OG vs QuestionBank1 vs OG Verbal/Quantitative Review

[Semusal]

Dear GMAT-Fellows,

I am planning to give GMAT soon and after starting with 620 benchmark score, I am going through MGMAT and OG 2015. I am sure by two weeks before test I will be somewhere near to 700 mark (exam at the end of May). I want to plan for last two weeks with difficult questions to make sure I score above 700. My question is:

1) I recently got OG Verbal/Quantitative Review from a friend. Are the questions in these 2 different than OG 2015? If yes, whats the difficulty catoegory?

2) To make the best use of time, should I spend last two weeks with QuestionBank of Verbal/Quantitative Review? Is QB worth investing? I can do either QB1 or V/Q Review.

3) Whats the best source of difficult questions which one can do in a week before test and that those questions are also like real GMAT Questions.

While commenting kindly ignore the Computer based environment as I have Kaplan/PR/Gmat Prep CATs to practice at regular intervals along the preparation.

Looking forward to your responses!

[ceilidh.erickson]

1) I recently got OG Verbal/Quantitative Review from a friend. Are the questions in these 2 different than OG 2015? If yes, whats the difficulty catoegory?

Yes, the questions will all be different than the ones in OG 2015 (or any of the big OGs). Those supplemental OGs just contain a different mix of real GMAT problems. The difficulty level and the mix of question topics should be roughly equivalent to that in the OG.

You don't need to use these, but they're a good source of extra practice, particularly if you're consistently getting in the high 600s or 700s on CATs and need more hard problems to practice with. In any of the OGs, there will be a mix of difficulty levels, so if you're a high scorer, the average difficulty of questions in the OG is much lower than what you'd see on the real test.

You should use the Mprep Navigator (which you may already have access to if you bought our suite of books) to search for problems by topic and by difficulty level, and to track your accuracy and timing: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/stor ... navigator/

2) To make the best use of time, should I spend last two weeks with QuestionBank of Verbal/Quantitative Review? Is QB worth investing? I can do either QB1 or V/Q Review.

There won't be much difference, really. They're all official problems. I'd recommend using V/Q Review guides rather than the GMATPrep question banks, though, because of Navigator. Mprep has more robust metrics, and answer explanations.

You shouldn't feel the need to "finish" any individual resource, though. Just a) do targeted problems in topics that need work, and b) do a series of random timed sets to build up stamina and pattern recognition.

3) Whats the best source of difficult questions which one can do in a week before test and that those questions are also like real GMAT Questions.

- use Navigator to find the harder questions in the OGs to practice with.
- if you're looking for a *serious* challenge on quant, check out the Mprep Advanced Quant Guide. Just note that many of these will be harder than all but the hardest problems on the real thing: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/stor ... mat-quant/

Good luck!

[Semusal]

Dear Ceilidh,

This book is already on my radar. I scored 47 in QUantitative with almost no practice. However My Verbal score was diasappointingly 28 (620/800 in total). I would appreciate if you could suggest a similar advanced verbal book. CR, RC and SC books are already in my shelf.

[ceilidh.erickson]

Hi Semusal,

We don't have an Advanced Verbal book, because quant and verbal don't really operate in the same way. I'm generalizing broadly here, but the heuristic is this: quant problems can get very difficult and still have an unambiguously right answer. Verbal problems cannot - or at least not in the same way. In quant (again, broadly speaking) you arrive at a right answer, then choose it from the answer options. In verbal, you are choosing the best answer from the options they give you, and there is always some degree of subjectivity of interpretation.

Or in short: it's very difficult to write an "advanced" SC problem for which grammarians would still agree on the right answer. For one answer to be discernibly right, it can't ever get too hard. At least not in the way that quant can.

But more to the point: if you're still scoring a 28 on verbal, you don't need an "advanced" verbal guide. You need a solid grounding in the basics. Start tracking your errors, and see where there are pattens in the kinds of verbal questions you get wrong. The SC, CR, and RC guides you have - plus an error log, and plenty of OG practice - should be sufficient to raise your verbal score significantly.

Good luck!

[Semusal]

Thanks a lot. I appreciate your response. I would continue with MGMAT Guides and OG plus Verbal Review if time allows.

[Semusal]

After finishing the MGMAT guides, will it be sufficient to just solve hte Questions at the end of Advanced Quantitative Guide? It has around 200 pages of theory and then come Workout Sets. For someone like me who has gone through all the Math Guides, do you think jumping to the Questions sets at the end makes sense? Or should I make room for the theory as well?

Secondly, any difference between teh two books? https://goo.gl/JKbsrP AND https://goo.gl/tX9aeK.

Looking forward to your kind response!

[[email protected]]

Hi Semusal,

It's been 3 weeks since your initial post in this thread. Have you taken any practice CATs since then? If you have, then how did you score? If you have not, then you should plan to take one soon. You should make sure to take your CAT in as realistic a way as possible (so take the FULL CAT - with the Essay and IR sections, take it away from your home, at the same time of day as when you'll take the Official GMAT, etc.). Once you have that score, you should report back here and we can discuss how best to proceed.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[ceilidh.erickson]

After finishing the MGMAT guides, will it be sufficient to just solve hte Questions at the end of Advanced Quantitative Guide? It has around 200 pages of theory and then come Workout Sets. For someone like me who has gone through all the Math Guides, do you think jumping to the Questions sets at the end makes sense? Or should I make room for the theory as well?

