I finished the new questions from
OG 13 this morning. I haven't done the IR problems yet.
You can read a very good
review of OG 13 by MGMAT from this blog. Although I agree that the problems are NOT "radically" different, there are few common patterns worth mentioning.
Problem SolvingI felt the biggest difference is in the Problem Solving. Most of the new problems are word problems (27% of new PS), specially in the hard problem range. Statics, digits & decimals, divisibility and percent problems are more common.
Moreover, although difficulty in the low and mid range did not increase, the higher range problems are a lot harder. I felt these hard problems (166, 170, 177, 178, 182, 183, 196, 198, 199, 218, 229) are representative of the problems I faced during the exam. Some problems took me about 4 to 5 minutes to solve and for some I had no idea how to solve.
If you are doing well in PS you should try to do these problems. But I agree that if you don't have access to
OG 13, you should not worry much.
Data SufficiencyNot much different. The higher end is a tinge harder. The new DS problems also has more word problems (31% of new). Statics, inequalities and fractions more common.
Sentence CorrectionNot much different. Harder problems are mostly longer sentences. I found about two idioms in parallel structure. So memorize the idioms that has parallel structure in them. Modifier and parallelism are more common than others, in the new problems.
Critical ReasoningA bit more trickier. Not much different overall. Minor problem types are more common. For example, Explain the discrepancy and complete the argument both are 32% of the new problems.
Reading ComprehensionRC is different. The passages are shorter; 71% of new are short passages. The number of questions are fewer per passage. The questions are mostly tricky and ask for specific details or ask you to infer. More importantly the higher end passages are shorter. It felt more like a set of longer critical reasoning questions. IMO, this change along with the exclusion of idioms is done as an effort to make GMAT a global test.
Integrated Reasoning/AWAI haven't opened the IR section of the website yet. But I noticed that the issue part is gone from the AWA.
OverallFor $24 I got 158 new questions. That's 6.58 questions per dollar. It took me about a week to finish. I agree the new IR is a plus. But I felt disappointed to find just handful of problems for $24.
IMHO, releasing just a handful of problem every 3 to 4 years is not a fare practice. The students are forced to practice from non standard materials and suffer a lot because of this. At least I did.
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Just my two cents.