GMATPrep Question Pack 1 Review

GMAC released a new preparation software GMATPrep 2.0 in April 2012. Around the same time they released the question pack 1, which includes 200 quant, 180 verbal and 24 integrated reasoning questions. The pack provides a set of very good official questions and I highly recommend everyone to practice these questions.

Pros

1. Official questions
2. Almost all of the questions are new and were never released before
3. Computer based practice
4. Includes explanations similar to OG for all questions
5. Statistics available to track your progress

Cons

1. The default question pack can not be deselected or deactivated. You will need to go through it once before you start working on the QPack 1

2. The Reading Comprehension questions in GMAT Prep 2 practice module are not grouped with a given passage. If you select 5 questions to practice, you may end up working on 5 different passages. This is not helpful at all!

The problem could be solved by providing a separate slider to select the number of passages to practice with. In this way all the questions for a given passage will be grouped together, just like the exam.

I haven't tried the integrated reasoning, but I think similar grouping mechanism should apply to IR too!

3. Relatively more quant questions are available in the QPack 1 than the verbal questions. If you take a typical exam as a reference, there are 5.4 times the number of questions available in a typical GMAT exam (200 vs 37). On the other hand, the verbal questions are 4.4 times a typical exam (180 vs 41). If you consider the extraneous questions bundled with the passages, the difference will be even higher.

4. Although it was claimed to contain new and unseen questions, it does contain few questions that were released before or were available online.

5. The progress statistics is limited to last 6 sessions. Any practice before that will not be shown in the progress tracker.

Question Type Analysis

Since the RC questions are not grouped with the passage I was having difficulty doing them. I stopped after trying few of them. So no analysis is available on RC yet.

I will take the exam before June. So I did not do the IR questions as well. If someone can provide the analysis, I will be happy to include them.

(This section will be updated)

Image PS

Image DS

Image SC

Image CR

Observations
1. SC questions are very old and not so difficult.

I assumed that the question ID reflects the creation time of the question. I found that the SC questions in QPack1 range from 1000 to 3000, whereas the default set contains questions in the 7000 range.

See the note below for an explanation how this inference was drawn.

2. Although difficulty did not vary much for CR, the quality of the questions are very good.

3. Few PS questions are as difficult as the OG 13 questions.

4. DS questions are of similar difficulty as in the the OG 13.

List of Questions

I prepared a list of questions from the question pack 1. I tried to add a title whenever possible. It will help you track questions and/or correction any mistake I made in categorizing the questions.

I may have made some mistakes identifying the SC questions. Feel free to correct me in a comment or post a corrected version of the XLS.

(Attachement: Questions XLS . Will be attached later)

Inference on the Question Order and Difficulty

Each question in the QPack 1 and the default set (the 90 questions that are available in GMATPrep for free) has an unique 5 digit question number. For example, a SC question ID would look like VSC01783.

The ID VSC01783 says, the question is from
1) Verbal pool - V
2) Sentence Correction sub pool - SC
3) ID number - 01783

Similarly, examples of PS, DS, and CR are QPS05678, QDS04789, and VCR03498, respectively.

Grouped questions have a little different format. A group of reading comprehension questions is numbered from VRC00198-01 to VRC00198-05, in which the -XX part indicates question number related to the passage 00198.

Integrated reasoning questions may come in group as well as in standalone flavors. An Integrated reasoning questions ID starts with an IIR tag.

Interestingly, the IIR IDs are between two to three digits, for example IIR00034, IIR00125, etc. From this fact, I assumed that the question ID reflects the sequence in which it was created. For example, I assumed that question VSC01783 is older that question VSC0345.

As I said before, the SC questions in QPack1 range from 1000 to 3000, whereas the default set contains SC questions in the 7000 range. If my assumption is correct, it can be inferred that the SC questions in QPack 1 are older than the default set. On the other hand, the quant questions appear to be newer.

All the question numbers used in the section are randomly created by me.

I also assumed that the 5-digit ID number has one more part in it. I think the first three digits indicate an exam code and the last two digits represent the question number within the exam. For example, VSC01783 means Verbal - Sentence Correction - Exam Code 017 - Question 83 and VRC00198-01 means Verbal - Reading Comprehension - Exam Code 001 - Passage 98 - Question 01. However, this assumption is not needed for the inference above.

FAQ

1. Should I buy it?
Despite the problems I mentioned, the questions are very good and come with official explanations. Since practicing the official materials is the best way to practice, in my opinion, the pack is worth buying.

2. Where and how to purchase it?
To purchase you will need to go to mba.com and purchase it like any other online product. At the end of your purchase you will be given the download option and a code. See the image below.



After you double click the .qsp file it opens in GMATPrep. You need to click activate and enter the code that you received after the purchase.



3. Can I use the question pack 1 in multiple computers?
According to a response by GMAC, yes, you can use the question pack in up to three computers.

However, you won’t be able to synchronize your responses. I requested the GMAC to release an online version to resolve the problem.

4. Why are the RC questions not grouped?
I sent an email about it. The representative replied saying that they are looking into the issue.

5. How do I know which questions were available in the default set and skip those during practice?
I will post an XLS file containg the question ids and which set they belong to. You may use it to determine the group.

The questions are presented sequentially as well. So you can just skip first 15 question in each set to avoid working on the default questions.

GMATPrep Tour

Here is how the installed content page looks after the Q Pack 1 installation.



Note that it is possible to "turn off" or deactivate the Q Pack 1. But it is not possible to turn off the default questions.

Here is a screen shot of the more option page.



I thought I will be able to select question pack here. But unfortunately that's not possible. So you are pretty much stuck with the default set. There is no way to get rid of it.

The statistics is provided as a percent of questions answered correctly.




(This post is an enhanced version of the log I posted earlier.)