time.
2. Simple,straightforward and relevant
3. Extremely low price
4. 5 Stars on Amazon
Weaknesses:
1. Technically not a GMAT-dedicated book
2. Lacks some of the more advanced areas




2.2 The Ultimate Math Refresher for the GRE, GMAT, and SAT
Good Mathematics refresherStrengths:
1. Good book for starting from scratch.
Weaknesses:
1. Many people have found this book too basic.
2. Lack of good strategies.





2.3 Princeton Review Math Workout for the GMAT
Not a solid performer, even when it came out in 2005
Strengths:
1. Could be a good supplement if you need to master some of the more basic math areas
2. Contains 220 GMAT math questions
3. Price
Weaknesses:
1. Statistics, Combinations/Permutations and Probability are not covered
2. Tricks are emphasized above fundamentals
3. Not suitable for solid math performers
4. 2nd edition, published in June 2005 - long overdue for an update and hopefully will use a better paper grade





2.4 Kaplan Math Foundations - added 7/25/2009
Table of Contents:
Good coverage of Math Basics but numerous errors wipe out value; lacks difficult questions. Use the Foundations of GMAT Math instead
Strengths:
1. Methodical - starts with very basics of number properties and how to add/multiply large numbers
2. Good coverage of topics and well organized though a bit strange with equations as the last chapter
3. Covers adequately probability and statistics, coordinate geometry in great detail
4. No overlap with other Kaplan GMAT Books
Weaknesses:
1. A significant number of errors in questions and explanations
2. One-step questions only - nothing hard
3. No index and no single place for formula reference

Guys...I wanted to share my experience and take on the GMAT Advanced Quant Book.

advanced-gmat-quant-from-manhattan-gmat-114166-20.html

In the thread I posted above -- I could not stop raving about the advanced quant book. I still think it's an excellent book -- but I am not too sure it's really relevant to your GMAT preparation. It's a wonderful book filled with excellent problems -- but the tone of the problems are not what you find on the real gmat.

Different perspective post exam: I took the real GMAT a couple of days ago -- scored Q50. My overall score was 760 (Q 50, V 44). I was always pretty strong in the verbal section (LSAT prep years ago and I write reports and grant proposals). But quant really scared me -- I invested a lot of time in the advanced quant book mainly because my first manhattan CAT quant did not go all that well.

Now what I realized is this (post real gmat and gmat prep practice) -- the manhattan quant questions are a lot of fun if you like solving difficult math problems. But they are not representative of the real deal. The real gmat questions are very elegant -- in that -- they are not HARD -- they are just *brilliantly* tricky. Manhattan problems take a long time to solve -- they require a lot of work. But the real gmat questions have this tone about them -- its so unique. Most of the problems on the real gmat can be cracked with a proper technique and an analytical approach -- you don't need to use fancy formulas or solve complex expressions and equations.
I am very pleased with my Q50 -- but I don't think the manhattan advanced quant guide helped me all that much. The real GMAT questions are very subtle -- they are not over powering. The best guide you can use is the GMATPrep software. Keep resetting this software and do every problem (there are plenty of problems in both the bins) on there. I could hardly complete the Manhattan quant sections -- but I completed my real gmat quant exam with 8 minutes to spare.

Hi. and welcome to GMAT Club forum. It's always great to see new people.
Answering your question on E-Z Solutions. You can look though this thread gmat-books-ez-solutions-thoughts-76791.html
But I'll sum it up for you. Apparently this company has its employees writing fake reviews on amazon and other web-sites. There was an attempt to do so on gmatclub site also. Since we find such a way of doing business not only inappropriate but also highly unethical, we removed our review on E-Z books from Best GMAT Math Prep Books thread.

It's been out of stock for a few weeks - not sure if another edition or batch will be printed. If not, we'll remove it.
It is not available from veritasprep.com, so my guess it may be the last we've seen of it.

I bought Manhattan GMAT Inequality and Geometry, I will highly recommend in case you want to work on the fundamentals of these 2 topics.

Grt feature, rated a couple of books. Can we do it for other books in some post?

Very valid question and I have been trying to figure out how to make the process of picking books easier.

I would say that the mistakes in the Kaplan Math Foundations are not very concerning - a few errors in the explanations are easy to spot. They are not in concepts or rules or theorems, so you are not learning baloney, just a few errors in the explanations/answer choices, which are minor. So, it is irrelevant for the majority of test takers except the pickiest, but I am sure the book will be condemned on Amazon as the result.

Here is my shot at it. I would say the best combination for what you are looking for is probably Kaplan Math Workbook with MGMAT Number Properties book.

Kaplan Math Foundations is much more thorough but basic and starts with how to multiply/divide numbers. It is not enough by itself - you would need another math book with harder Math Questions to practice.

MGMAT Guides are better than Kaplan Math Workbook in terms of explanations and learning presentation - they are the ultimate collection and having used them, you can be confident you covered all areas, though most people find that though they learnt the concepts, the books did not contain anything they did see in other books (except Number Properties book). In my opinion, it is probably not worth the extra $$$ for all of the guides.




