The GMAT official guide bundle is a collection of three books covering all the essentials of the GMAT test. These books are written by the Graduate Management Admissions Council, which make the actual GMAT test.

If you have been around our website, you would know we place a great deal of emphasis on prep material created by the makers of standardized tests. The reason for this emphasis is simple; a third-party book will never come close to the quality of practice questions that an official book offers.

Who knows better than the people who make and manage standardized tests? That’s right, no one. Hence, an official set of books should always be your first consideration when looking to prepare for a test like GMAT.

Today, I will be reviewing the GMAT Official Guide Bundle. We will briefly look at the contents and talk about the pros and cons of the end.

What is the GMAT Official Guide?

GMAT Official Guides are a series of books that are renewed each year to offer more material. These guides are the official test prep material for GMAT and written by the people who make the GMAT test. Generally, the way these guides work is that the bigger book, the main GMAT Official Guidebook, includes around 950 practice questions and answer explanations. In earlier iterations of the book, the practice questions were less than 950; however, they added more questions in each subsequent edition of the book.

You can purchase this main book separately. However, in my opinion, if you want to score well above average, this book won’t suffice, which is why it also comes in a bundle with two additional books that cover the quantitative and verbal sections separately.

These two books are called GMAT Official Guide Quantitative Review and GMAT Official Guide Verbal Review. As is evident by the names, each of the two books is dedicated to the two measures of the GMAT test, i.e., Verbal and Quantitative.

In a way, you can say that the main Guide is a must have for your GMAT prep. The additional two books are optional and are meant to take your learning to the next level by giving you additional practice questions and explanations.

What does the GMAT Official Guide offer?

GMAT Official Guide is a great starting point for your GMAT journey. It is your introduction to the GMAT test along with a thorough explanation of all the different question types, their explanations, and test-taking strategies.

The book contains a total of 10 chapters. As you would imagine, the first chapter details what the GMAT exam is, its format, its scoring system, the allotted time, and an explanation of the different sections that make up the test.

The second chapter gives you useful tips on how to go about preparing for the GMAT. It tells you the best method for studying from this Guide and goes into some general test-taking suggestions.

The subsequent chapters are basically where the actual learning begins. All the remaining eight chapters explore a specific topic such as “Math Review”, which is the third chapter, “problem solving,” which is the fourth chapter, and then so on.

The remaining six chapters are titled:

• data sufficiency
• reading comprehension
• critical reasoning
• sentence correction
• integrated reasoning
• analytical writing assessment

As apparent by the names, each of these chapters explores their respective topics beginning with a brief introduction of the topic and then comments about how it works, etc.

You will find study suggestions that are specific to each chapter as well as test-taking strategies. The last subtopic in each chapter is titled “practice questions,” where you will find official practice questions followed by an answer key and answer explanations.

The total number of test questions contained within the booking amount to 950 questions. You also get access to additional 150 questions that are online exclusive when you purchase the book. Moreover, you also get access to a mobile app but more on that later.

What Does the GMAT Official Quantitative Review offer?

The GMAT Official Quantitative Review is a separate book that is solely dedicated to studying the quantitative section of GMAT. As with all the official GMAT books, you can buy this one separately as well. However, I recommend that if you are serious about your GMAT preparation that you should get the Bundle.

The Quantitative Review is an add-on to the GMAT Official Guide. It is meant for those who need additional quantitative practice, which realistically the leading Guide alone doesn’t offer.

The book contains five chapters, and I was surprised to find that the first two chapters are almost identical to what you will find in the main official Guide. Same as in the GMAT Official Guide, the first two chapters are titled “What is the GMAT exam” and “How to Prepare,” respectively.

So even if you decide to buy this book separately, you will still understand the GMAT test as a whole, the format, the scoring system, the time allotment, etc. However, what is indeed different in this book is that you get 370 quantitative practice questions that cannot be found in the leading Guide.

Anyone buying these books is almost certainly doing it because of the practice questions, which is by far the most crucial aspect of any test prep book.

The remaining three chapters are titled “Math Review,” “Problem Solving,” and “Data sufficiency.” If you purchase the Bundle, you can skip the first few sub-topics in any given chapter in which the concepts about that topic are explained because these are identical word for word.

Hence, keep in mind that you would be using this book solely for the additional 370 practice questions and nothing else. There are no new strategies, tactics, or tips.

What Does the GMAT Official Verbal Review Offer?

The GMAT Official Verbal Review, same as the quantitative review, can be bought separately. It features 340 verbal reasoning questions that do not appear in the GMAT Official Guide.

Like the quantitative review, this book has the same opening chapters as the GMAT official Guide. Hence, the first two chapters are identical to the main Guide and are titled “What is the GMAT exam” and “How to Prepare.”

Thus, if you buy this book separately, then you wouldn’t be missing out on understanding the GMAT test and the suggestions on how to go about preparing for the test.