Our AQ book is broken into 2 sections: strategies & practice problems. It does not get into specific topic-related content (geometry, exponents, etc). Instead, it assumes that you already know the content, and gives you particular strategies that are applicable only (or mostly) to the really hard problems: how to test multiple cases in an organized chart, how to recognize when you don't need to test, etc.

You certainly don't need to read that strategy to do well. I would advise this: do a few of the practice sets, and see how you do. Then skim through the strategy sections and see if anything seems relevant to the questions you got wrong.

Just remember - the questions in the AQ book are harder than ones you'll see on the real test, even if you're scoring a Q50+. So you'll also want to include practice with OGs, GMATPrep question banks, or other sources to give you an accurate sense of your timing, etc.

Secondly, any difference between teh two books? https://goo.gl/JKbsrP AND https://goo.gl/tX9aeK.

The one with the black cover is the newer edition. We've added a lot of new problems and refined the strategy section since the 2011 edition, so I'd definitely get the new one.

Good luck!

[Semusal]

Hi Semusal,

It's been 3 weeks since your initial post in this thread. Have you taken any practice CATs since then? If you have, then how did you score? If you have not, then you should plan to take one soon. You should make sure to take your CAT in as realistic a way as possible (so take the FULL CAT - with the Essay and IR sections, take it away from your home, at the same time of day as when you'll take the Official GMAT, etc.). Once you have that score, you should report back here and we can discuss how best to proceed.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

I scored 630 in Kaplan with 4 in IR. I tend to have a careless beahviour towards IR which I intend to focus by the end of April. I am wondering how good/bad is 630 in Kaplan compared to 620 in Gmat Prep or PR?

[ceilidh.erickson]

I scored 630 in Kaplan with 4 in IR. I tend to have a careless beahviour towards IR which I intend to focus by the end of April. I am wondering how good/bad is 630 in Kaplan compared to 620 in Gmat Prep or PR?

At this point, if you've worked through all of the content guides, you should be taking a full practice test every week or two. One CAT in the last 3 weeks is not enough to be practicing time management, pattern recognition, decision-making, and stamina that the test requires.

What was your breakdown of Quant v. Verbal? I would recommend waiting until you're scoring at least a 45 on the Quant before you worry about practicing with the Advanced Quant guide. And I would worry about improving your Verbal score to get your overall score closer to 700 before doing any AQ.

All of the top companies do their best to replicate the style and scoring algorithm of the real test. There are some slight deviations (Mprep is known for being a bit harder in quant, and other companies for being a bit easier), but you probably wouldn't see a score that deviated by more than +/- 20 points. So regardless of exact accuracy, you're quite far from where you want to be.

So, put aside the AQ guide and take a new CAT! If you bought the Mprep guides through us, you'll have access to all of our CATs for free. If not, you can purchase an exam pack here: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/stor ... ice-tests/
Although I might actually recommend sticking with Kaplan, so that you can run assessments across several exams within the same company. That will be harder to do if you're using different exams from different companies.

Good luck!

[[email protected]]

Hi Semusal,

What were the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores on the 630 and 620? Assuming that those pairs of scores are similar to one another, then it's likely that you continue to 'see' (and respond to) this Test in the same general ways. To score at a significantly higher level, you will need to learn/practice some new Tactics. In addition, if you've actually gotten 'stuck' in the low-600s, then you will likely have to invest in some new non-book resources (since simply working through lots of additional practice questions has not yielded the improvement in score that you are looking for). Thankfully, a late May Test Date still gives you plenty of time to continue to study and improve.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[Semusal]

At this point, if you've worked through all of the content guides, you should be taking a full practice test every week or two. One CAT in the last 3 weeks is not enough to be practicing time management, pattern recognition, decision-making, and stamina that the test requires.

What was your breakdown of Quant v. Verbal? I would recommend waiting until you're scoring at least a 45 on the Quant before you worry about practicing with the Advanced Quant guide. And I would worry about improving your Verbal score to get your overall score closer to 700 before doing any AQ.

All of the top companies do their best to replicate the style and scoring algorithm of the real test. There are some slight deviations (Mprep is known for being a bit harder in quant, and other companies for being a bit easier), but you probably wouldn't see a score that deviated by more than +/- 20 points. So regardless of exact accuracy, you're quite far from where you want to be.

So, put aside the AQ guide and take a new CAT! If you bought the Mprep guides through us, you'll have access to all of our CATs for free. If not, you can purchase an exam pack here: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/stor ... ice-tests/
Although I might actually recommend sticking with Kaplan, so that you can run assessments across several exams within the same company. That will be harder to do if you're using different exams from different companies.

Good luck!

@ceilidh:
I did PR tests with just skimming through 'cracking the GMAT' and scored 600 (Q40/V33) and 620 (Q47/V29) respectively.

Gmat Prep1 also after PR book: 620 (Q47/V29). At that moment I realized I need Manhattan for deep understanding of stuff esp. Verbal. I did Kaplan Test Diagnosticve Test after MGMAT Quantitative books and score 630 (Q45/V32). Most of the mistakes in Quantitative are careless or time-panic mistakes, which I am sure will be solved as I practice more. I still have 7 full weeks.

I am nowadays doing MGMAT Verbal Series and will do 7 more practice tests (each every week) before the real exam (4 Kaplan and Gmat Prep2, plus Prep1 and 2 once more). I intentionally chose Kaplan to test the prep so that I introduce more variety of Questions other than MGMAT. In next 7 weeks I plan to cover MGMAT Verbal Guides, OG 2015 + Quan/Verbal Review Books and MGMAT Advanced Quantitative.

You are right to mention that the variation can't be that big and I need to focus on improving Verbal and time management.