The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 10th Edition

Review by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A228NBNLYJ8V3J/1/ref=cm_cr_auth/102-3963692-3052961">Eran Cohen</a>

The Math Section -
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ETS's "GMAT" is valuable for its math review; it's one of the most comprehensive and thorough reviews I've read - and this is its strongest link. Nevertheless, it looks as if most (if not all) this background material is included also in the "Powerprep" software that is sent to you upon registration to the test. Bear in mind that the software also includes tests with many questions you've probably done if you have solved the questions in the book. The result is a score that does not represent your actual performance on test day.

There are well-explained answers to each of the questions (ones you won't find to the practice tests of the sofeware) that help to develop knowledge and understanding. Even so, the biggest problem this book has is the fact that - although it has many questions - there is no indication about their level of difficulty - and this is a major drawback. I wasted a considerable amount of time doing easy to mid-level questions I shouldn't have done at all. Some people commented here that one should do the last third of questions - but the writers of this book failed to include this important piece of information.

All the above comes to show that you should not be impressed with the large number of questions the book offers (274 questions on data sufficiency and 441 questions on problem solving) - most of which would hardly advance you. The logical conclusion you can draw from all of this is that it is imperative to buy other preparation books (such as Kaplan's "GMAT" and Peterson's "GMAT CAT success" which I also reviewed).

Another key disadvantage is the lack of some powerful test taking strategies and techniques that are included in other books and help a lot to crack a few types of the harder questions.

If ETS really wants to help test takers it should make considerable changes and improvements in this book.

The verbal section -

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In this section, the examples abound on all subjects, but still, for better constructed and analyzed material you should seek out other sources. It's evident the writers haven't spent much time shaping a system that will categorize different kinds of questions and suggest general guidelines for dealing with them.

Analysis of an issue and analysis of an argument -
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These sections are quite poor in substance. They offer 3 scored compositions for each section in addition to explanations of the scores. Other than that, all you get are many pages of possible subjects for analysis for your practice. My advice is to look on the bright side, as this book is the only one I know of that actually scaled and analyzed test takers' essays.