GMAT Strategy

Hi there! I currently started preparing GMAT. I've done some research and I'm kind of struggling in deciding which books to buy. I bought the Official Guide and I think I will finish all the exercises by the end of next week. My aim is 700+, I'm working full-time on GMAT and I've got 4 more weeks left. My plan is to finish the official guide, buy a couple more books to improve the parts in which I feel weaker and then do as much practice tests as I possible. Thus, I've heard that the Manhattan advanced books are pretty useful. But my question is the following: to what extent do they differ from the OG? Are there a lot of different types of questions that I won't find in the OG? Also, according to your experience, is my plan reasonable?
Thanks

first thing first
let me assume that you know all the basic
which means you are done with concept
1)quant
2)data sufficiency
3) sentence correction
4)critical reasoning
5)rc you can manage with official guide

see og gives you question to practice but that doesnt tell you which rule they are asking and they get the answer following which concept

so completing OG without going through basic especially for Sentence correction it will be hell of a task
my personal suggestion get hold of good basic book for sentence correction download Manhattan sentence correction
and still finsih this before you hit Official guide
all the best god willing you will hit 700 and even more

It is generally the other way round that i have seen : People do Manhattan Gmat books first and then attack OG. Reason being that mgmat books contain a lot of theory, basic to advance and then give tricks for DS problems which u can apply while solving OG.

Since u have already done OG , i would suggest u to sort of the areas you are weak in. And buy books for those . Manhattan has 6 books for quants.
One for SC which is really good.
For CR i would suggest doing CR powerscore bible. It does in depth analysis .
RC in my view is only about practice, reading theory doesn't help much, you can search up for RC articles on this website.

After Doing all this theory if u still feel the need to work out more problems , you can buy the Verbal Review and Quants Review from GMAT. They have a few tougher qns than the 12th edition of gmat. Its better to practice from offical material.

In my exp i have seen that its not the quantity of the problems you do. Its the quality. You can just do 10 problems from OG and do in depth analysis and learn more from that as compared to doing 100 with out analysis.

And then also you have GMAT prep cat which is closest to the official qns.
Apart from gmat prep the only other cat i feel whc is close to the offical test is Manhattan cats.


Hope that helps.

You can search in the resource section for many study plans and choose what fits u the most.

Good luck

Thanks for the quick replies.

amising6
Well, my basics can be summarized to the theory provided by the OG and the FlashCards from BtG. So far I've done most of the Quantitative questions in the OG and I feel quite positive about the results I've gotten. Is there a big lack of theory in the OG regarding the quantitative part?

amising6 + shalzz9
As you suggested I downloaded the Manhattan SC Guide. This book has 78 pages compared to the 296 that the real book has. Is it enough with the guide or should I buy the whole book?

I will also follow your advice and buy the CR PowerScore bible.

Thanks a lot to both!

The Manhattan Sc guide that is floating around in the internet is an older version.

I have not read the new 4th edition, but i hv heard that the 4th edition is really good, It might be worth buying.

As of Powerscore CR i think there are copies of it on the internet too, may be u can search for it.

The Quants in OG are simpler than what you find above the 700 level, but the OG does give a good base from which you can build on.
If you are really good at quants and are confident then u can skip the other books.
But u feel u need to work more on it do try the manhattan number properties it has amazing theory and tips.