New Veritas books review?

Hi,

Here's my two cents on latest Veritas books (2012 editions).

1. Veritas Quant books are excellent. Improved a hell lot ! For example, more of logical approach is being advocated in the quant books against relying on memorizing a lot of formulas !
Check out a few methods on Veritas quant blogs at https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html#/categor ... er-wisdom/
They deal with logical and graphical approaches to effectively solve a trickier problem in less time. Check out the posts on weighed averages , mixtures and absolute values(modulus) and you will understand what I am talking about. They have incorporated most of these into the new quant books.

2. They are organized in a much better way. Infact Veritas now uses a more methodological approach! It breaks each book into three section viz basics & drills, illustration of lesson concepts with examples, Highlighting key points of the discussion that teach you to think from the perspective of the Test maker (How does the test maker hides the correct answers and misguides you). If you are rusty at math, Do the basics & drills of a topic
(say for e.g Algebra) until you are comfortable and go on to the lessons and advanced concepts. Once done, deal with the homework problems at the end of each book.

3. In case of homework problems, Veritas seems to have preferred quality to quantity ! Yes ! for e.g. the old CR (book 1 and book 2) in total has 155 problems but now in the new CR book, there are around 55 quality homework problems( starting at above average level, so I assume they start at above 650 level and go up to 700-800 level). Each of them is a very high quality GMAT-Like problem. Not just me, but anyone who has taken the new Veritas prep course will agree with me on this.

4. Geometry, Algebra, Combinatorics & Statistics, Word books are excellent ! You do not need any other material for theory,application of concepts and tough problems if you have these quant books and the homework problems that come with them online. You can use them in place of any other material and I am sure you wont be disappointed. The best value I see in these books is they are not full of theory and huge as Manhattan quant books. Certainly you can learn the basics, use the drills to improvise your rusty maths concepts much better. You even can spend less than 3-4 hours on each book then and get on to solving pretty good homework problems. Say, if you just need to review basic concepts, you can do so using the basics section and cut time on drills as you can spend that time on learning from the lessons and doing homework problems.You do not need to look else where for tough quant problems . All the 6 quant books in total have around 500 tough and high quality GMAT-Like problems.

5. DS book is surely good for practice and has some solid DS theory and techniques you may find useful. Airthematic book is something I am not sure and yet to go through it. I just cannot comment on whether Mgmat number theory book can be replaced by this, as it is too early and may be biased if I comment without actually looking into the book.

I will update my reviews about Verbal books as soon as I dive through them and develop an profound understanding !

Kindly note that, I am not vouching or advertising for any specific test prep. But yes having won the Veritas full course in a contest here, I have been really surprised with the quality of the new books and thought l need to shed light about the quant books as they really deserve a loud applause for the new makeover !