Thanks a lot guys and believe me, if I can do it, you can also do it; just put in the commensurate effort
Also, good to see you back mallelac. It is always a pleasure to see good old members again. I would like to cover some material which I used and made me achieve my goal.
Kaplan800: This is a must even though you have the regular Kaplan CD 200X. This does not come with a CD but will go in great depth discussing many fundamental questions.
Barron(12th edition): Hmmm, there is nothing positive that comes to mind. I can't even believe that it is the student's #1 choice for the GMAT as they advertise it to be. The CD is just buggy and many quant questions are so not representative of the actual GMAT. You will find many pie charts and histograms but I have yet to find questions containing such graphs in the actual exam. Also, many of the SC questions are testing such arcane and subtle differences that they are litterally not representative of the actual exam. I remember that "grandmother" question which was so ambiguous. You will find it if you run a search on GMATClub and you will see what I mean.
Peterson/Thomson: Quant is ok but there are a few errors on their quant part which drove me nuts. Also, some function questions are not too great. It contains a few probability questions and well enough explained although it does not sufficiently cover that area. As for verbal, SC is GREAT. Many questions are super and of very good quality. However, CR are somewhat of a stretch. Too many EXCEPT questions which definitely take you more than 2 min to solve. Also, many of them I posted here and nobody agreed with the OA. RC are particularly challenging and similar in that respect to Kaplan RC. I would not recommend this for unexperimented test takers though but instead stick to normal material such as PR or
OG, I'll get to that later.
Arco/Thomson: I liked the questions in general although math was definitely easier than the actual GMAT. In my last attempt, I based myself on their Paper Test but it did not penalize you appropriately for getting wrong answers and also was too generous on their scaled scores. Hence, I always score 710 to 780 range whereas Kaplan CAT would give me something hovering around the 600. However, we know how difficult Kaplan CAT is
.
PR200X: This is another GEM. By the way, buy the 2005 version, not any earlier version. The newest version corrected many glitches with the previous versions(repeat RC, not underlined SC) and includes more representative GMAT type questions such as Bold Faced CR and permutation&Combination questions which no other CAT test prep which I used included. Even the Kaplan 2004 did not have any of these type of questions.
Kaplan+CD: Their paper test in the book is relatively representative of your potential score
provided that you timed yourself. Remember that while doing ANY paper tests, it is very important that you time yourself to have an accurate potential score for one thing the GMAT will do so. Your diagnostic CAT score should be slightly higher than the full test ones because it is not as intense and has fewer questions. Do not worry if your score is lower than on other material which you used; it is totally normal to see scores around the low 600 and end up with 700+(it happened to me and many others). One thing I find great with Kaplan CAT is that it will really pump the adrenaline out of you so that you really have the actual GMAT rush. Remember that in the end, you should spend about half as much time analyzing your wrong AND right answers to make sure that you learned CONCEPTS, not A,B,C,D or E.
OG 10th edition: This is considered the GMAT bible. I would not walk in the testing center without going thoroughly through this book. PS are all easier than the actual exam but will give you the general idea of how such problems are constructed. DS is also easier except for the last 60 questions. Even someone who has 50+in Quant, could end up missing 5+ DS questions in a row. I remember missing 8-9 of those DS questions in a row towards the end and almost freaked out but realized that with the proper analysis, the concepts could be learned after those mistakes. I would however suggest you to go through
OG AFTER you have been through the PowerPrep CD because the latter is made up of
OG questions. If you do
OG first, your PowerPrep scores will be contaminated.
Old Paper Tests: These are old retired official GMAT questions. Agree that many of these are to be found in the
OG, especially RC, but there are also many new ones. These PT, done under timed condition, were really a good gauge of my own score. Because these are actual GMAT questions, their quality is very good. There is a total of 9 and they are sold in bundles of 3 for 25$ at
https://www.mba.com.
885SC: These are very good practice if you ran out of material. Even though you did not, you should still go through these. I did not at first but realized how good material they were by answering many of them answered here on the website. You can download these from gmatclub at the "verbal lesson" section.
Last but not least, participate in the GMAT-challenges and math/verbal forums. I already mentioned this but you will see a good increase in your skills by joining a discussion forum with people with similar goals. The above are the material I used. You may not need as much to reach your target score but it should give you an idea of what to start with if you are new to the GMAT or are starting from scratch.
close
14 Dec 2004, 08:12
