Newest Official GMAT Study Guides Released

Written on 09/30/2009 , 02:24 PM

I am very excited that we have launched the next of our new, second editions of The Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review and The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review. With new questions, updated answer explanations and a new publisher to help us get the books in places that make them easier for you to find, the books—and access to the books—are better than ever.

What I like best about the launch of the books though, is that I get to read the opinions of everyone who discusses the books on book-seller sites, blogs, and Facebook pages. When I work with the team to develop the book, we start with you in mind. We want to give you the best material we have available to help you prepare for the exam. Quality is important to us, but so is meeting your needs. So I like to hear from you what works, what doesn’t, what you’re worried about, and what you really don’t need.

Preparing for the exam can be an anxiety-ridden process. I’ve been there—I sat for the GMAT exam and went to a full-time business program. Once I sat for the exam, even though it was 10 points off of the score I was striving for, I decided I was never going to go through that again. It was two months of studying, research, more studying, interviews, and intense decision making—in one word: STRESSFUL.

Then I was hired by GMAC to manage marketing and development of our test-preparation products five years ago. I couldn’t believe I was now working for the company that at one point I perceived as my arch-enemy, the roadblock to my future, the gate between me and the rest of my life.

I see that same anxiety, the same questions, the same stress in your questions and comments. You are striving for success, trying to do even better than your best in order to achieve your goals, whatever they may be. I hope that in some measure, our guides and other test-preparation products can ease that stress. We may be the owners of a high-stakes and challenging exam, but in the end, we’re a team of 135 very dedicated people who care about education and our customers.

So check out the latest edition of  The Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review and The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review today—get some extra practice and be as ready as you can be for your test appointment!

(There’s a new edition of The Official Guide for GMAT Review this year, too—order your copy today!)

 — Allison Riley, Associate Director, Product Management


Comment

Koraljka de Carina said:

I have a hard time with the sentence correction and reading comprehension. I am attending a prep class and preparing on my on. I get lost with the sentence correction. I don't know where to begin. Can anyone offer some good tips how to tackle this?

October 4, 2009 6:27 PM

Natalee Evans said:

Please let me know the best GMAT book I can use to study for the exam. I am using the Kaplan right now but don't like the quantitative section.

October 5, 2009 3:35 PM

Victor Manuel Gonzalez Gorrin said:

Dear Sirs/Madam

Please confirm whether there is a typo on Page 167 for answer to Q11 of the Quantitative Review Book Edition 2.

Thanks

October 8, 2009 3:40 PM

Victor Manuel Gonzalez Gorrin said:

Hi Natalee

I bought all 3 Edition 2 GMAT Official Guides (Review, Quant and Verbal)and they are brilliant.

October 8, 2009 5:49 PM

Allison Riley said:

Koraljka,

The diagnostic test in the Official Guide for GMAT Review will help you get a feel for where your scores range in each of the sections of the GMAT exam, and the answer explanations will give you feedback on what you got wrong and why.

Sentence correction, of all the sections, focuses the most on English grammar rules.  Chapter 9, the Sentence Correction chapter, has a 4-page section on basic English grammar rules, that will give you guidance, but if you are really getting stuck, it might help you if you found a local tutor for more difficult concepts. To get even more practice with Sentence Correction problems, The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review is completely dedicated to the verbal component of the exam and includes 113 additional sentence correction questions that are not in The Official Guide for GMAT Review.

Finally, using the free GMATPrep software will help you guage your progress. You can use the 2 free tests as a way to see how your studying is helping you reach your goal.

October 12, 2009 1:53 PM

Allison Riley said:

Natalee,

The best book to start with for studying for the GMAT exam is The Official Guide for GMAT Review. It is the only book on the market that uses questions from past GMAT exams, so you know the questions are authentic. There is a comprehensive diagnostic test at the beginning of the book that will give you guidance on your strengths and weaknesses. From there, you can begin your studying with the topics that are most difficult.  Additional practice on Quantitative questions can be found in The Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative review, which has 300 questions that are not included in the main edition.

If the quantitative section is the area you are most concerned with, a GREAT place to start is GMAT Focus.  GMAT Focus is a quantitative-only diagnostic tool that assesses your answers to 24 quantitative questions and breaks down your weaknesses not only by section (problem solving versus data sufficiency) but also by question type – word problem versus straight math problem, algebra versus arithmetic. It will also analyze how long you are spending on questions so you can work on your timing, and there is also an option to track the questions you are guessing on to see if you are guessing accurately. GMAT Focus is computer adaptive, so it also gives you an estimated score range and you can take up to 4 assessments without seeing repeat questions.

October 12, 2009 1:54 PM

Allison Riley said:

Thank you for your excellent question. Because the GMAT is an adaptive test, people see different sets of questions. Scores are not based on the number correct. Rather, scoring is based on the difficulty of all the questions that a person has seen, whether the person got each of those question right or wrong, and the number of questions he or she answered. The scaled scores (0 - 60 for the Quantitative and Verbal sections and 200-800 for the Total score) are transformations from your performance on the Quantitative and Verbal Sections. These transformations are designed so that the scores represent the same ability level over time. A 550 in 2009, for example, represents the same ability as a 550 did in 1997. Because of constantly increasing ability of GMAT test takers over time, today’s mean is higher than in past years and percentiles that correspond to each score has changed.

October 12, 2009 1:57 PM

Angela Isaza said:

This year, none of your new books come with a CD. Is there any particular reason for it? I found the CD helped me to adjust my speed to to the one required by the GMAT test in order to increase my chances of success.

November 3, 2009 5:07 PM

Ritesh Sinha said:

Hi,

Can somebody suggest me a book for Quants please?

December 28, 2009 12:47 PM

Copious-Systems said:

Someone referenced this post to answer question "Help!! Math word problem! i need to know this answer in 2 hours?"...

December 1, 2010 10:17 AM

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