Best Use of Manhattan GMAT books

I like MGMAT books, but not all of them.
Quant (except Geometry) is just GREAT and a must to have, so is the SC book - it is simply the SC Bible (or Tora or Koran . Geometry book - I have never read it, using another source. The CR book is mas-o-menos, although it needs to be backed with A LOT OF PRACTICAL questions. And RC book is completely useless

When studying something of such great extent as the Manhattan GMAT Books, I have found useful these steps for each book:

1. Read and highlight important concepts, making notes in the process.
2. Do the exercises at the end of each chapter and review results afterwards.
3. Review and summarize your highlights and notes before getting into the OG exercises.
4. Once you've done the OG exercises, review your results to see if the concepts were applied correctly or not.

I've been dealing with the same frustrationn, glad to see I'm not the only one!

I am not so happy about finding this thread just kidding! Now I realize I am going in the reverse way; I am almost done solving OG12; need to do 54 DS and 60 SC, already finished solving verbal OG review book, bought manhattan gmat books but haven't gone in them yet, after reading this thread I need to go back to OG post MGMAT again.

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I reckon from my recent experiences the best thing to do after readding the MGMAT books is to do lots of questions, like RKimball said (the very helpful MGMAT instructor), and when you get a question wrong, either completely master it by understanding the MGMAT OG Guide answer and the OG guide's answer, work out which was the best one to use, and then mark the question to be done again very soon, to cement the knowledge in your memory. And if you get a question wrong due to lack of knowledge of a concept, do 5-6 similar questions, then mark the question to be redone again very soon. Also apply this concept to GMAT Club practice exams and other practice CATS you do. Make a list of those particular problems and concept areas you are weak in so you can focus on nailing them.

I'm doing this now and I can tell you even in 1 week my retention of knowledge has accelerated massively. I've wasted so many months on this damned exam purely due to not studying properly or effectively, now I see the light at the end of the tunnel!

I think that something better than writing your notes of the MGMAT guides in a note pad is writing them in an Excel spreadsheet.

Use each spreadsheet for a guide, and each row for every chapter. You wil see that organizing all those notes in that way is much better!

Thanks for the excel idea, only if it was more comfortable for me, I will try it anyways, jst started my notebook today!

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is it enough to just do the practice question at the end of each chapter and save the OG questions for later? or the right way is to do the books as methodical as they are being presented [meaning do all the OG Q's after doing the practice questions]?

Hey,

After each chapter, you should do both the practice questions in the back of the book as well as the questions the MGMAT strategy guides list in the Official Guides. While the "In Action" questions will help you practice the actual content you'll need to know for the GMAT, the OG problems will help you apply that content to real GMAT problems.

When you do the Official Guide problems, don't be too concerned about whether you get right or wrong answers--look to see if you actually understand the content and ask yourself whether you could do a similar problem by applying the same concept. Also, try to work on the OG problems as if you were sitting for the real GMAT. If you have ten OG problems to complete, then try completing all the problems in one 20-minute sitting (2 minutes per problem).

Hope this helps!

Best,
Matt Mapplebeck
Student Services Associate
Manhattan GMAT

That was a great suggestion by Matt; my quant timing is not improving; other than that MGMAT quant guides are taking too long to finish, I think doing few problems in timed manner should help!

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maybe a shortcut is to only reread what you are not remembering, if it is the WHOLE strategy from one book, I don't think any of us can help you with that, if it is specific problem areas just reviews those, repetition is key

the only way to improve the quant would be do as many problems with as much variation possible... if you learn all the variations and types you will improve substantially... so you should do as many problems as you can, and figure out all the short cuts for every type... after a while you will be able to approach problems from a pattern recognition perspective [this is the instance that you can do really good, really fast]...

Wanted to thank everyone for their input on this thread! Just purchased the MGMAT guides for my studying and wasn't exactly sure how to start approaching them. The advice on how to best learn the material (Take your own notes, apply the concepts learned, review, etc.) is very helpful.