How to make the best of OG questions?

Question

So I've been studying from the Manhattan Strategy books for over a month and recently received my OG books (Guide + Quant Review + Verbal Review) and I want to start next week with that, but I'm not sure how to assemble the practice sets, and this translates to a few questions:

- Should I start with untimed sets or start with with timed sets right away?
- Should I do sets of 5, 10, 15 or how many questions?
- Should I mix topics or should I do sets focused on certain topics (eg. pronouns or FDP)?
- Should I start with the easy ones and then increase difficulty or should I mix from the beginning?
- Should I do a set and check the answers/errors right away or wait until I do a few sets?

Thank you in advance for your help!

GMATinsight · Answer

Hi nachomontegu I have my opinion here. Since OG books are official questions so learning through them is the second best possible strategy. I recommend learning of all the concepts and application through Manhattan Books and other good non-official sources (Veritas for Quant and Manhannat for both Q and V) Finally you should make the tests of official questions and test your performance in them. Quant questions in Official sources are not upto mark in terms of quality and quantity of difficult questions however for Verbal, OG books are best source in the world I have done something with Quant questions of OG books. You might want to visit the links below Solve the Official Questions more productively Click here for Timed Sectional Tests with Video solutions of each question Also explore Dedicated Data Sufficiency (DS) Course Get TOPICWISE: Concept Videos | Practice Qns 100+ | Official Qns 50+ | 100% Video solution CLICK . Two MUST join YouTube channels : GMATinsight (1000+ FREE Videos) and GMATclub

harshtandel838 · Answer

Hey  nachomontegu

As you’re on your way for preparation, assuming you’ve done all the concepts from Manhattan and OG. When you start your practice, first do not constraint yourself on timed sets! At this moment you should work with strategy you’ve learned. Workout questions and you’d know why certain options are wrong and why some are right. You can practice on timed conditions once you familiarise yourself with tackling questions. Also, you should work with all the topics so you will know which are the weak areas. Regarding whether you want to start with easy ones or hard... that’s up to you! It’s good to go from easy to difficult ones btw. One important piece of advice, keep notes of everything ... all new concepts you learn ... your error log .... !!

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bb · Answer

Hi. Welcome to GMAT Club! These are the right questions you are asking. So you are on the right track. There are several approaches/considerations. 1. I think in the beginning I did untimed practice (meaning I recorded my time but I did not look at the clock and set a countdown timer, more like, recorded how long I took) but as I got better, I I did timed practice with limiting myself to 2 mins/question. 2. I did 10 questions at a time with a mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. You will see the GMAT club difficulty associated with each question in the error log link below (you will have to find the topic and then look for error log link) and you may take 5%, 15% and anything higher than 25% 3. I focused only on the topics I studied (e.g. I finished Powers, I did powers and when I finished all of Arithmetic, then it is random arithmetic questions and you can mix in others but keep this in mind - it is not useful to practice questions that you have not covered yet AND it is not use doing easy questions you know you will be able to handle. Just eats time. 4. This is up to you but I found it for me that I wanted to finish a topic and move on. So I would not study all easy powers questions, and then next month come back and do medium, and then hard powers. I wanted to be done with Powers and never come back

so I mixed easy, medium, and hard. I could also use that for consistency and see how I did (e.g. 6 out of 10 or 9 out of 10) 5. I checked mine right after I was done with the set. I wanted to know and I don't think there is much value in not doing them. I only did like 10 questions a day. i was not killing myself with questions (I did not have many, part of the reason) I also devised a general approach that if you mix 10 questions of 3 difficulties and have 3/4/3, then getting 9 out of 10 is around 750, 8 out of 10 is 700, 7 out of 10 is 650, and 6 out of 10 is 600... this is a completely fake scale but if you can do that for EACH topic, I feel that's where my score ended up so I aimed for 9 out of 10 right in each 10-question quiz I took. P.S. You can download the OG Error Logs that will give you topics for each of the questions: https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmac-officia ... 40610.html

CrackverbalGMAT · Answer

Hi nachomontegu We are glad to assist you in deciding a practice plan for yourself using the OG bundle. (1) We suggest start with the untimed sets and slowly as you settle and get on the track,use the timed tests. This will help you maintain confidence and will not let anxiety seep in from the very beginning. (2)You can always start with less number of questions and with time,increase it.This is so that your mental thought patterns are not overloaded but trained in a phased way that would be relatively more effective. (3)You can start with topic-wise practice and once you have prepared all categories/topics,go ahead with the Mixed Questions. (4)Starting with easy ones will allow you to close any open ends in learning in case there are any at a beginners level and you will not feel lost as you encounter challenges in the advanced questions. (5)You should NEVER and we repeat categorically NEVER see the solutions right away for all through your practice.Attempt the questions and note the errors. Invest good time on "thinking through" the question to reach solutions. Use all possible startegies. Allow yourself a 12-18 hours of thought window on errors committed. Only after you have exhausted the "thinking" points,go ahead and check the solutions. The solutions will always remain with you and you will not be dependent on the solutions but through this exercise you shall get better at solving problems organically. We wish you all the success!

Pls reach out to us in case of any difficulty. CrackVerbal Academics

nachomontegu · Answer

Thank you so much  bb  and  CrackVerbalGMAT  for your detailed answers, I've been thinking about this for weeks, you've helped me A LOT, thanks!

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