Again, same as the quantitative book, this book too has a total of 5 chapters. The first two chapters, as I mentioned before, are the same as what you would find on the main Guide as well as the quantitative review.

The remaining three chapters are titled “Reading Comprehension,” “Critical Reasoning,” and “Sentence Correction.”

Each chapter’s general layout is the same as the main Guide, where each chapter begins with an introduction of the topic followed by “what is measured” and then test-taking strategies. Each chapter’s key component is the practice questions, which are followed by an answer key and then finally answer explanations.

Similar to the quantitative review, if you buy the Bundle and start with the main Guide, then you wouldn’t need to begin each chapter from the beginning because all the concepts and explanations of the topics are identical, which means that you can pretty much jump to the practice questions of which there are 340.

PROS

The most authentic High-quality practice questions

I come in contact with various test prep books daily, and the one gripe I have about almost all of the third-party books is the low-quality practice questions. The practice questions included in most non-official books tend to be of greater quantity, but where they fail is the questions’ actual content.

You’d have to look very close to find a few questions in third-party books that pass the standard of an official test question. In most instances, the questions are either too easy, needlessly tricky, or lack the nuances and hints that add to the context of a problem, which is a distinguishing factor of a standardized test like GMAT.

When it comes to GMAT Official Guide bundle, I can safely claim that the practice questions you will find therein capture the exact essence of what you will find on the GMAT test. However, this is not surprising because the GMAT official guide bundle questions are retired questions that were once used in the actual GMAT test.

Over 1850 official Practice Questions

The main Guide alone offers around 1150 practice questions when you add in the 150 additional online exclusive questions. Add to this the 370 and 340 questions that the quantitative review and verbal review offer, respectively, and you are looking at over 1850 official high-quality practice questions.

It is rare to find an official test prep book that has high-quality questions and greater quantity. If you are serious about your GMAT prep, I can confidently say that these 1850 questions combined will efficiently prepare you for the GMAT.

Mobile App and Online Question Bank 

The GMAT Official Guide bundle gives you free access to their mobile app. All you need is to find the access code located on the inside of the front page.

The app is available both on Apple and Android and lets you access all the practice questions contained within the Bundle on your smartphone or tablet. You would also be able to access the 150 questions that are not included in the book.

Moreover, The Online Question Bank is an online tool that allows users to create customized practice sets using questions in the GMAT Official Guide series.

CONS

Lack of Conceptual Approach to Learning 

If you are an absolute beginner to GMAT and it’s been a while since you studied any math, then you might have a problem grasping the various math topics covered in this Bundle. I say this because, from a beginner’s perspective, the book does a poor job of explaining what is happening in a question. The concepts taught are bare-bones and don’t get into the nitty-gritty of the process that lies behind it, which is essential if you are bad at math to begin with.

Moreover, the answer explanations are, at times, needlessly convoluted or straight-up challenging to understand. The language used is not the most user-friendly and seems very matter-of-fact.

Do take this criticism with a grain of salt because not everyone learns the same way, and thus it is highly subjective. What works for you may not work for me.

Should I buy the GMAT Official Guide Bundle?

Here is what I recommend you should do. If you are entirely new to GMAT and haven’t bought any other guide, you should buy the Bundle because why not. However, if you have already studied from an earlier version, then don’t buy this.

If you master everything in those earlier guides, you are already looking at a high score. Sure, there are a couple of hundred new questions, and that’s good, but is it good enough to spend extra money on a new bundle when all you will be getting are just further questions and nothing else that is worthwhile? I don’t think so, but I’ll leave that decision to you.

Should I buy the Bundle if I only have a couple of months to prepare?

There is no way anyone can go through all the practice questions in this Bundle, especially if you are learning the concepts along the way. If that is the case, you should only buy the main Guide as there are plenty of practice questions in that one already.

I would say that for a detailed study of the complete Bundle, you would need to have a consistent study schedule comprising multiple hours each day over at least six months. Add a few more months to that if you are a slow learner.

Can I use an older version of the books to save money? 

If money is an issue and you want to buy earlier editions second-hand, I would suggest that you do that. The majority of the content you would find in a previous version is unchanged; the only new content is the practice questions, which are essential but not important enough to break the bank. If you master everything contained within an earlier bundle, then sure, you will score very well, and I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Releasing a slightly improved book each year is nothing more than a business tactic to increase revenue. Buy second-hand by all means.

How can I supplement my prep even further?

If you have already gone through the complete Bundle, mastered all the questions, and are looking to take your preparation to the next level, then you, I’d say, get the GMAT official Advanced Questions. You can find it for around $20 on Amazon, and it contains additional 300 challenging verbal and quantitative questions that do not overlap with other GMAT official guides.

However, do note that these questions are specially curated from the tough questions to appear on GMAT. This book is not recommended for those who are just starting on their GMAT journey. Only get it if you have entirely mastered everything else on the Bundle.