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Average Customer Rating:

Excellent book, got me a 760

Customer Rating:

I saw this book at the bookshop *3 days* before my GMAT and spent the entire weekend with it. The book helped polish my analytical as well as passage reading skills. My final score is 760; I would guess that without this book I would not have gone beyond 720 and might have stalled at 700. It is also a little wistful to think of what I could have scored had I got it two weeks earlier. But enough about me; the book is meant as additional preparation for someone who has already read a "normal" preparatory book. In my case I read Barron's, it does not really matter which you have. All problems except essay questions are tackled here. The problems are a bit tougher than the ones you get on a typical GMAT and you may be surprised at frequently getting the answers wrong initially (this is not good 3 days before the exam!). But going through them will give you a solid preparation for whatever ETS throws at you. Everything - logic problems, passage reading, sentence correction and mathematical questions - are quality material. If you are serious about getting a high score I would recommend checking this out at your local bookstore. Again, do not read this before having already finished an initial preparatory book (and doing well with its problems).

A little silly, but worth it and easy to power through it quickly

Customer Rating:

I had done a bunch of studying before this book (beginning with Princeton Review, then "math workout" books by Princeton Review and GMAC, methodical plowing through the official guide, and even some surreal time spent with crazy Barron's GMAT prep). This was just what I needed to regain some humility a few weeks before taking the test. The questions are indeed hard and I got a lot of them wrong. To me, that was a really good thing. You can lull yourself into a false sense of security with the other books because they are geared for 600-650 scores. Don't get me wrong - those are good scores - but if you are determined to break through 700 then you need a book that will light a fire under your rear. The reason I say this book is silly is because throughout the book it has these tips that use the language: "An 800 test taker recognizes..." or "An 800 test take is able to..." To me, that's a little corny and insane. But after you start to feel a little bored by the other books, give this one a try. You can get through it in very little time (the type is big and the margins are wide) - even though it's thick, it goes very quickly.

Very good tool if you need a high score

Customer Rating:

I agree that the questions in this book are harder than average. It's quite useful understanding all of the questions and solutions in this book if you need a good score (700+). If you aim for 600 then Princeton review or something equivalent might be sufficient for you. I took the test 5 years ago and got 600 (75th) so I knew what I was up against and had done all the OG 10th edition questions before. This time around my goal was 90th+ percentile (690), but I had very little time to practise, about a month and max 10 hours pr week, as I was busy studying Mandarin at an intensive program in Beijing. My strategy for achieving the score I needed: - Study with the hardest questions. - Understand why you fail. Do the questions that you got wrong again in the following week to make sure you know why you did them wrong and how to do them right. - Try to find more than one methodology to solve each question. After each practise-test, go through all the exercises again, this time with no time-limit. The purpose is to find better methods of solving the q's you got right, to understand why you got some wrong and how best to solve these questions. You especially need to focus on remembering the correct/smartest methodology (perhaps do a couple of questions of each type), but I'd say it's best having a repertoaire of 3 or more methods for each type of question. - Multiple choice is a game of odds, so you need to perfect your techniques for guessing in case you get questions you cannot solve easily and quickly, or if get stuck. 1) Use POE/process of elimination (I did it on a piece of paper during the test - very useful), especially on CR and SC. 2) Plug in on PS questions where it can save you time. These two methods definitly helped me increase my score. - Practicalities: Check out the center before test-day to reduce stress come test-day. On the test day: take the breaks and try to clear your mind before commencing the next part. My practise test results (after I had done all the exercises in the Kaplan 800): - Princeton 1: 670 Q43 V40 (a year and a half before the test) - Kaplan Diagnostic: 650 (2 weeks before the test) - Kaplan 1: 550 Q33 V31 (1 week before the test) - Kaplan 2: 570 Q31 V36 (1 week before the test) - Powerprep 1: 680 Q46 V38 (1 week before the test) - Kaplan 3: 560 Q32 V35 (5 days before the test) - Kaplan 4: 550 Q32 V33 (3 days before the test) - Princeton 2: 640 Q34 V44 (3 days before the test) Notice that my scores were not improving. I got 710 on the test, perhaps I was lucky given that my practise test results were not on that level. But I still think it should be possible getting 750 with more practise. Overall I'd say I couldn't have gotten the score I got without using the Kaplan 800 or a similar tool, not sure whether other alternatives exist on this level of difficulty though.

The Best!

Customer Rating:

If you know you are a high scorer - look no further! I am an engineer, and I had very limited time to study (2-3 weeks). I worked only on verbal as I figured I had the math covered. I almost cancelled the test because I thought I screwed up the verbal. I finished with 5 minutes to spare, and I had only easy questions the whole way through the test, so I figured the CAT was not giving me hard questions because I had gotten so many wrong. I wound up with a raw score of 47 on the verbal - where a 44 is the 99th percentile! The questions in this book were so much harder than the actual test that I couldn't believe it! My best piece of advice is to stay loose. I was so focused on getting every question right on the math that I got hung up on several questions and ran out of time at the end. I wound up getting 49 score/90 percentile on the math, which I thought was my strong suit! If I had cut my losses and guessed on the hard question on the math, I would have done much better. On the verbal, I 50/50 guessed on many answers since I wasn't so focused on getting everything right. YOU DON'T NEED TO GET ALL THE ANSWERS RIGHT TO DO WELL! My final score was a 760. I'm sure I would've gotten 790-800 if I had not wasted time on hard questions on the math.

If you bought the regular Kaplan book, DON'T BUY THIS

Customer Rating:

This book is not good. It repeats many of the questions from the regular Kaplan GMAT prep book. I bought both books together to study for the GMAT but I found neither of them very good. The official GMAC book is extremely good ....the questions are tough and thorough....if I had more study time I would have bought all three of the regular GMAC books. I ended up getting a 740 on the GMAT but it wasn't due to Kaplan, my score was great because I bought the real test-takers study guide.