GMAT Strategy

I found that both Manhattan or Veritas offer books which are very similar in the content. I have not personally gone through them, so have no saying on the actual contents.

1. Would it be recommended to go for either of Manhattan or Veritas?

or

2. Is it recommended to go for a mix of both, some from Manhattan & some from Veritas?

Appreciate a response, as I'm yet to fix on book/course to start my preparation.

Thanks, Piyush

Though I have not read all books from MGMAT, but I have SC guides from MGMAT and thats awesome. Even MGMATs Number Property and Geometry books are great. I would recommend you to go with MGMAT only.

Don't mix resources. First complete MGMAT and then start with OG. I am sure that after MGMAT you won't feel that you need any more resources.

BTW, don't miss to visit this forum as you will get best questions from all prep companies here..

sumanr84 appreciate u response bro.

Thanks,
Piyush

I've used both. I can tell you that Veritas RC, CR 1 and CR 2 are better than Manhattan's RC and CR guides and its not even close really. I would suggest that you mix books. The Veritas books I would get are: CR 1, CR 2, RC, advanced word problems, data sufficiency, geometry, and problem solving and statistics. The Manhattan books I would get are: Number Properties, Equations Inequalities and VICs, and Sentence Correction.

Good luck.

osirus0830 wrote:I've used both. I can tell you that Veritas RC, CR 1 and CR 2 are better than Manhattan's RC and CR guides and its not even close really. I would suggest that you mix books. The Veritas books I would get are: CR 1, CR 2, RC, advanced word problems, data sufficiency, geometry, and problem solving and statistics. The Manhattan books I would get are: Number Properties, Equations Inequalities and VICs, and Sentence Correction.

Good luck.

I would love to read your reviews of these books!

uwhusky wrote:

osirus0830 wrote:I've used both. I can tell you that Veritas RC, CR 1 and CR 2 are better than Manhattan's RC and CR guides and its not even close really. I would suggest that you mix books. The Veritas books I would get are: CR 1, CR 2, RC, advanced word problems, data sufficiency, geometry, and problem solving and statistics. The Manhattan books I would get are: Number Properties, Equations Inequalities and VICs, and Sentence Correction.

Good luck.

I would love to read your reviews of these books!

I'll write reviews on them in this thread later today or tomorrow.

Thanks osirus0830 for ur suggestion.

I would be waiting to read ur review on these books.

Thanks, Piyush.

Veritas Prep Reading Comp:

This guide I think is the best book on RC you can buy. The book teaches you how to read each passage. How to approach RC in an effective and engaged manner. The book teaches you to read the passage so that you can answer all primary purpose questions without having to go back and read the passage. From there, the book describes the 6 RC question types you will encounter on the GMAT. The book also includes 90+ RC questions so you can practice the methods that you learned. The passages are really good and do a great job mimicking the logic and style that you will encounter on the GMAT.

Veritas Prep Critical Reasoning 1 and 2:

I think the real value of these guides is that they essentially teach you how to attack each Critical Reasoning question type and they present the material in a simplistic way. I think the main problem with the Power Score CR bible is that it is almost too much. I think these two guides provide you with all of the information you need to drastically improve your CR, but they present the material in a more manageable way.

Veritas Prep Advanced Word Problems:

I think this guide is a must have for anyone that wants to score a 49-51 on the GMAT. The book has 134 tough word problems, ranging from tough VICs problems to tough Combinatorics problems. This guide will throw almost anything that you would see on the GMAT at you. Going through this guide will just increase your comfort level with word problems.

Veritas Prep Problem Solving and Statistics:

This is the best guide for stats on the market. It goes above and beyond just teaching the minimum that you need for the gmat. The guide explains how to calculate standard deviations. Even though, the GMAT doesn't require you to know how to calculate this, I found it helpful because it really expands your understanding of the concept. This is very valuable for the DS stats problems where you have to attack them with a more conceptual approach. By having a more thorough understanding of stats, you can approach these stats problems with confidence. Additionally, this book is also a great resource for additional word problems. This book in conjunction with the Advanced Word Problems guide will provide a great base for attacking most of word problem that you will encounter on the exam.

Veritas Prep Data Sufficiency:

This book was very helpful for high lighting the tricks that GMAC uses in data sufficiency problems. The book teaches you what traps that you're looking for and how to approach DS problems so that you don't fall for one of the many traps that the test makers like to set. The book provides great practice and really gives you over 90 DS problems to practice identifying the traps that they teach you to look for.

Manhattan GMAT Number Properties:

I think this book does the best job for teaching number properties. It teaches everything from divisbility, exponents/roots, consecutive integers, and remainder theory. The advanced chapters of the book are difficult to understand but if you take the time to understand them, you will be positioned well to kill the math section.

Manhattan GMAT Equations Inequalities and VICs:

This book is great for learning how to attack inequalities, how to manipulate equations, and how to approach VICs problems. Each chapter has 15+ problems so you can make sure that you have a thorough understanding of each concept. I think these topics are some of the more difficult concepts on the math section and this book gives you the understanding that you need to attack any problem involving these concepts.

Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction:

This guide is great teaching you all of the grammar that you need to learn for the GMAT. It is very thorough and even has advanced chapters that deal with the more difficult concepts. I think this book is a must have, the only thing I will say is that it doesn't really focus on word order or sentence structure, and you will have to have a great understanding of this in order to fully master Sentence Correction.

Great reviews! Can you elaborate more on what you said about Powerscore's CR Bible having too much information.

Sure,

Its a great book. It goes above and beyond in terms of the information that it provides. The danger though is that it presents too much information. For me, I knew most of the information in the guide, but I wasn't always sure of how to apply the information, just because it was too much. If you don't have that problem and can handle processing large amounts of information with ease, then you can't go wrong with the powerscore guide, but I think the veritas guides presented the information in a more practical manner and it gave me an approach for each question type. Let me know if you have any other questions.

I may be rejoining you next week, haven't decided yet...lol

What's the hold up, don't you want 760?! =)

I am moving on from verbal I think tomorrow or Friday, I am kind of just lingering around verbal for not sure what. But I am pretty solid on the subject now, so when you come back, I'll be around quant by then.

Are you guys preparing on your own?

Would these books (except OG) still be required if I join an online course?

Thanks,
Piyush

Good discussion here.

piyushk wrote:Are you guys preparing on your own?

Would these books (except OG) still be required if I join an online course?

Thanks,
Piyush

OG is for practice only. It is not a strategy book.

osirus0830 wrote: I think the main problem with the Power Score CR bible is that it is almost too much. I think these two guides provide you with all of the information you need to drastically improve your CR, but they present the material in a more manageable way.

+1, despite reading so many rave reviews I found this book to be overwhelming. Sure, it does an amazing job at analyzing each question type, but it's a complete overkill imo.

I read both the Powerscore CR Bible and MGMT's CR book. I found MGMT CR book to be much more useful b/c it presented everything the Powerscore bible did but in a much more concise manner. However, I found the strategies in the MGMT to be way too time consuming. Their 'chart method' is a really good idea, but there's no way I could use it on every CR problem and still finish the test in time.

In the end...
I used the MGMT book to understand how to identify the correct problem, but I used my own hybrid method for making notes.