Please notice this was first posted in the period 2012-2014 and can be outdated
Finally I also finished the third book I bought to study for the GMAT. Before I already commented on the Princeton Review and the Official Guide for GMAT Review, so this time I can give a review of the Kaplan GMAT Premier 2011 (Kaplan Premier from here on).
Kaplan GMAT Premier 2011
And as expected the structure of this book is similar to the other two. The book starts with a general introduction into GMAT followed by practise questions and in-depth explanations. This is not much of a surprise since it is the most obvious way to structure a book like this.
The big difference with the other two books is how well things are explained in this book. And that is also the biggest strength of this book! Because I already went through the other two books I did not expect to see many new concepts: maybe just a different explanation of the same. But to my surprise the explanations were much more extensive. Maybe that is the reason why the people on the cover of the book look so happy.
Kaplan GMAT Premier cover
Let me give an example; this book was the first one that explained in a clear way how to choose the correct verbe tense. The other books touched the subject also, but nowhere was there a clear list to be found when to use which tense.
In total it took me 854 minutes to go through this book from cover to cover. Although I have to admit I did not do all the sample questions anymore in the last parts of the book. While that is less than either of the other two books, I do think I learned a lot from this one. Why? Because I picked this one up as the third book and still ended up with 7 pages of handwritten notes.
Kaplan GMAT Premier notes
Another strong point of the Kaplan Premier is that they give tips on how to tackle the GMAT test. I have seen that before in the Princeton Review and the tips in this book are comparable.
How to take control of the GMAT test
All together I can say this is a very complete book I could not do without and the notes I made will be on me for the coming weeks till I know them cold. From here on I will start focussing on practise questions and doing practise exams. I still have the green and blue book from GMAC and both the Princeton Review and the Kaplan Premier have online components. Hopefully I can get into complete studying mode now and start building some test-stemina.