Is the forum's question bank legit?

Sure thing. One caveat, since you mentioned you are just beginning your preparation: Do not comb through questions marked OG 10, OG 9, 2nd Verbal, or anything from older editions of the official guide. Many of these questions subsequently appeared as GMAT Prep questions, and you would not want to take an official mock having potentially seen some of the questions. As I advised earlier, stick to those that have been published in the OG 2016 or later, just to play it safe.

- Andrew

I was planning to take questions starting from the OG 2019, since it was published after the last time the GMAT got changed. The way I understand it, the test structure got changed a bit, but the question format didn't, but I didn't want to take any chances; I figured the more recent the OG was, the better.

Thanks again for your advice

Posted from my mobile device

Hi @@MEChimpanzee,
You can customize recent OG problems from here; https://gmatclub.com/forum/search.php?view=search_tags

Thanks!

So per the recommendations of many, I have heard that I should only stick to OG questions (exemption for LSAT) bc other courses cannot replicate the nuances of the GMAT ...(especially for verbal)....so given that, is it okay to go into earlier versions of GMAT OG questions in the practice bank?...I hear that the GMAT changed....are the earlier questions harder/easier than the newer questions...?

Also i am trusting that the questions here with source:OG are questions from the actual OG. hopefully some other materials did not sneak in haha

Hi MEChimpanzee,

I see your question has already been answered well above. However, I would recommend you to follow a 3 step approach.

1. Learn all the concepts thoroughly.

2. A key focus on methodologies. Do not skip straight to practicing questions as this will not help you learn a lot and, will not help with retention either. Instead, learn the most effective methodology to solve a particular question type. For example, a meaning based approach for SC. Also, go through solutions step-by-step to maximize your learning effectively.

3. Finally, start practicing questions. A good benchmark to know that you're ready is 80-90% accuracy at all difficulty levels.

Important Tip – Don’t practice tons of questions directly. First focus on learning the right methods for each question. That plays a significant role in getting hard questions correct within 2 mins.

Hope it helps!

Feel free to reach out in case of any queries!

Hello, sa800. I have been an outspoken critic of the notion of students using LSAT Logical Reasoning questions for CR practice. It is not as though the quality of LR questions is poor; rather, in my view, the majority of them do not resemble their CR counterparts closely enough to warrant studying for GMAT™ preparation. If you are working with a knowledgeable tutor who knows the two tests thoroughly and can hand-select certain LR questions that he/she thinks may be good for CR practice, then I see no harm. Still, there are over 700 official CR questions that have been published in some form of official guide, so I see no reason to deviate from such dedicated questions. Yes, it is okay to sample questions from earlier editions of the official guide. If you reach back far enough, though, to guides that end in "Xth Edition" (OG 13 was the last, published in 2012 and rebranded as OG 2015 two years later), you may see some of the same questions pop up in GMAT Prep mocks 1 and 2. There are also some cosmetic differences in questions—Similar Reasoning and Logical Flaw questions are not as prevalent as they once were. But that does not make such questions irrelevant to your course of study. The same lines of logic must be pursued in more recent questions.

One final point: Just because a "new" question is published in, say, the OG 2021/2022, does not mean it is a more recently created question. I have seen decades-old questions make an appearance in print for the first time in more recent publications, most notably in the GMAT Advanced Guide (2019). Some of those questions had not seen the light of day since the early 2000s, maybe even further back. (In fact, a few were first published on this site in the early 2000s.) I find that some earlier questions seem harder, while others are easier, and across the board, some are virtually indistinguishable from those that have come from a more recently published pool. So, feel free to go ahead and practice older CR questions. Again, I would recommend doing so backwards, chronologically. Once you have taken official mocks 1 and 2, you will be able to explore a lot of the older stuff without worrying about repeat questions in further mocks—3-6 were released in 2012.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

I agree with everything AndrewN says above, and maybe I can add a few details -- in my experience on the forum, the only "OG" tags that are sometimes incorrect are ones claiming questions are from very early editions of the OG. There's a very old set of documents full of questions that was a popular study tool about 15 years ago, and some people mistakenly believe all of the questions in those docs are old official problems, so I think that's why some non-official questions have the wrong tag.

It's true that the format of the GMAT has changed a couple of times in the last few years, but those changes had nothing to do with the content of the Quant and Verbal sections. You have to go back more than a decade if you want to find a point where the style of GMAT Quant or Verbal question really changed at all (a new company started developing the questions, but even then the change wasn't all that dramatic). So there's no reason to avoid official resources from, say, five years ago -- they're almost as good as the books released today.

As for LSAT questions, you really need to know how the LSAT and GMAT differ if you want to have any chance of studying from LSAT material efficiently. A lot of LSAT questions are irrelevant to the GMAT. There are enough official GMAT Verbal questions available now that I don't think anyone needs to even look at LSAT questions, but if for some reason a test taker did completely exhaust all official GMAT Verbal resources, and needed additional questions, then if that test taker knew what LSAT questions to ignore, LSAT questions are probably the best quality ones you could use (I'd recommend them over any prep company Verbal questions). But they're not nearly as good as official GMAT problems for GMAT practice.