rakeshd347 wrote:
vaj18psu wrote:
Hi All,
I am in the process of developing my study plan for re-taking the GMAT. I originally used the
MGMAT CR book, but think I want to give
Powerscore CR for additional methods and practice. About how long will it take to cover this book, given roughly 3 hours of study time a day?
This will help in planning out my study. THANKS!
Hi Mate
I have just finished the whole powercore bible CR. its really good and it will help you a lot. The theory they have written is in very simple language so its not hard to understand. I have done the whole book in 4 days. I was studying around 2-3 hours daily on that book. Sometime 1 full page contains only one question and next full page will have explanation to that question. make sure you do all the question and read all the explanation. It won't take much time to finish the book. Make notes as i have done. after doing the whole book you will see the difference.DO lot of practise.
Please KUDOS if my post helps.
very good post. this book may seem daunting at first, based on page numbers and especially the first 2-3 chapters. believe me, it gets much better later chapters, in terms of rhythm, extent of concepts etc. because chapters 4-13 cover question types, each chapter has maybe 10-20 pages of text, the rest of that (except for chapter 8 which lumps assumption and strengthen together) is for end-chapter problem sets and mostly full page explanations for each problem.
so the main body of the text is not that heavy either. for example, a 10 page chapter on weaken would start with basic introduction and concepts to keep in mind. this follows a loose pattern in each chapter as well - description of the question type, examples of wording the question stem, what to look out for in the stimulus, what kind of reasoning to look out for, how the incorrect answers can be tricky. then all of that is applied in a couple of practice questions (different from problem set at end-of-chapter). these will take up 2 pages at least for each question.
overall, great book, in terms of organization and breaking down the concepts. also gives you a bit of extra insight that most other books just gloss over. that's just the essence of test prep i guess, you should balanced attention to basics as well as practice. for example, princeton gives you a very shallow, basic overview of concepts, focusing more on advising students to use certain tricks, strategies, or shortcuts. these are helpful, but only in context of the underlying content/basics/concepts. whereas princeton would also advise you to put in requisite practice, it's not guarantee of nailing it.
also, the primary objectives can be a bit daunting or seem useless in the beginning, but after a while it becomes second nature. especially since it's organized into parts - first 4 deal with stimulus, 5 and 6 with question stem, last 3 with answer choices. and since PS CR Bible advises you to work in the order presented (i.e. not "read question first" approach), the objectives come naturally - those things are what you do with each task (stimulus, stem, choices) anyway. i.e. objective 5 and 6 - classify question, then prephrase. so you don't even have to think about the number or order of objectives. after you read, you automatically start to identify the question, just have to keep in mind to slow down in prephrasing.
hope that makes sense