GMAT Math Prep Course

First off, this is a great little book that I'd absolutely recommend to anybody that is looking to brush up on the quant part of the test. It goes into all the topics in great detail, includes simple and easily remembered tips for eliminating answer choices on the harder questions, and gives you small equations which (while unnecessary) can really help you come test day. The reason I give the Kindle version four stars instead of five is it has a few problems. The big thing is typos. I don't know how these came about, probably from the use of scanning in lieu of actually taking the time to enter in the data and tables, but the book has a lot of typos in the question sections, some of which make the question ask something completely different than what it's actually asking. I've seen 1=l, A=4, 6=b, (=C, and others. Usually you can tell what they meant, but in a few circumstances, particularly 6=b, it can really throw you off.The only other things I could complain about:1: Some of the difficulty levels seem to be off, with some medium questions being hard and hard questions being painfully easy. I remember one 'very hard' question (Counting section, around 60% of the way through) where if understood weighted averages the only possible way I saw to screw it up would be to accidentally subtract .05 from .55 instead of .5 from .55.2: The books favors long solution explanations. In a lot of ways, this is an extremely good thing because it's almost impossible to get lost in their explanation. Unfortunately, on the actual test you have time limits so you can't afford to do the extremely drawn out solutions the book favors. I wish they would have occasionally taken the time to show how you would do the problem quickly. A good example of this is 6 & 7 in Sequences.6) If you can't figure out the relationship and just realize that the middle value between 1 and 3 is 2 and guess the answer that way, there's a drawn out explanation that's very useful.7) A normal person would say "a=2ar, so r must equal .5. .5^2 is thus .25." Add 'em up and divide (if you see the problem you'll know). It takes under 30 seconds to do this problem. Instead, they do this gigantic, vastly overcomplicated solution when a normal person would just say "1.5a/.75a = 1.5/.75 = 2/1."Again, it's a great book and I completely recommend it. It's the best book I've seen for GMAT math thus far, and I've read quite a bit prepping for that test. I just wish the publisher would fix the typos, fix the difficulty levels, and give guidelines for doing the extremely common problems ("Machine A takes 5 hours to do something, Machine B takes 3 hours to do the same thing, how long would they take together?" sort of stuff) quickly.Bottom line: Buy it, it's good.

I used this book after using some of MGMAT's books. The GMAT Math Prep Course text is excellent, with many, many examples and reasonably good explanations. HOWEVER, you have to have a SOLID FOUNDATION to be able to use this book because it focuses (mostly) on 600-800 level problems without explaining all the finer math principle details (author assumes that you know them, and you will, if you use the MGMAT guide  Manhattan GMAT Set of 8 Strategy Guides, Fourth Edition (Manhattan GMAT Strategy Guides) ).WARNING: the Kindle version contains many errors! The errors are OK and you figure them out after reading the problem explanations, but these errors CAN and WILL get frustrating at times. The number of errors greatly decreases towards the middle of the book. I contacted Amazon support about this issue and the support personnel told me that the errors are a publisher issue and that the issue will be escalated. Haven't really heard anything since.With the above said, I would still highly recommend the book and even the Kindle version (that's what I used). The Kindle version is an absolute joy to use when studying from iPad.

The book is good, but whoever had it first had drawn faint lines in the geometric questions ruining the problems as I could easily spot the answers and not have the chance to solve them myself!

Who edits this stuff? Obviously no one because the misprints in this book are horrible. It's difficult enough to go through the different equations and understand the explanations while having to pick out all the misprints in each equation. For example, on page 248, there are at least 13 instances where either an equation symbol (=) or a "greater than or equal to" symbol is used instead of where a subtraction symbol (-) should be used. This is pathetic, Nova. I have the copyright edition 2010. I'm surprised there aren't more complaints about this in the review section.As for the general content of the study guide, it is marginal. I would give it 3 stars, but explanations for how to solve certain problems are not very detailed and could be stronger. Buy at your own risk... I bought mine used at least.

This book is great if your math is rusty and you need a more in depth refresher. It only covers more basic GMAT math so don't expect to master the most difficult math problems after using this book.The book's main shortcoming was the lack of tricks and shortcuts. There simply isn't time to fully solve every problem fully on the GMAT and sometimes I knew of easier methods to find the answer quickly with skills I learned with the Kaplan book.

If you intend to use this for answering practice problems, it would be in your best interest to buy a different version. The kindle version includes the solutions right below many of the questions. I am forced to cover the screen with a piece of paper or make the text very large in order to hide the answer or the beginning of the correct solution. I bought this when I began my gmat prep and only began using after it was too late to return it. Even with all of it's typos and errors, you would be better off with a physical version of this book if you choose to buy it.

I wish I would not have purchased the kindle version of this book. It is full of errors, translation problems, and even missing text. I did so because I needed the book immediately. Pay the full price and get the physical version of the book.

I'm only in the first chapter and in the first ten questions alone there have been two errors that render the question invalid. The answer explanations have the typos fixed so you can see what the questions were supposed to ask, but it is still super frustrating.

I am just starting to use the book and in the first few pages I have already missed a couple of problems due to a printing error. Checking up the solutions, the problem shows the process with different values or symbols sometimes.