Hey!
Harsh probably summed up what you should be doing right now!
gmat-study-plan-how-to-start-your-gmat-prep-80727.html?fl=menubest-gmat-books-118706.html?fl=menuWhile I agree that these two threads are THE best posts for newcomers, I also think that books are what you make of them!
When I started out with my gmat preparation (which has not finished yet!) I went on a buying spree!
I bought an ipad,
gmatclub tests, gmat toolkit, knewton course, Manhattan SC, Manhattan word problems/number properties,
Powerscore CR, SC grail, RC Sets, and later went on to buy
egmat SC course. Of course
OG and other official materials were bought initially.
Obviously with the sheer volume, I was extremely overwhelmed and that had a very negative impact on my gmat preparation.
I have heard
Powerscore CR is the holy grail of Critical Reasoning, but I found that book very repulsive for 2 reasons:
1. I bought it in a later stage of my preparation and I knew CR and its evilness pretty much by then.
2. I hate fat books, and I am a huge fan of online stuffs.
Also I would like to point out that Manhattan SC is an incredible source. But sadly it did not work wonders for me. I mean I could get a lot of concepts and all, but however I failed to apply most of them in CATs. Knewton videos, on the other hand proved to be a VERY solid groundwork (dont expect too much of advanced stuffs from them except perhaps in CR) and
e-gmat and Ron's videos did the magic for advanced stuffs.
But the takeaway here is: THIS WORKED FOR ME! There was a time when I was scoring 680-700 in CATs though I had read
MGMAT SC thoroughly, watched ALL knewton vids and did almost every aristotle sets.
Then I think Ron's videos and then going through
the official guide extensively helped me achieve better accuracy on CATs (I initially used to score pretty good on random small tests but failed to score that much on full fledged CATs)
This might not work for you!
So try to figure out what works for you: Find out if you like the old school hard copy books (manhattan, powerscore are relatively inexpensive over amazon), or you like interactive videos (
e-gmat turns out to be the absolute champ here), and go from there. Take a CAT to figure out your weaknesses in an intermediate stage and work on them after a thorough review!
All the best to stellar GMAT!
Souvik
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