Customer Reviews

Equations Inequalities and Vics GMAT Preparation Guide (Manhattan GMAT Preparation Guides)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

I really liked the book as it looked pretty new.. also quick shipping..
Happy for purchasing from this seller..

If you manage to get through all the questions in this book you will undoubtedly improve your quant score. Very Good! I used the manahattan GMAT materials and was able to get a 720 without the aid of any classes.

This and all the other Manhattan GMAT guides were really helpful in helping me prep for the GMAT. My colleagues had recommended them over other guides and I continue to do the same after getting the score I needed on my first try.

I have an engineering background and I strongly suggest others with a similar one not to buy this book. I could complete this book and all of its 'exercises' in an hour. All it does is repeats very basic math knowledge which I bet you will not forget even after 50 years from now. All in all bad book for GMAT Equations, Inequalities, & VIC's preparation. Now I have look for ways to sell this book which I bought two days ago... any buyers? not a scratch on the paper and is all in mint condition.

"Very good for the target audience" - I think this sums it all. If you are someone who has not done active maths for some time now, and therefore does not remember the concepts involved very well, this is the book for you. This I will say holds true for most of the books of the Manhattan Quant series.
The Manhattan Quant series books cover the concepts only to the degree that gets asked in the GMAT, and do not overwhelm you.
Plus, as each of the Manhattan books then turns to the Official Guide for practice, each of the books has a section where the appropriate questions for that topic are numbered from the OG. They also detail the toughest of the lot from OG. Here I think the book is useful for anyone, irrespective of the personal comfort level with maths.
Therefore if you are true to yourself and practice the questions marked from OG as you go along, this would prove to an excellent resource for cracking the quant part of the GMAT.

This series was a waste my time. They provide long and cumbersome techniques to answering mathematical problems. If one was to do well on the gmat exam they need to practice quick and easy techniques to answer the questions adequately. In my opinion this series needs to review their approach.

Quantitative section on the GMAT can be a little tricky, even if you were pretty good at Math in your high school or in college. Why? Because the skills tested on the GMAT are different than the one you acquired in high school or college.

I am an engineering major and I took multiple advanced Math courses in my college and yet, I benefited from the Manhattan Review quantitative books.

Of course, like with everything else on the GMAT, you need to practice a lot so you will benefit from this book only if you have sufficient time to practice. If your GMAT is in a week's time, this book is probably not for you.