Verbal/Quantitative Review and Official Advanced Questions

[PrashantS209]

I am a GMAT Interact student. Do you recommend we use verbal/quantiative review and official advanced questions after the prep through GMAT Interact is over? If so, is there some guidelines on how Interact students might incorporate these books in the study plan.

[StaceyKoprince]

I don't think the Verbal and Quant Review OGs are as useful as other official products—so I don't recommend those, no.

The Advanced OG has some very nice problems—I would use those if you are scoring at a level that makes those problems useful to you. On the quant, I'd be looking at scoring about a 45 (or higher) before using that resource. For verbal, I'd say something like 37-38 or higher.

I would do these in mixed (random!), timed sets. This article talks about how to set up mixed sets for yourself:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2017/01/14/practicing-sets-of-gmat-problems-mimic-the-real-test-part-1

(Note: The article begins by talking about what people should do early in their studies. Just keep reading until you get to the level / stage that you think applies to you. )

GMAC also has some online products—two free practice tests (definitely use) and four paid ones (maybe), an online problem set with both Q and V problems (better than Verbal Review and Quant Review, in my opinion—so this is a good option for doing mixed sets at lower difficulty than the Advanced OG), and what I think is their absolute best online product for quant: GMAT Focus. (I wish they had it for verbal, too.)

GMAT Focus gives you an adaptive problem set of 24 questions (so a little shorter than the real thing)—so it's a great way to get truly test-like adaptive practice without having to take a whole practice test. It gives you a scoring range on the two-digit scale for the quant section—like a predictor of where you'd score if you took the real test right now—and it tracks your timing per question (and gives you that data after). The problems in the tool are also very high quality. (And that's not just my opinion—their old chief psychometrician told me before he retired that they were really careful to pick extra-high-quality problems for that product to make sure that it gave a good prediction of expected test results.)

It's also their most expensive product on a per-question basis—so you have to factor that into your choice. But I think it's a great product.