I always urge our students to consult GMAT Official guide for their GMAT test. The reason for this is straightforward; an official guide will offer practice questions that are taken from actual past tests, and hence they are incredibly effective at preparing you for the real thing.
For GMAT, official guides are published by GMAC, the organization that administers the GMAT test, are the best GMAT prep source. They have various guides to help you prepare for the test, but today we will be looking at their “GMAT Official Advanced Questions” book.
In this Article
What is GMAT Official Advanced Questions?
GMAT Official Advanced Questions is a relatively new offering by GMAC and is meant to take your GMAT practice to an advanced level. Let’s be clear from the get-go about what this book is about.
If you are a complete beginner looking to learn GMAT topics from scratch, this book is not for you. You will not find conceptual lessons or basic strategies. However, if you have already prepared for the GMAT using a study guide such as Manhattan GMAT and have done substantial practice, preferably exhausted all the other GMAT Official Guides, to the point where you find the usual practice questions easy, then this is the perfect practice book for you. In fact, I recommend that students only use this book if they are consistently scoring around 650 on their GMAT mock exams and they now want to improve their score to a 700+. That is all this book is, a GMAT practice book with hard level questions.
What sets this book apart from other books is due to two reasons. Firstly, GMAC has the authority to use their authentic GMAT questions from past exams, and hence you get the most accurate practice questions possible. Secondly, nearly 50% of the questions are new and do not overlap with any of the problems encountered in GMAC’s other official GMAT books or mock exams.
Hence, if you have used GMAT official guides before this book, don’t worry; you will find a lot of new questions.
What does the GMAT Official Advanced Questions book offer?
As previously said, this book is the official choice for high achievers. When you have exhausted all the GMAT Official Guides, taken a couple of official GMAT mock tests, then this book is what you will get.
The book offers 300 challenging questions, half of which are verbal and the other half quantitative. You will also find detailed answer explanations for all the problems in the book.
The breakdown of the questions is as follows:
- 67 Problem Solving
- 83 Data Sufficiency
- 50 Reading Comprehensions
- 49 Critical Reasoning
- 51 Sentence Correction
The questions are carefully handpicked from past exams, and only the most challenging questions have been added to the book.
Upon purchase of this book, you will also be provided access to an online question bank and a mobile app so that you can easily continue your study even on the go.
The book also provides strategies to solve challenging questions by reviewing answer explanations from subject matter experts.
100% authentic GMAT questions
There is no other book in the market that can come close to official GMAT questions’ quality. The most common problem amongst third-party books is that their practice questions are either too easy or needlessly complicated. They just can’t seem to get the balance right. However, in this book, all the questions are actual GMAT questions, and there will be no surprises for you on test day.
The most challenging practice questions available
I have studied many GMAT prep books, and no book offers questions on the difficulty level found in this book. A common problem with third-party books is that to make their questions more challenging, they sacrifice the attention to detail and subtleties seen in the actual GMAT questions. These can be an absence of context clues or other nuances that give GMAT questions their unique status. This book doesn’t do that. Sure, the questions are challenging, but at the same time, they don’t lose their standard format.
Online question bank and mobile app
You will find a code inside the book, which will let you access an online question bank. The online question bank contains the same questions as the book but makes them more accessible. Plus, you don’t need to carry the book around as you can simply log in to either the website or the mobile application and start practicing.
Excellent verbal explanations
I found the verbal answer explanations to be evident and helpful. The explanations layout all the context clues and other subtle hints that you might have missed in the questions giving you a better understanding of how to read and interpret GMAT verbal questions.
Bottom line
GMAT Official Advanced Questions is a perfect choice for those looking to leave no stone unturned when it comes to GMAT prep. If you want to achieve a 700+ score and have exhausted all other practice material, then buy this book.
The included questions are high-quality and handpicked to be extremely challenging. The explanations are detailed and take you through the various steps on how to approach the problem.
This book is an excellent choice for high-achievers, and no other book offers the same quality and difficulty.