Those materials sound good, with the one caveat being that I suggest buying all e versions, as the process of making paper is fairly destructive in both physical and karmic terms.rahulzlpr wrote:Hi Marty,
I want to score high to get into one of the top B schools. I will be starting my preparation in Jan-Feb 2016 and appear for GMAT in June. Now after going through a lot of these forums I am thinking of using Manhattan strategy guides (10 books pack) and the Official guide review for my preparation. I will be adopting a self study approach since I am more comfortable with that apart from the fact that it will be hard for me to enrol in a full time course given my professional commitments. Kindly give your feedback on the above (including the study material) and emphasise more on how to use this study material effectively to get the maximum results I.e. Targeting a score around 750.
As far as using them goes, the most important thing to remember is that you have a goal in mind, and it's not to be able to recite all the rules in the Manhattan guides. The goal is to rock the test, which is like a big reasoning game. So what you are looking to do here is learn to play a game, and the OG and the Manhattan guides are just tools you have to help you in that process.
So the thing is not to just study those books to learn what's in them, but rather to use what's in the books to improve your game.
With that in mind, one thing to be sure to do is take practice tests regularly. That way you get practice playing the game and you get a sense of how good you are at the game and what you need to work on to get better at the game. Some people suggest taking a practice test right at the beginning of your preparation. I prefer preparing for a week or two, getting a general sense of the test and some of what's on it, and then taking your first practice test, all sections.
As you go along, much of what you do should be determined by what you see on the practice tests both in terms of questions and in terms of results.
The best practice tests are the GMAT Prep tests, as you have probably figured out by now. Another option that's pretty good is PowerPrep, available here. https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/resources I find those tests pretty useful. The only thing is that there is a lot of crossover between the PowerPrep tests and the Official Guide. So if you are going to use them, you are better off using them early, so that you have not already seen many the questions that are on them. It's great to have those PowerPrep tests though. Also via buying the guides you would have access to the Manhattan tests. I mean there is something about playing the game repeatedly that is really helpful. You get used to the timing, the need to focus, the relentless parade of questions, and you get into it like a kid who plays the same video game over and over and just keeps scoring higher and higher.
So preparing is partly about playing the game, and with that in mind, if you are running out of questions, another type of resource you could use is online questions banks. There are various companies that have them, companies such as Grockit, Magoosh, Veritas and BellCurves. For quant, I particularly like the BellCurves question bank, which can be broken down into categories and contains thousands of questions. You just go to their GMAT section and set up a practice account. Veritas also has a free question bank, with decent and cool quant and verbal questions. Whichever online questions you use, you can get some great practice by doing them.
Here's one thing about practicing. People are concerned with timing and also they often use the timing as an excuse to finish working on a question. So they practice doing question after question, giving themselves only two to three minutes per question, and then if they don't get them, they go to the explanation. What's wrong with that? Often they never learn to get them right. You need to learn how to get right answers to rock this test, on which there won't be any explanations to go running to. So when you are practicing, often it makes sense to spend ten, twenty, or more, minutes on a question, to get used to DOING WHATEVER IT TAKES to get right answers. That's what you need to learn here, how to take what the GMAT gives you and use it to get right answers. That's the bottom line. That's what you use the guides for, the practice questions for, the tests for, getting better at getting to right answers. Nothing else matters.
By the way, the Official Guide is not that great a help as far as giving you the best ways to get answers. What you can do is come to the Beat The GMAT forums and look up OG questions or post them and see how the experts, the gamers, on this site answer the questions. That's a great way to learn some cool ways to play the game and to get a sense of how to approach things.
That should pretty well cover you for now. As you go along, you can post more questions related to specific challenges you are experiencing.
Also, for some more ideas, you could check out this post and article in which I further discussed my personal strategy for preparing for and rocking the test.
https://www.beatthegmat.com/rocked-the-g ... 82365.html
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/05/ ... rty-murray
Have fun playing the game.