GMAT Prep Course

I think this book contributed about 10% to my overall score. The most helpful books were Princeton Review and the OG and its supplements. The problem with this book is that it cannot be used as your main source of strategy because, well it introduces non-traditional methods as well as questions that are not very similar to the actual GMAT questions.Don't get me wrong, the exercises are very good, but I only used a portion of the book because I discovered this book late in my preparation.This book really has no strategy in the data sufficiency portion, which is far and away the more difficult portion of quant for everyone.Sentence correction is not that great either.Where this book shines is the math review (which is quite thorough), the introductory logic (great if you never took any logic courses), and the reading comprehension (which a lot of quant-heads fear).The most helpful part was the reading comp. This book is the first I've read and the only one that I know of that tells you that you need to understand the reading passage. There are two types of reading comp questions -- general/specific which any person of minimal intelligence can get right by sifting through the passage and inference questions which test your ability to understand the passage. If you cannot answer both of these questions, you will not score very highly in verbal. Inference questions separate the boys from the men. This book has some good reading exercises. The exercises are not geared specifically for the GMAT, but it does help you to improve your reading skills.

Basically if you would like to have good book which teaches you fundamental principles then it is a very good book. I did not like the SOFTWARE. But Math section is very good and very clear. If you are looking for some short cut then this is not the real book. But you would like to work hard and prepare for the high and medium difficulty questions then this is good book. But DONT buy this book for the software. For the software GMAT POWERPREP will be the best in my opinion.

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I used a total of five books in preparing for the GMAT: Barron's 13th edition, Petersons 2003 and 2004 CDs, Kaplan 2005, Nova's GMAT Prep Course 2003, and the Official Guide.I have taken the GMAT twice. The first time I used the Barron's book and the Petersons CD and scored a 40% on math, 75% on verbal, and a 4.5 on the essay for a total score of 570. This score was unacceptable.The second time around, I budgeted more time to study a day (around 6 hours) and for a longer time period (a month and a half). For me, I felt I had a strong background knowledge on all the required subjects, but I was not as honed on specific strategies and techniques for answering questions. My thoughts on each book:Barron's: As a beginner, I enjoyed this book. I read the whole book and did all practice tests. They did not explain probability, sequences, and progressions questions well. In general, the math explanations were a bit sketchy. However, the word problem explanations were the best out of all the books.Petersons: I just used the CDs and did not look at the book. After taking their adaptive practice tests, one is provided feedback which has questions divided into very difficult, difficult, etc. This is beneficial because you can see the level of difficulty at which you generally test. This is a really helpful addition that other CDs lack.Kaplan: My least favorite book and CD. The book had very poor explanations for test questions. The book only offered general guidance for taking the test and outline common strategies. The cartoonish CD just became annoying and took more time than it was worth.Nova: Far and away the best book. After reading reviews on various sites, everyone recommended Kaplan and Princeton Review, but no one mentioned this book. I found it by chance at the local book store. It covered everything on math and had exceptional, comprehensive explanations. Also, the drills after all chapters were very, very, very helpful. After doing all drills in Nova, the commonly considered difficult practice questions in Kaplan were almost a joke. I would recommend to anyone this book.Official Guide: A must to have for everybody taking GMAT. I did the last third of the questions for each section, which are typically more difficult.I recommend, in order from best to worst:Nova, Official Guide, Petersons CDs, Barron's, Kaplan.I recently took the test again and got a 96% in verbal, 60% in math, and a 690 overall.

Perhaps the book itself is a nice enough book on preparing for the GMAT, but the software on the CD accompanying this book has to be the worst ever designed for testing. And the online course (while looking slick) is pretty much a rehash of the CD. An example that I have given below is pretty much symptomatic of the software design.While doing one of the full-length tests, in the verbal section, I was answering the first reading comprehension section. After I spent about 2 minutes reading through the passage, I answered the first question. Instead of taking me to the next question about the same passage, it immediately took me to a completely new reading comprehension passage and asked me a question there! And this happened with all the reading comprehension passages. I am sure the GMAT is not a sissy test, but surely even ETS would not play with your mind by switching around passages like this.For those in my situation (I already hold a graduate degree and had about 4 weeks to study for the GMAT): get the Kaplan guide (with accompanying CD) and perhaps the Barron's guide. That may be all you need. However, I sincerely think you need more computer-based questioning than the full-length practice tests that most of these moron testing guides give us.

Bought this nova GMAT guide today,the paper quality is very bad,a sudden hand release over the page is enough to tear. But regarding the questions and answers,its simply the best,all answers are explained ,but when price is concerned, the page quality should not be looked into.

Pages quality not good,But for the money it demandsBang for the BUCK