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I kept reading here about the Manhattan GMAT here and decided that I needed a strategy book (at least one) for my studies. I don't see Kaplan helping too much now (at least the results aren't as tangible as I've hoped) and the official guide can get you only so far. I figured since I read good things here and maybe something that's not "mass produced" like the Kaplan and Barron's (I bought the latter too, barely read it and didn't like it), might help. Then again, I'm very skeptical of these strategy books. I find that they're often very similar and teach me very little new information. So I decide on the Manhattan GMAT and specifically the word translations that seem to make up a large bulk of the math.

Lo and behold, I'm reading the Manhattan GMAT and it's showing me practical strategies that I've never seen before. Age and rates problems that used to seem convoluted have been solved brilliantly. By brilliantly, I don't mean "correctly", of course every book would have the correct solution. But the brilliance in it is that the book helps YOU solve these problems. I always considered myself strong in math, but let's face it, even algebra can be confusing. With my penchant for dumb mistakes, that hurts even more. But their strategy of organizing this material in tables, works wonders. I've never seen these tables before. Now everything is so much clearer and easier. Kaplan and the $1,500 that I've shelled out has not shown me how to solve these problems as clearly and as easily as the Manhattan GMAT. I'm up to combinatorics and am actually looking forward for more strategies that will help me solve these problems and save time. Thanks guys for letting me know about this series, this book is highly recommended.

new to the forum...

Is it me, or is Princeton Review 1012 absolutely riddled with errors? So far I have found at least 8 mistakes in the answer keys or diagrams.

thanks,


acc

Some Errors in PR 1012:

Page 314, Question 2, Lines and Angles Drill - They placed either the x or the y in the wrong space in the figure. The answer explanation indicates that x and y comprise both a "large angle" and a "small angle" created by the line intersecting 2 parallel lines. This is not the case as both are large angles.

Page 320, Question 5 of Triangles Drill - They don't indicate that any of the triangles in the figure are right triangles, making it impossible to determine if a triangle is indeed a Pythagorean Triple.

Page 333 Question 8 of Circles Drill - Answer explanation gives B as the answer, but you need A to provide the radius of the circle. Answer should be C.

Page 334, Question 10 of Circles Drill - Statement 1: x =72. There is no X in the diagram!! retarded....

Page 335, Question 13 of Circles Drill - Answer explanation says "Statement 1 gives you the second of two of the three sides of the smallest triangle." Incorrect... It only gives you one of the three. They may have left out a number they meant to put in.


That's what I have so far. There are some others but I can't find them at the moment.

I recently completed the Kaplan Math Foundations book and I agree that the few errors in the review explanations (I noticed only a handful throughout the book) did not outweigh the benefit of the book.

I think the book is best for people who either 1) need to begin at square one with math, or 2) notice that their math foundations are holding them back from achieving a higher score. Since I was a liberal arts major in college (and have not really dealt with math since high school), I felt like I needed the book before delving into the MGMAT guides. In that regard, it has served me well and I feel like my footing is much stronger.

I'm going to get the kaplan 800 book soon...it better be good...their promises were indeed lofty in some other forums..

You are talking the $450 set of books here: http://www.veritasprep.com/course-materials/#fullset ?

Hello, prac.

Without question, GMATClub Tests. Just make sure that you adequately cover the concepts and exhaust the OG before using these.

I also bought the Manhattan Math challenge bank - a collection of over 250 difficult math questions. Don't buy these. But if you're talking about the Manhattan tests, you can access these for free if you buy one of their books.



Hi, vasureddy18!

I'm not aware of any book that focuses exclusively on 700-level questions. The closest thing would probably be Kaplan GMAT 800, which (I think) has been renamed Kaplan GMAT Advanced. This is not a proper guidebook, however. It's basically a collection of 650 to 700-level questions.

Hope this helped! If not, just wait for bb to respond.

Do you think combining KapMath workbook with MGMAT's Number Properties and Word Translations books would work for building good understanding needed for the quant section? (that is, before beginning to work on OG).

Thank you for your time and detailed responses - its GREATLY appreciated!

Thank you

My two cents, the Manhattan books were TREMENDOUSLY helpful. I agree with everyone else, that Word Translations and Number Properties were the most useful ones (also the thickest ones), but I got all five and the other 3 are not a waste of time to go through. Equations, geometry, and Fractions, in that order. The books are expensive, but used books are cheaper and help the environment!

Also, I didn't see it here, but the Kaplan 800 book was great too. They have some good tips and general strategies, though the organization of the book wasn't that great.

The Kaplan Advanced book contains questions mostly in the 650 to 700 range. This is purely a collection of questions. Veritas Prep's Combinations & Probability guidebook also discusses advanced math topics. It has a decent amount of practice questions.

Other question sources include the GMATClub Tests and Jeff Sackmann's Extreme Challenge set. Both of these collections are very challenging.

The only other hard questions that I know of are the MGMAT Challenge Archive and Ariel Goldberg's GMAT Quant Problems. I personally didn't like the MGMAT Challenge questions. I have never used Goldberg's stuff, but at least one member found his product useful.

You can also visit the math forum.