It’s hard to tell from the photo but the height, literally, of my GMAT study books is approximately 9 inches or 22 centimeters tall.
You may have noticed at the top of the stack I have an old Kaplan book that I purchased in 2007 when I was first considering taking the GMAT. Many people had lukewarm reviews for Kaplan’s materials and I tend to agree with them. Kaplan’s content review sections were slim at best and some of their sample questions were not well written.
The majority of my study materials are Manhattan GMAT books followed by the Official Guide books. This is pretty much what is prescribed when taking their courses. There’s definitely a larger ratio of Math content here, but I feel this is a good balance for me because Math is my weaker subject.
I feel I’m well covered, but what other books / publishers would you recommend for someone looking to get 700+?
Nice stack you got going there… Mine looks very similar maybe even larger.
The first book I would highly recommend that I do not see in your pile is the PowerScore GMAT Sentence Correction Bible. This is a great book for doing well on the sentence correction. It has helped me a lot in refreshing my verbal skills.
Another book I would recommend is the Kaplan Mastery Practice (LSAT course book). This is great for CR. However, I was lucky enough to have a friend who had this book from taking Kaplan’s LSAT class and was finished with the book. The reason I recommend this is that the CR questions on the LSAT are far more difficult. The book has the different CR questions split all the way up to five star questions. On the GMAT you would only run into at the hardest a two star question in the Kaplan book. So what I did was I practiced out of the LSAT book and went all the way up. I just did make the transfer to GMAT type CR last week and I have been crushing them. If you cannot get your hands on the Kaplan course book maybe look into some other LSAT CR review books. Maybe you can find someone out there though that recently took a Kaplan class.
I cannot prove what I say with a score because I have not taken the GMAT myself either. I am also in search of the 700 level. I have been studying since May and am now just practicing time, etc. I have been meeting with a tutor and will be taking the test in the beginning of September. If all goes according to plan I will post on this site my detailed study plan since May.
Tip: become involved in this site, I have not had the chance but wish I had started way earlier. This is my first post actually. Hopefully more to come!
Great tips Chas – I’ll definitely check those books out!