Arco Teach Yourself the Gmat Cat in 24 Hours (Arcos Teach Yourself in 24 Hours Series)

I just rated Kaplan's GMAT book but I feel I need to chime in regarding Arco...because that book was very helpful ! I'm not a native speaker of English and have never taken a standardized test before in my life; yet I scored a 770 (99 percentile) on the GMAT in my first try 3 days ago.I started out with Arco's 24-hour course. Arco's book is great, and it has quite a bit more stuff on the math and verbal part than Kaplan has. I didn't get the CD rom though since I got an older edition, so I can't rate the software. But the book itself is excellent. Arco has a lot of useful info on both the math and verbal sections. There are a lot of relevant problems in the book, and their style comes close to the real thing. The book is well written with lots of useful advice. There a very few mistakes and printing errors in the book.After Arco I went on to tackle the official guide from ETS. Anyone who wants to prepare for the GMAT should work some of the problems in this book. I did them all, but I don't really think that's neccesary -- just do the final third in each section and you'll be fine.Finally I read the Kaplan book. There was not much in the book that I didn't already know. In fact, Kaplan has much less material than Arco. However, when you start working with Kaplan's CD rom you realize how much info is packed on that disk. There's 18 quizzes with 9 math and 9 verbal and they're all great practice. They actually force you to work *faster* than you'll need for the real test. Also, there are very few errors in the Kaplan material, and their problems come very close to the real ones.I took the four GMAT CATs on the CD rom and got 700, 780, 660 and 700. There's no question that Kaplan artificially lower your score so you're guaranteed to score higher on the real test, but that's cool as long as it doesn't discourages you. Just know that's the way it is.I also took the PowerPrep tests, just for practice... but I had already done the problems in the ETS book ! However you definitely should work with PowerPrep to get a sense of the problems and the way they're presented.Hope this helps. Good luck !!

I used this book as the capstone to a self-taught GMAT course. It provided adequate review of the quantitative and verbal concepts on the exam, challenging practice problems, and good answer explanations. The AWA section was also helpful. In addition, I used Kaplan's CD and the GMAT PowerPrep software, both were also excellent.

I thought that a few of the answers might have been erroneous, and then I confirmed it. There's a few errors in the math section (i.e. pg 109 prob 10...x can equal 1 or -1). But other than that, this is a great book...quick and thorough...doesn't waste time...review is the best I've read. It explains how the test is scored better than the other books too which I think is vital. If you only have time for one book, use this one.

This is the best i have used so far. The math review is very detailed and by far the best. After going through another book, i learned so much more with this one. What I liked most is that the quick quizzes after each section are tougher than the lesson problems. So,they bring you up another level once you have mastered the lesson. E.g., I am better at sentence correction and breezed through those lessons, but got slowed down in the quiz. Each lesson takes ~1 hour, so the 24 hr thing refers to 24 man-hours of study, not day hours. I spent two weeks on the book.

Had known this book earlier, I could have scored better on my first trial. Anyway, it's a well structured manual with lots of model questions, workshops on both manual and cd-rom. You will be guided with hints and tips to tackle any kind of GMAT questions (easiest to the hardest ones). Above all, its AWA guidances and reviews are fantastics. I am confident to score much better on my next (final) attempt in a few months time. Wish all of you good lucks.