Should we refrain from solving questions that are in older OG?

Question

I am writing my GMAT in a month or so, and what concerns me the most is that, through-out the course of my preparation, I have been using OG 16, 17 , 18 and 19. SOme of the questions are now obsolete and not available in the newer books? Are those poor quality questions? Should I not use them during my practice?

DisciplinedPrep · Answer

GMAC has discontinued a few questions from earlier versions of the official guides. That said, I believe that nothing comes closer to the questions available in the official guides. You can continue practicing questions from the official guides but make sure you practice under timed conditions. Also, you should religiously take the practices tests offered by GMAT Prep; make sure to review both the correct and incorrect questions thoroughly. All the best.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi darshak1,

To answer your immediate question - NO, the questions that were removed/replaced in those versions of the OG were NOT "poor quality" questions and you did not cause yourself any harm by working on those prompts.

Since you're getting close to your Official Test Date, you'll want to make sure that you are properly preparing for the Official GMAT, so you'll want to take each of your practice CATs/mocks in a realistic fashion (take the FULL CAT each time - with the Essay and IR sections, take it away from your home, at the same time of day as when you'll take the Official GMAT, etc.).

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?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs/mocks (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your goal score?
5) When is your exact Test Date?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
7) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi  darshak1 ,

The GMAC  tests  its questions  before  including them in the actual exam as live questions. There is some monitoring after that, but that monitoring does not extend to questions in the official guides.

The bottom line is that you can use those questions. They were almost certainly not dropped for quality issues. If you find anything that you feel doesn't fit with something in a more recent OG, you can always get opinions on it here.

IanStewart · Answer

The GMAT changed quite a lot more than ten years ago, when ACT took over test development from ETS. The Quant section notably became a lot harder (which didn't change scores, because you now have a lot more leeway to get questions wrong, but it changed how the test feels while you take it). At the time, the OG still was full of old questions, and they've gradually been phasing those out and replacing them with newer ones. So those newer questions are better, but if you've been using any fairly recent edition, it will contain mostly newer questions, so any recent edition of the OG will be fine. And there's nothing wrong with studying the old questions; they're good quality, but they just feel a bit more straightforward than what you see on the test these days.

Sometimes they've also phased out questions because of a shift in emphasis in what the GMAT tests. These shifts aren't all that important (or noticeable), but, for example, they've been steering away from testing idiom in SC, and steering towards testing meaning and logic. Changes to the SC section in newer editions of the OG will reflect that, though the older questions are still high-quality (and better quality than any questions you could use from a prep company).

If you were working from OG11 or some edition that old, you'd probably be a bit surprised when you took an official test, or a real test, by the style of questions you'd see. But if you're working from OG2016, say, you'll be fine, and if you need extra questions, you could always supplement it with OG2020, which shouldn't overlap much with OG2016. To anyone just starting their prep, I'd always recommend the most recent edition of the OG, but it doesn't really make a big difference.

bb · Answer

Many of the OG 10 questions have made their way to the GMAT prep software and that would be my biggest argument against using OG 10 as you may potentially inflate your practice scores and ruin a great tool (GMAT Prep). For example, about 30 SC questions in GMAT Prep overlap with OG 10. About 15-20 PS questions overlap as well. Not a huge overlap but sufficient to mess up a test.

In terms of what's tested - you can see some things that have been phased out. I agree. On the other hand GMAC has a very consistent retirement platters for old questions in the official guides. (Likely this will be of interest only to about five people here) but I’ve analyzed question overlap between the official guides going all the way back to OG 10. Here is a screenshot of the distribution of OG questions from OG 10 to OG 2019 (have not added OG 2020 yet). There are exactly 2 total questions that overlap OG 10 and OG 2019. (Other sections such as PS, SC, CR, and RC all look the same)

Attachment:

OG Question Evolution.png [ 114.13 KiB | Viewed 2707 times ]

Seeing such a consistent retirement pattern, makes me believe that the questions are phased out for reasons other than topics or materials tested. This is only my theory so I definitely welcome arguments and corrections if you think it points to the opposite. Anyone has a different opinion?

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi darshak1,

None of the questions from those books are obsolete, so I wouldn’t worry about that. More importantly, since your exam is in just one month, have you taken an official practice exam to get a baseline score? Also, what is your score goal?

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Should we refrain from solving questions that are in older OG?

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