OG GMAT 2017 Review: GMAC needs to address several issues

The Official Guide for GMAT Review 2017 brings incremental changes to the main official GMAT guide. The guide remains a must have for any student preparing for the GMAT, and is a good starting point towards serious GMAT preparation. However, if you have any of the past three editions of this guide, then there is no need to purchase this edition. The changes are incremental and previous editions will be sufficient. Instead, I would recommend students to spend money on additional GMAT resources such as GMATPrep Question Pack 1 and Exam Pack etc. The 2017 guide has 15 percent new questions and they are consistent with the existing style and format of the test, meaning no radical changes.

The rest of my critique is targeted at GMAC and is intended to encourage them to make some longstanding changes that are now past due for the Official Guide. If you are a student preparing for the GMAT, then these are irrelevant, and you would be fine picking up any of the recent edition of the Official Guide and sticking to studying. All of my comments below are relevant only to the quantitative portion of the guide, as that is the area that I focus on.

Here is my list of issues with the last three or four editions of the Official GMAT guide:

Obsolete and inappropriate diagnostic test: The diagnostic test in the Official guide has been the same since its introduction in the 11th edition of the GMAT. The diagnostic test for quant consists of 48 questions, 24 each in the category of problem solving and data sufficiency. Almost all of the questions are on the difficult side, and this ends up scaring students who are just starting out preparing for the GMAT. My long standing recommendation to students is to ignore this diagnostic test. The test is too difficult and does not serve the purpose of a diagnostic test, instead it ends up creating fear in students who are just starting out. A proper diagnostic test should consist of questions that range in difficulty level from easy to hard. Also, it would be helpful if the diagnostic test gave students a rough estimate of their initial score. I believe GMAC has the knowledge and tools to improve the diagnostic test, it is just a matter of getting it done. Some might argue that the full length practice tests in the free GMATPrep software should serve as a better gauge of an initial diagnostic test. However, I don't like subjecting students to a full length computer adaptive test early in their preparation. Most students end up doing horribly on GMATPrep in their initial stages, and it just causes more stress than getting any meaningful data from it.

Drop all older GMAT questions: The current official GMAT guide consists of about 30 percent questions that are from the old paper and pencil format of the GMAT test (more than 20 years ago), and the questions are of lower average difficulty and do not accurately reflect the current content on the GMAT test. These questions are now outdated and should be replaced with GMAT questions from recent administrations.

Remove overlap with GMATPrep Exam Pack 2: There is one question in the 2017 Official Guide (Data Sufficiency # 278) that is also found in the GMAT Prep Exam Pack 2. This question needs to be removed from the current official guide, because it can bias the score of students who encounter this question in their Exam Pack 2 practice tests.

Remove overlap with GMAT Focus diagnostic tests: There are several questions in the current Official Guide that also pop up on the GMAT Focus quantitative diagnostic tests. Here I have done the work for GMAC and listed these questions, all they have to do is to ensure that they don't appear in the 2018 GMAT guide.

Problem Solving: 88, 194

Data Sufficiency: 333, 340, 344, 365, 367, 370, 371, 382, 384.

Organize questions in increasing order of difficulty: GMAC claims that the questions in the official guide are in increasing order of difficulty. This is broadly true, however there are plenty of questions that do not follow the trend. I am certain that GMAC has the detailed statistics of each question, for example the percent of students that answered a particular question right, and they could easily use that data to rearrange the questions by correct difficulty level. My feeling is that they have simply been lazy in doing the necessary work. Here are some questions that are of high difficulty level and should be closer to the end of each section. I have given a list of representative examples below. Almost all of these problems are GMAT questions from recent administrations, meaning over the last six years or so.

Problem Solving: 64, 81, 102, 113, 122, 129, 134, 142, 151, 153, 155, 158, 171, 177, 195, 198, 202, 210

Data Sufficiency: 299, 303, 328, 333, 348, 350, 384

I hope that GMAC will take a note of these suggestions and make the necessary changes to ensure that the Official GMAT guide stays relevant to the GMAT test takers.

And finally, I have also posted free video explanations to all of the quantitative questions in the Official GMAT guide 2017 at this link: https://www.gmatquantum.com/official-gmat-guide-2017/

Cheers,
Dabral

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