32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply the best out there, March 30, 2006
This stands true for all 7 Manhattan GMAT books. Are they a bit more expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. I've had both Kaplan and Princeton books, CDS, other books, and I always felt they fell short. Other books focus on teaching you relatively complex strategies to save time, but ignore the fundamentals. Problem is, you can show me a million shortcuts, but if I don't remember how to solve the problem, the shortcuts only get me to a wrong answer faster.
The Manhattan method addresses fundamentals directly. If you don't remember Geometry, thats fine - Manhattan will teach it to you again, ground up. Have trouble manipulating fractions? Again, manhattan will go over it from the ground up - while showing you a few speed tricks - but the focus is on the fundamentals, not just some "tip". Their philosophy is that if you don't remember the fundamentals of a specific subject, you can't possibly be expected to get the question right - speed tip or no speed tip. The method in which they cover each subject is also helpful. Typically, they introduce a concept, then show you how that concept applies with one or two sample questions, then build on that initial easy question and show you another piece of the puzzle, then again, show you with sample questions. Its very much of a building block mentality - step by step. Understand what an integer is first, then understand a fraction, then understand how to manipulate fractions, then understand different properties of fractions, then combine fractions with exponents and learn how to manipulate those, and so on. By the end of each chapter, you'll end up seeing more challenging problems. I also appreciate that the books really start from the bottom of a topic - the first page of a chapter is typically so basic that you will skim it ("what is an integer") - but in areas where you might be weak, that first piece may actually be very helpful.
The material is also laid out in a much much clearer fashion than most other books which tend to lump huge pieces of the exam together. Each book contains several chapters, each chapter on a very specific section of material. At the end of each chapter are a list of specific questions from the Official Guide 11th edition and the verbal and math supplements that test exactly what was in that specific chapter. So, after reading about, say, manipulating inequalities, you can go practice on ten or twenty or thirty practice questions that specifically address exactly that subject.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only series of books that ties their own strategies and lessons to specific questions in the Official Guide in this way. The huge advantage of this is two fold: One, because you test your understanding immediately by focusing on exactly the right kinds of questions, you can quickly figure out if you "get it". Second, if you later want to come back and do practice problems of a specific kind because you need to review, it takes all of 3 minutes to find the right page in the book and you have a huge section of practice problems straight from the official guide to go back to. This was one of my frustrations with previous books - finding a specific kind of question that I wanted to practice on was often tricky because the competitors don't segment the content as finely. Other books tend to lump this material together and you have to wade through hundreds of questions on similar material before you find the two or three questions that test exactly what you were looking to practice. On the other hand, if you are having problems with volume questions, you can find practice problems in the Manhattan books that specifically point to EXACTLY that kind of problem. Or, if you have trouble with rate problems, again, you can find exact practice questions that test exactly that. As a result, the Manhattan books save you time - and a lot of frustration. This is particularly the case as you get closer to the exam and you begin to want to review very specific portions of the material.
Also, note that they cover every single question in the official guides. If you do all of the chapters in all seven books and complete all questions listed in the back of every chapter, you will have done all 800 practice questions from the Official Guide and all questions from the verbal and quantitive supplements. In other words, they don't cherry pick the questions to make you feel good. You will do everything from the easy to the hard.
In addition, each chapter contains 15 practice questions that are not multiple choice (so you can't just pick numbers or back-solve). This forces you to really learn the material again rather than simply looking at a problem and testing out answer choices.
As with most books, the focus is on the quantitive side, but the verbal books are the only ones I've read that actually provided tangible help. One of the most amazing strategies you will read about is how you DONT read those long reading comprehension passages. I started using their strategy - haven't read a whole reading comprehension passage in weeks, and I'm getting 85 to 95% of the questions right - as opposed to 50 or 60% (the book explains why this is often the case). Not only that, but if you don't have to read 70 lines of text three or four times on an exam, you easily add 10 minutes of extra time to all the other questions.
In short, buy this book set. Buy the official guides, and you will do fine.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not worth it., February 23, 2008
This review is from: Equations Inequalities and Vics GMAT Preparation Guide (Manhattan GMAT Preparation Guides) (Paperback)
I don't think that this book is any better than the mathematics fundamentals covered in Kaplan or Princeton Review.
It is a waste of time and money.
Atleast they could have given numerous questions to practice.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
