MGMAT CR? CR Performance dropped

Sorry to hear that your experience with Manhattan Prep material has been suboptimal, Sherry2101, but it may be a case of over-analysis on your part, of abandoning some of your natural inclinations in an effort to follow a method that may in part run contrary to your own. This is not to say that Manhattan Prep material is poor in quality, just that it seems, at least for CR, not to resonate with you at the moment. It is not uncommon for students preparing for the test to try out different materials. Some prefer Manhattan Prep, some Veritas Prep, and still others PowerScore. All of them establish useful guidelines for taking on CR questions. They just may do so in slightly different ways. Trust me, once your accuracy in CR starts to climb, you will look at the same words in the Manhattan Prep CR guide in a different way. My advice? Look to integrate MGMAT strategies into your own techniques. With practice, you will turn a corner.

To touch on your query regarding the difficulty of questions between the OG and GMAT Prep, no, they are not much different. The OG simply places all questions from the same category (e.g., Easy) together and then gets progressively more difficult, while GMAT Prep questions can yoyo, based on your performance. The Manhattan Prep strategies should apply equally well to OG and GMAT Prep questions. Start with Easy questions and get your accuracy up to 90 percent or greater, then repeat the process for Medium questions, shooting for 80 percent or greater. Reward yourself for hitting each benchmark. The GMAT™ is a test that punishes mistakes on easier questions more than it rewards correct answers on harder questions. Too many aspirants overlook this tendency and focus too intently on Hard questions. (The bar may not be so high if you mess up the easier questions, and you may have exhausted yourself during your preparation, thinking you were no good at CR, when the real problem was that you never gave yourself a chance to build confidence.)

Good luck with your studies. If you have further questions, feel free to ask.

- Andrew