I had about a month between when I decided I was serious about applying to grad school and when I took GMAT. No pressure, right? I've been out of school for close to 20 years, so I spent the bulk of my time focusing on the quantative portion of the GMAT. The Kaplan was my primary study guide, supplemented by some general algebra texts and GMAC's free PowerPrep software. My practice scores ranged from the mid 500s to the mid 600s. My actual GMAT score was 740, so in general I'm very pleased.

Yes, the practice questions in the Kaplan program are much harder than the ones you will encounter in either GMAC PowerPrep or the actual GMAT. I found that to be an advantage. However, I would suggest finishing at least one of the PowerPrep CATs because the presentation is identical to that of the GMAT.

The CD ROM worked with out problem. I appreciated the very large set of practice questions that were provided.

The online portion of the Premier package was close to useless. I'm pretty sure all of the questions and tips on-line are present in either trhe book or the CD. I felt like I was navigating through a Kaplan ad. The only thing of value on-line was the mobile prep download, which is hidden in the syllabus area. I carry a palm device with me and used the mobile prep to review while I was waiting for meetings. Be warned that the mobile Qs are not as carefully edited. I found at least one answer that was simply wrong.

Good workout on the quant section. Review tips not as insightful as the Princeton Review book, although I felt that this book contained more difficult math problems which made the real math problems on the exam seem a lot simpler.

I already read all the gmat books reviews you can ever imagine, because like all people that enter in this site, I'm aiming to apply to the top buisiness school in the US.

In order to decide which book is the best option, I would like to emphasize three important view-points I've found on this site.

1. First, as many people said on The-Official-Guide-for-GMAT-reviews-webpage this could be the best book, BUT the exercises are exactly the same you will find by downloading the POWERPREP software for free (from mba.com). So, I dont think we need to do all the 1,500 same excercises to get a good gmat score.

2. On the other hand, it's true that the Kaplan CD tests are by much more difficult than the actual gmat test(I already took one powerprep test (690 score) and one kaplan cd test (575 score)), BUT, if you are aiming to >700 score you will need this difficult questions to get yourself through the test with an overestimated score. For me, the GMAT play's an important role in my application process,hence I need that 700+ score.

3. And finally the real gmat test may not have similar questions you'll find in the kaplan cd's BUT thats why you need to complement this book with the PowerPrep software(mba.com).

In conclusion,this is a great book ( well structured and well defined). You should buy this book and download the powerprep software so you can begin this " applying to an mba program journey".


Good luck

Most questions in this book and the CD are not reflective of the real GMAT questions at all. The verbal questions appear more to be those you would see in LSAT than to be GMAT questions, and the math questions provide you with nothing but horrible headaches.

However, to make my money's worth, I had to take all the practice tests and got the following results:

1st: 530
2nd: 540
3rd: 580
4th: 590

I really don't know what they are trying to test or what these scores mean, as I got 750 in the actual GMAT test.

I thought that I had better wait until after I wrote the GMAT b4 I would actually review the Kaplan package, but my initial suspicions were dead on - the tests on Kaplan CD are really hard. I did three practice test from Kaplan, scoring 540, 660 and 570. Not bad but not that great either. So trying to do better I over studied and reviewed like crazy. I ended up getting 740 on the actual GMAT, but there's no way that the real test was as hard as Kaplans CATs, espicially the math part. The questions in the book are typical of the actual exam, the questions on the CD are questions you'll see if you want to get 700 or more. My suggestion is, dont use the CD unless you are thinking about getting over 700, otherwise it will just deflate your confidence and get you focusing on stuff that is too hard. Thake the ETS tests, study, then, if you are doing well, try the Kaplan test, and see how stupid you really are.

On a lighter note, the actual strategies in the book were quite good, better than Barrons for the verbal stuff at least. But the math stuff is made for ppl who are already really smart, if you need a review of the math stuff, like i did, dont start with kaplan. I would buy this book again but I wish the CATs were scored a little more realistically. GOod Luck