Older vs. newer questions on GC

Question

Hello community,
Is it helpful solving 5-10 years old questions to prepare for current date GMAT or should I practice newer fresh questions?

As GMAT CLUB has so many questions & one can not solve them all, sometimes I get confused seeing the older questions.

Please share your thoughts on this.

Thanks in advance.

bb · Answer

🤔 the last updated official guide came out in 2020. That’s 3 years ago. Since every year the official guide refreshers 150 questions, that means that in your filter of questions younger than five years, there old would be 300 from the OG.

However, many of those 300 questions have been recycled from some of the other editions of the books and materials and it is probably only 100 that would be new.

PS. Most of the questions in the GMAT prep tests are 20 years old, some are 30. The math they’re testing is between 500 and 2000 years old. The verbal stuff is likely not as old, only 300-500 years old.

While there are some new flavors and variations of verbal questions that have been introduced in the last 15 years such as bold face critical reasoning, in general GMAT questions are very consistent. A hard question from 10 years ago is still a hard question.

Don’t fall for marketing 😇

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GmatKnightTutor · Answer

You can set the filter to show questions from OG 2022, for example. Wouldn't be surprising, however, for a question to still have a tag that shows it was part of some previous OGs as well.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi GMATmona07.

Generally, it's helpful to practice using older OG questions, for a few reasons. One is that, as bb said, generally, the older questions are not that different from the newer ones. Another is that, to a large degree, you are practicing to develop precision in execution. So, even if the style of a question is a little different from the style of a question that would appear on today's GMAT, the question can still be useful as a means of developing precision.

That said, there is one area in which using older questions, while useful, can also be a little strange at times, and that area is Sentence Correction. Around 2010, GMAC switched from one SC question provider to another and also made some adjustments to what SC questions involve, reducing the use of less well known idiomatic structures in SC questions, making SC questions more logic focused, and improving the quality of SC questions. Also, SC questions had been evolving even before then. So, whereas we could say that math remains math, SC has changed over the years. Older SC questions tend to be lower in quality, be more formulaic, and involve more so-called "idioms" than today's SC questions.

Long story short, you can still learn from most older official SC questions, but some are not great.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi GMATmona07,

Since your Official Score on the GMAT is valid for up to 5 years, that result has to be comparable to other results from before, during or even after the time that you took your Exam. By extension, the overall content, patterns, etc. of the Official GMAT have to essentially stay the same - and that means the Official practice materials will also essentially cover the same material in the same style that it appears on the Official GMAT. This is all meant to say that using study materials that are even ten years old at this point would be fine.

Before I can offer you any additional advice for your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far? What “brands” of CATs/mocks have you used?
3) On what dates (or approximate dates) did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Contact Rich at: [email protected]

GMATmona07 · Answer

Very well explained & clarified my doubt.
Thank you so much  bb   MartyTargetTestPrep   EMPOWERgmatRichC  for your help.

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Older vs. newer questions on GC

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