After practicing GMAT for over a month now, mostly using the official GMAT book, I purchased the on-line simulation tests of Manhattan GMAT. I am wondering whether anyone else noticed the difference in quality between the official verbal questions and those of GMAT. Whereas, for the official GMAT questions, I always understand why I made a mistake, for the Manhattan questions I mostly don't understand why I am wrong at all, even after reviewing the explanation. Maybe this is because the Manhattan questions are much harder, but anyway I don't feel like I am making good practice on the verbal part with them...

Quantitative is good though...

Anyone else feeling the same on this?

Monne

Not sure how happy Ron would be to read this!

The thing about the official guide is that while it has real questions (used in actual tests), most of its questions tend to be on the "easier" side-give the test though, and you will feel cheated, because the questions are harder.

I guess Manhattan is trying to avoid (by deliberately preparing tougher questions) that feeling that students get when they see the test-"Hey, this sort of a question was never a part of OG".

Specifically for Verbal: GMAT will give tougher questions-no doubt in my mind about that (I "did" the OG 5 times) and still got a low score. Also my score was far lower than what I used to get in GMAT prep tests (My scores were 690 each, in Prep 1 and 2), and I scored 620 in Manhattan's test. I was pretty positive that I will at least cross the 650 mark-but I didn't.

So my suggestion to you would be to use the OG for pattern recognition-as in, develop the way GMAT test makers think. Manhattan's CRs are a bit "off the tangent" at times, but the trainers do well to explain official questions.

In summary:
-Use the OG as a "guide", not as a bible
-Try to do tough questions as well (70% of the questions you practice should be 700-800 range; let's face it-that's where you'd want to be-handling the toughest questions in the real test. And you get tough questions only when you solve the preceding ones correctly)
-If you come across Manhattan's questions that seem "out of syllabus", don't ignore them. In the real test I had a question that had something to do with area of a pyramid-something that I had never seen in the official guide or even in old ETS tests. So nothing, is beyond the scope as such. In the real test-you can't go back and complain (like I wanted to) "Hey, this ain't done. You didn't have similar questions in the study material".
-Last: practice hard. And good luck for the test.
:)

thanks for the observations. i think the best takeaway here is not to complain or to second guess the problems (either OG or MGMAT), but rather to learn everything you can from them..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor