No, don't get me wrong. The book is really nice and good for people who was very bad with math. (I can judge the verbal section, yet.) I wasn't the most brilliant math guy, and I have more then 12 years past my school days so far (I graduated when I was 17, I now I'm almost 29). However, the book is very, very basic. 225 pages out of total 347 (not including practice questions, answers, drills and blah-blah-blah) and almost nothing new for me. No tricks, no hints, no secret combos that I'd be able to apply on my own on the real test. (Well, sorry, The Princeton Review, I might be dumb to get yours, too.)
Anyway, I still want to mention pages 147 to 158. These ones have a pretty nice intro with practice questions on probability, permutations and combinations. I marked it down and going to use it as a table reference. Very clear and nice.
There are also few nice intros on pages 183-184. This is something I normally don't use in my daily life and tend to forget. The books has all these formulas for me there. Thank you.
So, lessons learned.
- There are a lot of books on GMAT and there is no the best one. I might need to purchase some more to cover those parts which are needed to get me to 700+ score. However, I still believe I should better practice more. It looks like those hints and tricks aren't for my type.
- Flexible hours of studying time just don't work. You need to be have a specific timing every single day (well, you can give yourself a break 2-3 days in a week). But you should have specific hours within specific time frame. If you break it — you should know that you fucked up. I tried many different ways of managing my study time, and everything sucks but specific and set hours. You can feel some pressure because of that, but it's good for you, trust me on this.
- GMAT questions are tough. At least, they should be. If you feel that they're piece of cake for you — you either extremely brilliant and well prepared or you're doing them wrong. I try myself not to turn the page and breath with a relief because of seeing an easier question. This won't happen on a real exam, if I'm doing well. Better manage to enjoy tough ones.
- Make sure you can get some peace when you're studying. Every single minute you're being disturbed requires up to 5 minutes extra to get back on track.
