GMAT 2006- Premier Program (Kaplan Gmat (Book - CD-Rom)) Description:

GMAT 2006, Premier Program (Kaplan Gmat (Book & CD-Rom)) review:
3 stars (Good practice problems, bad presentation) - I preferred 'Cracking the GMAT', which I read first. I ended up using this book primarily for the practice problems. My big complaint with this book was that in the answers to the practice questions, the problem isn't included. To see the original question, you have to flip to the quiz, then back to the answers...this style makes it difficult to see where you went wrong.



Note that the CD version only works on Windows, and you won't see this information printed anywhere obvious.
3 stars (Some parts good, some less so.) - The good: The book itself has some fairly good explanations of things and useful tricks. The practice questions are nice to have, especially the data sufficiency questions which are so unlike anything the average college student has previously encountered.



The mediocre: Much of the explanation is *too* much, I think, for a book that's supposed to be geared at people who either have graduated or will be shortly graduating from college, but I may be nitpicking with that. What I definitely find irritating is that the book seems to have been poorly proofread; I caught one reference to 'going back to a question later' or something similar which must have been from a version predating the CAT!



The bad: The internet portion offered works very poorly and doesn't give you much that the book and CD don't, though they certainly hype it enough. And the practice questions are generally of easy-to-moderate difficulty, even though it's an adaptive test, probably to get high-level test takers to purchase their separate GMAT 800 book.



The gist: If you just want to survive it, this'll probably do you fine. If you're expecting to expand on your preparation with other books, question sets, or prep programs, this seems like a good place to start. But if you want to really do your best, you're going to have to do more than just this book. Since it's a $250 test, you can probably afford a few other books, if it means not having to take the test twice!
4 stars (Useful book - I was satisfied) - I used the 2007 edition of this book for my GMAT last. I had only 2.5 weeks to prepare because I had signed up for the GMAT under a special program and I could not begin preparing for the test earlier than 2.5 weeks from my scheduled test date. Figuring that it would be a better idea to use only one book for a short preparation time such as this, I decided to go with only the Kaplan book. In retrospect, it was a good decision because I scored 770 - 49 in the Quantitative section, 48 in the Verbal section and 6.0 on the AWA.



This book has good strategies for the newbie GMAT test taker. I basically read the test taking tips and strategies for each section and then did the practice questions at the section. I did not have the CD (I bought the book from the Amazon used books section), so I did not take any practice tests accompanying this book. If I had to justify the reason for 4 stars instead of 5, I would say that the data sufficiency section in this book could be improved. In the practice tests that I took, I found that I wasn't doing too well on the data sufficiency section. Hence, one day before the test, I consulted the 2007 edition of the Princeton Review guide for extra tips on the data sufficiency section. I found that some of the tips in that book were very helpful. Two hours before my GMAT, I also reviewed Princeton Review's guide for the AWA section because I found the content in the Kaplan book insufficient. Finally, the section from which I benefited most was the test taking attitude section in the Kaplan book - be sure not to miss that section, including the tip on considering the GMAT as a test of your wits against the test makers', and not as something that will determine the course of the rest of your life (which it won't).



Obviously, the reference material used by a test taker isn't the only factor that will determine the test taker's score, so I wouldn't say that I would fully attribute my score to this book. However, I would say that if you had to buy one book for your GMAT, I would suggest going with the Kaplan book. It is probably also a good idea to take the PowerPrep tests because the scores I obtained on those tests (760 and 730) were pretty accurately indicative of my final score.