hi i'm erika one of the senior curriculum managers here at magoosh and a gmat expert and in today's
video i'm going to talk about the best gmat book ever now my take on this might surprise you so
stick around to find out what it is so i'll give you the goods right away the best gmat book
ever in my opinion is the official guide and this is not the surprising part the og
is made by the creators of the gmat so it is pretty much guaranteed to have
the most accurate content out there and with over a thousand practice questions it is a lot
of content but and here's the surprise even though the og is my favorite gmat book i don't recommend
it to most students in fact i think the og is only useful in very specific study cases now this
leads me to a really important point books are typically not the best way to prep for the gmat
the best way to prep for a computer-based test is also going to be computer-based so not only does
the medium better reflect the actual experience of taking the gmat but it can also reflect the way
that difficulty shifts with performance something that is totally critical to the gmats challenge
in a way that a book just simply can't so if you have to choose one thing to spend your gmat budget
on make it online prep not paper prep now the most worthwhile online prep is going to be gmat
practice tests specifically full length adaptive gmat practice tests now i talked more about that
in my video on a best gmat practice test so check that out for more information now for study in
between practice tests online prep is still going to be a good idea it's worth noting that a lot of
online prep options are not going to be adaptive in the way that the tests are for example the
online practice problem bundles from gmac with the exception of the quantitative practice bundle are
not going to have any option for adaptive practice now you can still sort the problems by difficulty
by subject type and you will get information about how you're performing so you can still cater the
practice it just requires a little bit of thought and action from you now that said some online
offerings do have the option of adaptive practice that roughly mirrors the experience you'll have
on test day one example of that is magoosh so when you are doing practice problems you can sort them
in the same way that you would an official problem set by difficulty by subject matter et cetera et
cetera or you can select an adaptive option where the program will feed you problems based on your
performance so when do i recommend the official guide the best gmat book ever and the answer is
when you're out of online materials even the non-adaptive online materials is going to give
you a more realistic and customizable experience then you're probably gonna get with the og now
the only exception to this is if you really really really hate studying online and really just want
the experience of having a physical paper book in that case the og might be a good option for you
but just make sure that every two to four weeks you're taking an online practice test
so that you're getting that test-taking experience in and you're not unprepared on test day now it's
worth noting that at the time of filming the og is only available as an ebook so even with this
option you may still be stuck at your computer unless you're willing to do a lot of printing
now based on this advice whether you decide to go with all online prep supplement with the og or go
an entirely different route altogether remember that gmat prep materials are expensive so i highly
recommend checking out my video on never making the same gmat mistake twice to find out how to
get the most mileage out of your prep and get the most bang for your buck let us know if this video
helped you by liking and subscribe for more videos from me and the other experts at magoosh and as
always if you have suggestions for future videos we're always looking out for them so leave them in
the comments below thanks for watching and i'll talk to you soon now the best online prep