Study material 3rd edition vs 5th edition

[7ariri]

Hey,

I'm starting to study for the gmat using the 3rd edition mgmat books set of 8. Is there a big difference between the 3rd edition and the latest 5th edition, or are they fundamentally the same albeit the question at the end of each chapter for the respective OG books (11 compared to 13).

I know that the guide related to critical reasoning has had changes in methodology and I don't have the guide related to IR. But other than that, will the 3rd edition be a good tool to prepare for the gmat?

Appreciate the feedback.

Thanks ...

[g_bethanis]

On a similar note, a friend told me that the previous version of MGMAT Quant strategy guides (the ones which were updated for the 12th edition of the official guide) were many pages longer than the 5th edition Quant strategy guides.

So my question is, why has that happened? Has the GMAT reduced the required subject matter? I am sure there is some good reason.

[StaceyKoprince]

The 3rd edition is sufficiently old enough that I'm uncomfortable saying "go ahead and use it." 4th edition is closer to 5th, but not 3rd so much. (To give you an idea, it has been more than 5 years since the 3rd edition books were published - if you're concerned about cost, you could try looking for used versions of 4th or 5th edition.)

Re: older quant vs. newer quant - the overall volume of material is still the same actually, but (for 5th edition) we moved topics around between books, and we also moved a decent amount of material from one of the 5 main strategy guides to the Foundations of Math Guide (FoM is now 200 pages longer than it used to be!). So some books are fatter and some are skinnier, depending on how we reorganized - but it's all still there.