GMAT Official Advanced Questions Book

Question

I purchased GMAT Official Advanced Questions Book 2 years ago, but have done roughly half of all the questions inside. Since I believe that OG questions are more important, I do not really bother about ensuring to master all the advanced questions because I observe that there are too many exceptions that will distort my understanding of the 600-650 level questions if I have to remember all the exceptions and forget the fundamentals I have learned so far,

So here I am wondering, do the questions in OG book and the Advanced book differ fundamentally? Because I did see a few SC rules and CR rules exceptions that need to be considered to tackle the Advanced questions.

Second, is it necessary to go through the advanced questions once you master and get 90% out of all OG questions and questions from Official Practice Tests correct in order to get more than 700+? I have been wondering on this question quite a while because I did see roughly 20% of questions in the real exam that are similar to the advanced questions in terms of difficulty, 60% of those are somewhat similar to 700 level questions from OG and 20% of those are 600-650 level questions. I guess maybe we should treat 700 level questions as medium level questions? Do you guys who scored 700+ gone through and tackled all the questions inside the advanced book? And I wonder what level is the question in the advanced book? 750 or 800 level?

I appreciate all the opinions on this topic.

Thank you.

bb · Answer

Hi. This book was published about five years ago and people have been scoring 750s for the past 30 years before that. So I don’t think you must have this book or solve it. I’m sure it will be helpful for you to practice but there are many roads that lead to the same result.

Similarly, if you practice these questions, it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed a certain score either. 😇

I would say if you need extra practice, absolutely use it and if you are done with your prep and ready to take the test, then I wouldn’t bother

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GmatKnightTutor · Answer

May be worth checking out the Share GMAT Experience sub-forum to see what others have used to get 700+.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi amirsaf1.

The questions in GMAT Advanced range from medium to hard level, and the questions you'll see if you're scoring 700+ on the GMAT will all or almost all be medium and hard level questions. So, the difficulty of the questions in GMAT Advanced is comparable to the difficulty of the questions you'll see on the GMAT.

Regarding the exceptions in GMAT Advanced you mentioned, a key thing to understand is that the GMAT does tend to include questions different from those in the OG or on the official practice tests. In other words, there will be exceptions on the real GMAT as well. So, you need to get accustomed to seeing all kinds of different things going on, not just straightforward or common patterns.

In fact, one problem that people often run into when taking the GMAT is that the questions do things they aren't expecting and they don't know how to handle the questions.

So, I recommend practicing with as many different questions as you can to prepare to handle whatever the test presents.

IanStewart · Answer

It's honestly a bit of a strange book. Some of the Quant questions aren't hard at all, and some are so dissimilar to any other official questions I've ever seen that they're probably not even worth studying (i.e. there's almost no chance you'll see something similar on a real test). But of course there are a lot of good questions too, and a lot of hard ones -- it just would be a mistake to think that the questions in that book give a fair representation of what high-level GMAT questions are like in general. There's a lot more variety on the real test than a short book like that can convey. Many of the Verbal questions are very old as well, and the GMAT has evolved a bit, so some of the SC questions, for example, will emphasize things that aren't important on the contemporary test.

So I don't think the book is essential (and as bb says above, lots of test takers got high scores before the book even existed), and I would not recommend the math section to someone scoring below Q45, and would not recommend the Verbal section to someone scoring below V35 (there are other official resources that will be more useful to those test takers). But if a test taker is scoring well on diagnostics in one or both sections, and has the time to use the book, it will be a better option than any prep company material, especially for Verbal, and in that case it will be a useful supplement to the other official books and question packs. I'd just be sure to also do the hard questions from other official resources to get a more complete picture of what high-level questions are like.

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