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).
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!
There is absolutely *no* substitute for official GMAT questions, and this book has them. You will get a pretty good sampling of the kinds of questions that ETS has prepared for you to take the GMAT.
The big problem, however, is that this book is now getting old and ETS spends a lot of money updating their tests almost every day. In other words, this text is becoming outdated.
I talked to a higher-up at ETS and complained to him that the real GMAT reading passages were longer than the ones in this book. What did he say? He said, "Well, we just wanted to give people an *idea* of what would be on the test."
In other words, if you feel confident after acing this book, be careful--you might get something harder!
Unfortunately, there is *no* harder material available on the market right now. We should all pressure ETS to release more official questions so we can be better prepared for the GMAT.
Good luck on your test!
