A Great Way to Get Ahead in Life

Here’s the thing: if you’re looking for a book that will give you exactly what you need to know to knock down the inequalities (or any section for that matter) of the GMAT, you’re not going to find one. The GMAT isn’t THAT type of test. Think of it less like an AP exam and more like a Case Interview – something that gets better ONLY with practice.

That being said, IMO Manhattan GMAT prep books are the best of the best. They should not be your only source of study material – I’d also highly recommend the Offical GMAT Study Guides. But in terms of a 3rd party source, when compared to Kaplan, Princeton Review, Veritas, Barrons, Arco et al:

1. The solutions are accurate and well described

2. The problems are representative of those you’ll actually find on the GMAT (Kaplan and Princeton Review are nonsense!)

3. They’re compact in content.

If you’re going to spend the money, I’d also highly recommend the question banks online.

Summary: they’re not going to teach you everything, and will not, alone, be responsible for a 200 point increase (unless your math skills are THAT bad) but are a great tool for refreshing those math skills you haven’t used since 9th grade.
Rating: 4 / 5

The Manhattan series was the most helpful for me on my GMAT because other GMAT prep books only shows time saving or test taking tips but does not go into details about the various topics which I needed because I don’t have a strong quantitative base. In fact, I didn’t know even the basic idea of number properties or even odd plus odd is even (must have been asleep in math class) and so these guides were a must for me. Except for the critical reasoning guide, I give them all five stars +++!

Too bad I found these guides too late (just 2 weeks before the exam) and by the time they arrived in the mail, I didn’t have time to do any of the practice exercises but I still managed to improve my score from 500 to 640 from just skimming through these guides. 640 may not be a high score, but for someone who didn’t know what a cube root is two weeks before the exam, these guides sure did a good job getting me up to speed. In my situation, these guides were heaven sent.

If you’re really good with math then they might be too easy and too basic for you. Even then, they would still serve as a nice ‘refresher’. They are short and concise and it only took me about an hour or less to skim through each and so they are pricey if you’re just using them for a quick review. But if you don’t know math like I don’t know math, BUY THEM ALL!!! THEY ROCK!

Rating: 5 / 5

How do you find f(x)=f(1/x)?

Are the product of 3 consecutive integers divisible by 2? how about 3,4, and 8?

What is the units digit of 3^107?

If you have any doubts on how to answers these types of questions, and most people do, you need this book.

The explanations on how to best solve problems are very good. Yet the book suffers from what appears to be two different authors writing the explanations and the problems. The same type of problems are not always provided the same type of solutions.

This book is a vast improvement over the previous edition. The GMAT has changed over the years and the previous version did not address all the changes. This book rectifies that. You can be assured many of the concepts outlined in this book will be tested in the real thing.

Although the GMAT quant section only tests high school level math, do not confuse it with the SAT. It is way tougher and far more abstract. Furthermore, your high school math is probably very rusty by now. If you are unconvinced, please spit out the quadratic formula (which you must have used zillion times in HS) right now. If you can’t do it in 5 seconds, then you are rusty.

I am torn whether to give this book a 4 or 5 stars. So I would give it 4.5 stars. It is very worthwhile book and you will not regret the purchase unless you are already a math geek.
Rating: 4 / 5