The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 11th Edition

Review:By RG

This book, coupled with the Official GMAT Verbal and Quant Review Guides (by the same company, GMAC) is enough to give you a thorough understanding, of the type of questions that can be expected in the GMAT and the reasoning needed to answer them correctly. I found the reasoning provided with each answer, especially useful. Another nice thing about these books is that the questions are arranged in increasing order of difficulty. So, if you find some questions very easy, just jump a few questions forward. The only setback with these books is that they do not give detailed explanations in the 'concepts review sections'.

You will need to turn to other books/websites to get tips and tricks for the exam. I recommend Princeton for this purpose: The Princeton guide gave me very clear and effective test taking strategies that helped me a lot. I highly recommend NOT USING Kaplan, especially to take practice tests. The scoring is very tough, and you are tested in areas that are absolutely unnecessary for the GMAT. Also, very low scores on these tests are discouraging. I highly recommend taking the two Powerprep practice tests available for download from the GMAC website. These tests consist of 'retired' GMAT questions, and are very much identical to the actual GMAT. Your scoring on these tests would be identical to your actual GMAT score.

My practice scores are as below (in chronological order):
Powerprep Test 1: 630 (35 days before my GMAT)
Princeton Test 1: 650
Kaplan Test 1: 600
Princeton Test 2: 670
Princeton Test 3: 700
Princeton Test 4: 720
Kaplan Test 2: 530 (One day before my GMAT - Very, very discouraging!!)
Powerprep Test 2: 750 (One day before my GMAT)
Powerprep Test 3 (Reinstalled): 760 (with some repetitions from Powerprep Test 2)
GMAT: 750 (Verbal 40, Quant 50)

My GMAT Prep consisted of lots and lots of practice, analysis of my practice test results, and noting down where I erred, and making sure that I did not repeat my mistakes.