Customer Reviews

Fractions, Decimals, & Percents GMAT Strategy Guide (Manhattan Gmat Prep)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I self studied and scored a 770 on the GMAT. Here are my thoughts on the Manhattan GMAT Fractions, Decimals, and Percents GMAT guide:

===== OVERVIEW =====

The Manhattan GMAT Fractions, Decimals & Percents guide is the second quant guide of the series of 5 books edited by Manhattan GMAT. The title of the book pretty much sums it up with regards to the content being analyzed. You'll see a theoretical review of the famed part-to-whole relationship in quant, in its three well-known forms: fractions, decimals and percents. Since the concepts that are discussed are not difficult and regularly encountered in day-to-day life (for instance, opinion polls are presented using percents), the book is probably the easiest in the series. As such, it is only recommended for those whose quant is pretty rusty.

The Fractions guide follows the now familiar two-part structure, with one basic-intermediate section and one more advanced one. The first part contains 60 "in action" problems, while the second features 23 such questions. These "in action" problem types are similar to Problem Solving questions, except that the authors do not provide answer choices: you are supposed to figure out a value on your own.

===== PROS =====

*Thorough review of the topics advertised in the title, from the basics and all the way up to more challenging problems involving symbols for operations or digits

*The book is ideal for someone who hasn't had math practice in a while

*You get a decent number of practice items per number of pages, but your main resources for practice are the The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 12th Edition (you'll find lists of "to do" problems at the end of the two sections)

*Comes with access to 25 online questions and the 6 Manhattan GMAT tests, some of the most accurate in the industry (supposedly second only to GMATprep tests, those developed by the makers of the GMAT)

===== CONS =====

*Not well suited for those who have had regular exposure to basic math, because the concepts presented are among the simpler ones. It provides an interesting counterpoint to the exhausting "math marathon" that is the Number Properties guide (the first in the series)

*Data Sufficiency is not sufficiently covered (a shared issue of all the Manhattan guides). The focus is almost strictly on reformulating Official Guide problems. I would have loved to see some DS practice problems written by the authors

*Very few challenging problems, mainly because the topic in itself is not difficult. Could have used more problems on symbols and last digits

===== BOTTOM LINE =====

The Manhattan GMAT Fractions, Decimals & Percents guide is not the book for you if you're looking for more advanced practice or theory. It's also probably best to focus on other guides of the series if you're pressed for time. Since problems rarely test the concepts in this book exclusively, I think you might get enough out of simply working through the The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 12th Edition. If, however, you find it hard to work with concepts involving the part-whole relationship, this book will definitely help.

About me: Dana Jinaru, 770 GMAT scorer, expert at Beat The GMAT - a community serving 1.5 million+ MBA applicants each year

I completely disagree with the other review, and if you do your research you will certainly come to the conclusion that ManhattanGMAT's books are a fantastic resource for the GMAT. While they are not necessarily a substitute for the class, they cover the material in great detail and include access to various practice problems online and 6 computer adaptive exams. You will most definitely need them for practice if you want to do well. The books are structured around content, not tricks, and are thus meant to teach the material from the ground up. I thought they were extremely useful. Raised my score from 630 to 740.

This book can be valuable to those who never did well in grammar school and high school arithmetic or to those whose rudimentry math is extremely rusty. The book covers the simplest portion of GMAT quant section(fractons, decimals, percents). As its name implies, this book covers mostly rudimentry arithmetic which is sure to bore many GMAT takers.

I have found only 7 questions which I personally found somewhat challenging. Worse yet, the real GMAT questions are signficantly (but not substantially) more difficult than the questions presented in this book.

Still, this book provides valuable review of arithmetic. I was going to grant this book 4 stars but the explanation of the answers were really dumbed down to those who would have trouble with rudimentry arithmatic. Given that I could solve most of the problems in this book in my head, I have found book's advocacy of grids to solve basic arithmatic problems to be counterproductive.

"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 book covers well the concepts and has several advanced exercises of this part of the Gmat. Buying the book, you will have access to 6 online GMAT tests. The online tests are really good and come with detail explanations. The level of the questions in the online exams is higher than in the real exam.

The Manhattan series was the most helpful for me on my GMAT because other GMAT prep books only shows time saving or test taking tips but does not go into details about the various topics which I needed because I don't have a strong quantitative base. In fact, I didn't know even the basic idea of number properties or even odd plus odd is even (must have been asleep in math class) and so these guides were a must for me. Except for the critical reasoning guide, I give them all five stars +++!

Too bad I found these guides too late (just 2 weeks before the exam) and by the time they arrived in the mail, I didn't have time to do any of the practice exercises but I still managed to improve my score from 500 to 640 from just skimming through these guides. 640 may not be a high score, but for someone who didn't know what a cube root is two weeks before the exam, these guides sure did a good job getting me up to speed. In my situation, these guides were heaven sent.

If you're really good with math then they might be too easy and too basic for you. Even then, they would still serve as a nice 'refresher'. They are short and concise and it only took me about an hour or less to skim through each and so they are pricey if you're just using them for a quick review. But if you don't know math like I don't know math, BUY THEM ALL!!! THEY ROCK!

However, their critical reasoning gmat guide did not go into much detail than the chapters of other verbal gmat prep guides out there and so I did not feel it's price was justified at all! The other guides costs lest than this guide and covers all the verbal topics and comes with tips as well. It also arrived after my exam date so I returned it.

I bought for and sent it to my nephew in the old country. He is thrilled.

Perfect for re-learning and reviewing on the basics. Very thorough and great as a crash course for all those basic number properties.

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

I didn't take a class, but I have alot of friends who have and have used the Kaplan book and practice tests in addition to the Manhattan. Manhattan prep material and tests are head and shoulders above Kaplan. My only wish is that I had started with the Manhattan series and not even worried about Kaplan. Kaplan may have the brand name, but the fact that Manhattan focuses only on the GMAT shines through. The material goes wayyy more in depth, and it really leverages the other best source of practice material you have, the Official Guide (it has a great feature called rephrasing that references the OG problems directly to give data sufficiency help. It almost makes so much sense that it seems obvious but ingenious at the same time. Why not use the actual old test problems provided by the GMAC as much as you can?).

I wasn't going to buy the whole series but was so impressed by the first book I used (Sentence Correction), that I bought a couple of the quantitative prep books. I was so impressed by those, that I ended up buying all the rest of them. I can not stress enough how much more focused and useful this material is than Kaplan. When used in conjunction with the Official Guide, you have everything you need to break 700.

The things these books provide make so much sense as the best way to prepare, that it makes you wonder why everyone else doesn't do it. My guess is that Manhattan benefits from a focused business model of limiting itself to the GMAT. If you're not looking to score that well and only need to practice some and get used to the questions, the Official Guide is enough. But the Manhattan series is also nice in that it allows you to pick and choose the certain topics you need extra help with. Also, by only buying one book, you get access to six practice tests that are very difficult and provide invaluable information in its readouts of your performance (much more detailed and useful than Kaplan's. Hate to keep hating on Kaplan, but it's the only thing I have to compare to. It's not horrible really, it just pales in comparison to Manhattan. I think of the Kaplan material like I think of McDonald's, very well-known but pretty junky. It'll fill you up, but you won't feel great afterward...)

I've never taken the time to review any items on Amazon.com before, but I have been so impressed with this product that I felt compelled to let others know about it.

Don't waste your money on a class, get the Manhattan series instead. You'll save over a thousand dollars and be better prepared as well!

Good luck!