Question from older OGs

Is it okay, dcoolguy? Sure. But when you suggest you may have gone through the latest editions of the Official Guide and Verbal Review, I see a warning sign—you may be falling into a bad habit of practicing more and more questions without taking the time to adequately review any of them. How many times have you missed a question, let it sit for a few days, then gone back to take it apart, piece by piece? And guess what? That should not be the end of that question. It should make another appearance during a review day, maybe a week later, two weeks later, whatever. And that still might not be the end of it. If you are not reviewing properly, and you think that looking up an Expert response is sufficient to that end, then you run the risk of reinforcing poor study habits and the sort of wayward reasoning that will cause you to keep missing questions. There will be diminishing returns after your initial exposure to different types of questions and topics makes you more comfortable with that material.

I agree with bb that the OG may appear a little different from, say, one decade to another, but the questions can come from any time, even from an earlier period in which ETS (the makers of GRE® questions) wrote the material. I thought those Roman numeral questions had been phased out from RC passages, for example, but another tutor told me that he saw just such a question on his actual exam in 2018, so you should not make assumptions about what will or will not appear on the modern exam. I believe AjiteshArun wrote a recent post in which he quoted GMAC™ as saying that it stands behind all questions in its catalogue, including the older ones written by ETS.

On a personal level, yes, I do think some of the older material can feel a bit different. Some of those RC passages from the paper-based exams were five or six paragraphs long and had nearly ten questions attached. SC was more reliant on test-taker knowledge of idioms, sometimes with a single word underlined, perhaps reflecting a time in which the international audience was much smaller. But if something has appeared on the exam, I take it as fair game that it could appear in one form or another on the exam again.

Thank you for thinking to ask. (Work smarter, not harder.)

- Andrew

If you've finished the OG bundle, consider checking out the Online only question banks. You can get it through the mba website.

Thank you bb for your thoughts on overlaps and related stats. It's insightful.

I do agree with ThatDudeKnows AndrewN you,
I am able to improve my reasoning by slowly doing a question untimed. why each choice is wrong and why the one is right.
It helped me get the most out of it.
during my study time, I tried to maintain a log of my incorrect questions.

Now, when I visit these question, I feel comfortable in soving these questioin. I take less time because I am aware of the story as well as the technical terms (in CR). Hence I feel like, I should be solving new ones, and when I do, I falter in medium- hard CRs.

These days i am working to improve my timing.I am able to solve a CR under 4-5 minutes, but under time constrain- I either miss some important detail of a choice or don't give myself enough time to eliminate trap choices(easy ones are ok, my problem is med-hards). It takes time for me to deconstruct the argument and find that logical gap (M-H CRs).

Hence, these days I am trying to solve new OG by making a quiz of 8-9 qns. May be doing this for few days can help me to get that momentum maybe not. I am looking for a constant flow by which I can attempt a question no matter how complex it is.

So, if I can solve a same question in 4-5 minutes, why can't under 2:30- 3:00 minutes?
mostly because- takes time for me to comprehend long convoluted trap choices, under time pressure I skip them. sometimes I miss important detail.
sometime I don't read for meaning hence miss a trap choice.

What should I do?

Get back to basics, dcoolguy, and leave those Hard questions alone until you can demonstrate proficiency on Medium-level questions on the order of 80-85 percent accuracy or greater. Until then, you have no business spoiling more challenging questions. I would start with GMAT Ninja's Critical Reasoning Resource Collection, a one-stop shop for a student at any level and of a particular preference for information delivery (written or audio-video). These free resources should help you reach that next level of performance, as long as you take the time to grasp what a particular post or video is driving at (and pause as necessary to work matters out on your own).

Good luck, and thank you for following up.

- Andrew

Hi dcoolguy,

It's fine to practice questions from older OGs but as BB mentioned there will be some overlap between these guides. Also, is this all you are doing for your prep, or are you using other resources as well?

I agree with AndrewN above -- it's important to master medium level material before moving on to hard material, and often you can learn a lot by revisiting past questions and studying them in detail. And as ThatDudeKnows explains, there have been some stylistic changes in the GMAT over the years (most noticeably when the test developer changed about fifteen years ago). But those changes weren't dramatic, and official questions, even from twenty years ago, are so much better than prep company questions for Verbal that I wouldn't recommend using anything else. If someone truly needed additional Verbal material for practice, and had completely exhausted official GMAT questions, the next best resource would be relevant official LSAT questions, but those aren't nearly as useful as GMAT problems, and revisiting official problems is often going to be the more productive path. Good luck!

Hi Scott, ScottTargetTestPrep

I have been preparing for 8 months now.
I have finished a prep plan from a company and I analyzed my strength and weaknesses, after that, I took TTP for 2 months, I focused on my weaknesses by completing specific sections and it was very helpful. I have finished OG22, quant review 22. I was practicing untimed and I am having 80% accuracing on medium level question, 90% on easy, 55-60 % on hard levels.
Now I am focussing on timing from last months and I am facing issues, my accuracy is dropping specially on medium hard question.
SO, I was solving older questions, because I was already aware of new ones.
I felt they are little bit different.

I am a slow reader. sometimes I feel I am ready and sometime I feel im not.
I don't know which way to go now. aiming for a V35+.
What do you suggest?
Thank you

Did you complete all of TTP verbal?

Adding one point to what everyone has said-

Official Guide questions assume a certain amount of knowledge about the world and a certain basic vocabulary.

The GMAT does not expect you to know specialised subject-related jargon or vocabulary; any such term in a RC passage will be explained. But the GMAT does expect test-takers to know things like what an editor does, what is meant by 'secondary school', what a chimpanzee is, where Japan is (in Asia), ...

And questions from old OGs are sometimes outdated. Because the world has moved on from when they were written.

For example, a really old question may refer to the Soviet Union/USSR, which hasn't existed since 1991. Questions may refer to VHS tapes, to video rental stores, or devices that most test-takers probably haven't heard of.

This can be a problem in all question types, probably more in CR and RC than in SC.

This doesn't mean that you should not use questions from old OGs. Just be aware that this is one reason why old questions may be harder.
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