GMAT Strategy

(Edit 3/23/: The full analysis is complete!)

Beat the GMAT Members,

ManhattanGMAT has recently published a complete and thorough analysis of the differences between all the problems found in the 11th and 12th editions of the Official Guide for GMAT Review.

To view the changes, visit GMAT OG 12th Edition: An Overview on our website.

Big Takeaways:

Not Radically Different: Only 1/3 of the questions are new!
Data Sufficiency Has Grown: 47% of the Data Sufficiency problems in the 12th Edition are new.
Transition to the 12th Ed. only when you are comfortable: Feel free to treat the 12th Edition as a source of additional practice, but know that you do not need to switch immediately.

Please post any comments or questions about the analysis below!

Best,

Thanks so much. This is very helpful.

I do have one question: how much advanced math is in the new section? I am looking for really tough combinatorics, series, etc. questions.

Kool stuff.

michael.dinerstein wrote:Transition to the 12th Ed. only when you are comfortable: Feel free to treat the 12th Edition as a source of additional
practice, but know that you do not need to switch immediately.

Thank you michael

Michael!!

***********Edited By BTG Staff********************************

There is no overlap between questions found in The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 12th Edition, The Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review, The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review, and GMATPrep®. The 300 new practice questions in the 12th Edition replace 300 practice questions from the 11th Edition. The remaining questions overlap.

https://www.mba.com/mba/store/productinfo?sku=1642949

I have the 11th edition , Quant Review and Verbal Review.I have my exam in about 50 days. My target score is 700+.

Is it worth buying the 12th edition?

Hi maihuna,

You replied earlier with:

maihuna wrote:Michael!!

How dumb your analysis can be, which shows new questions are from gmatfocus, see the following from mba stroe;

There is no overlap between questions found in The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 12th Edition, The Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review, The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review, and GMATPrep®. The 300 new practice questions in the 12th Edition replace 300 practice questions from the 11th Edition. The remaining questions overlap.

https://www.mba.com/mba/store/productinfo?sku=1642949

First off, I don't appreciate you calling our analysis "dumb", especially because we've had our Instructors on a very tight work schedule creating these documents for your benefit. In the future, you might want to phrase your question less negatively.

Also, I'd like to clear up your statement for the rest of the Beat the GMAT community. There has traditionally been overlap between GMATPrep and the 11th Edition for GMAT Review, and the copy we had prepared simply made the assumption that GMAC didn't update ALL of the questions repeated from GMATPrep. However, we did discover that this was the case, but accidentally kept the statement in the article. We have since corrected the error and the language to say "some of the new Quant problems can be found in GMATFocus™", which is true.

Best,

Hi visa1416,

In general, you should buy the 12th edition if you feel like the extra practice problems would help you study for the exam. Since your test is 50 days out, I think that's enough time to go through the new questions, especially if you've already exhausted a lot of the 11th edition problems. However, please note that buying the new edition is not going to be essential to your success - just think of it as an extra book of practice problems.

Best,

hi michael,

wow , thank you very much for your information. I am student of Tate Shaefer (NY based instructor). I recently bought 12 th ed and confued whether to practise or not ? coz i sceduled my exam on April 6th. Now i can practise new ones without wasting much time...

MGMAT rocks.....

thats a fantastic effort.

hats offf

indeed good review. thank you

visa1416 wrote:I have the 11th edition , Quant Review and Verbal Review.I have my exam in about 50 days. My target score is 700+.

Is it worth buying the 12th edition?

I went out to Borders today and bought a copy. It cost $40 but I paid since I didn't want to wait for delivery. I have taken a good skimming through most of it at this point and here is what I thought (Michael please tell me if I am off):

1.) The content tested really doesn't change too much (i.e., not new questions that are a different type of concept than 11 OG).

2.) There are some new questions but plenty of old ones too.

3.) The layout (i.e., order and thoroughness of explanations) is about the same.

Good analysis by MGMAT.I am taking my test on March 31.I have already exausted OG-11.I am going to see these 300 new problems as additional practice for my test.300 new questions before the test is really a great bonus for me..

Vijay

michael.dinerstein wrote:Hi maihuna,

You replied earlier with:

maihuna wrote:Michael!!

How dumb your analysis can be, which shows new questions are from gmatfocus, see the following from mba stroe;

There is no overlap between questions found in The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 12th Edition, The Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review, The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review, and GMATPrep®. The 300 new practice questions in the 12th Edition replace 300 practice questions from the 11th Edition. The remaining questions overlap.

https://www.mba.com/mba/store/productinfo?sku=1642949

First off, I don't appreciate you calling our analysis "dumb", especially because we've had our Instructors on a very tight work schedule creating these documents for your benefit. In the future, you might want to phrase your question less negatively.

Also, I'd like to clear up your statement for the rest of the Beat the GMAT community. There has traditionally been overlap between GMATPrep and the 11th Edition for GMAT Review, and the copy we had prepared simply made the assumption that GMAC didn't update ALL of the questions repeated from GMATPrep. However, we did discover that this was the case, but accidentally kept the statement in the article. We have since corrected the error and the language to say "some of the new Quant problems can be found in GMATFocus™", which is true.

Best,

I am sorry to all. I definetly meant to write something else. But no excuses, its an mistake and I am sorry for it. I found I cannot update my earlier post. If it is doable it is great, please let me know.

regards

Hi V16,

In response to your post:

V16 wrote:I recently bought 12 th ed and confued whether to practise or not ? coz i sceduled my exam on April 6th. Now i can practise new ones without wasting much time...

I think that you should follow the course curriculum as close a possible and only use the 12th edition for additional practice IF you have the extra time. However, it might be a better bet to finish your course using the 11th edition and then if the GMAT does not go as well as expected, you can use the new questions in the 12th for another round of studying. At this point, though, it's most important to finish the course on the current curriculum.

Best,

Hi pJackson79,

In response to your questions:

pJackson79 wrote: (Michael please tell me if I am off):

1.) The content tested really doesn't change too much (i.e., not new questions that are a different type of concept than 11 OG).

2.) There are some new questions but plenty of old ones too.

3.) The layout (i.e., order and thoroughness of explanations) is about the same.

All of your assumptions are correct! The content is not that much different, there are only about 300 new questions (out of about 900 - a 33% difference), and other than that, things are pretty much the same. However, the proportions of some question types have changed, which is why we created the link above. If you want to get more into it, check out our 12th Edition Overview above and you'll get quite the detailed analysis!

Best,