The Official Guide for Gmat Review (Paperback)

~ Educational Testing Service (Author), Ets (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Official Guide for GMAT Review is the only study guide on the market with real--though retired--questions from old GMATs. Published by the Educational Testing Service and the Graduate Management Admission Council (the organizations that administer the GMAT), this book is an excellent guide to the kinds of questions likely to appear on your exam--because they've appeared on exams already.

The book begins with an overview of the exam itself, brief descriptions of the different types of questions, and a list of skills that each question type is designed to measure. A very thorough review of the math skills you'll need for the exam is followed by chapters on problem solving and data sufficiency, as well as individual chapters on the three types of verbal questions. Each of these chapters includes strategies for doing well on the exam, hundreds of sample questions, and explanatory material for all the questions. The chapter on the analytical-writing-assessment (a.k.a. "essay") portion of the exam includes all 180 possible questions as well as guides to the standards used in judging your responses.

This book is not intended to provide "shortcuts" or "tricks to fool the ETS"--many others on the market can do that for you. It does, however, provide hundreds of actual GMAT questions. As a result, The Official Guide for GMAT Review is an excellent supplementary tool if you're serious about preparing for this major exam. --C.B. Delaney

Product Details

• Paperback: 524 pages
• Publisher: Educational Testing Service; 9th edition (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446396389
• ISBN-13: 978-0446396387
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #188,966 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you're serious- buy this book!, March 3, 2000

By A Customer

While the book is no help in brushing up on math, and the questions on the archaic floppies are the same as those in the book, if you want a better score, get this. While Princeton Review and Kaplan are great for re-learning your math, they can only approximate the questions on the GMAT, and they can be confusing.

This course is excellent because it ggives you real questions. This prepares you mentally for the GMAT, and is an excellent tool for your last week of studying. Also, becuase the format is the same as the real GMAT, you won't stress about anything on test day.

Some warnings: do the test on the disks (it's the same as the book, and gives you valuable practice on taking the computer test); don't try to learn the math from the meager review; and do one essay question (the software is so primitive, you have to get used to it!).

Also, this course accurately predicts your GMAT score (it hit mine on the nose).

44 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The most important book to buy, but still *NOT* enough!, May 24, 2000

By	TestMagic Inc. (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In a word, this is a great book!

We use this book as the basis for our GMAT preparation--we require all of our students to do all of the exercises in this book before they take the test.

This book has LOTS of practice authentic practice questions. There is no substitute for official GMAT questions--the questions in the practice books are just not the same. Many of the practice books have mistakes and address topics that are not really related to what you will see on the GMAT. It is very easy to doubt these questions and to find fault with them. However, official GMAT questions are not like that--you will almost never be able to find fault with them.

However, this book has MANY problems--it is not a perfect solution for GMAT preparation. Some of the questions are too easy, especially the math questions--many of our students have said that the questions on the real test are much harder than the ones in the book. Many TestMagic students can get over 90%ile on the math section and they think the math in this book is too easy.

Moreover, the explanations are hard to understand--they are written for college professors! It doesn't make sense--obviously, if the questions were difficult for you, you need explanations that are easy to understand. These explanations are written in the same style as the reading passages--not very helpful for many people!

In fact, many of our students quickly finish this book and need more. Unfortunately, there are no other good materials available. This book is not enough.

Finally, some of the reading passages are shorter than the ones on the real test. We actually called ETS to complain about this and we were told, and this is a quote, "Well, we were just trying to give people an idea of what the test was like." In other words, the reading will be about as hard as the hardest passages in this book--prepare yourself!

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Review ''Official Guide for GMAT review", January 16, 2000

By A Customer

In my opinion the content of the book only partly lives up to the title. I bought this book as preparation for the GMAT test, as I was convinced that the questions would be very similar to those in the actual test. Having made the test I believe that the verbal section of the book does represent the actual test level. However, the diffulty level of the quantitative section is significantly lower than the level in the real test. The mathematics review which is included in the book is quite good and straightforward, although it doesn't teach you the 'quick' tricks.

All in all, I believe the level of mathematics is misrepresented in the book. The powerprep software doesn't help either, as these sample tests are straight copies from the book. What it does teach, is working under time constraints. I got a high score, but I believe this was more related to my highschool and university prep. work than to the book. I suggest to either buy Barron's or the Princeton review to make up for the quant. section.