Need GMAT Advice - Test Soon

[dharu8]

Hi friends....
I'll be writing GMAT on May 3rd 2005. I have a few doubts:
a) I've heard the Official Guide is of no use to students writing GMAT now as the questions are outdated and the pattern has changed. So, Should I buy this book??

b) I'm an Indian and am writing this test from India. I've heard that the servers of the ETS people are so set as to give tougher questions on MATH section to people writing it from this part of the world. Is that true?

c) Right now I'm using Princeton Reveiw and Barron's for my preparation. What are the other study guides I should go for considering the little time I have in hand?

PLEASE ADVICE....

[Vaithy]

In what way the pattern has changed.
I understand there will be 37 Quant and 41 Verbal...what is the change

[pb_india]

Where do you hear all these rumors from. Thank God people are not complaining that Verbal is tougher since we are writing from Amrican/Autralian or European continents
Just Chill, there is no such distinction and why do you think ETS will assume that only Asians are strong in Math or Europeans in verbal and so on. Its all crap. Official Guide, ed. 10th is Bible for GMAT study, buy it, the first thing. Barron is crap, dump it right away. Buy OG and Kaplan materials. Go through various posts on this orum and you will do great.
Good luck.
pb

[GmatGnat]

Definitely get the Official Guide. It is invaluable in getting you comfortable with the kind of questions asked on the GMAT, as well as the reasoning behind the answers.

It's just a myth that the quant section is harder in S Asia. If the difficulty level of questions on the exam were varied from place to place, it wouldn't be a standardized exam any longer, would it?

[alakshma]

Hi friends....

b) I'm an Indian and am writing this test from India. I've heard that the servers of the ETS people are so set as to give tougher questions on MATH section to people writing it from this part of the world. Is that true?

Actually there might be a reason for this perception and your observation could actually be true. The MATH section might "feel" harder for majority of the candidates who write the test in India. And this is because the test is computer adaptive. The better you do, the harder your questions are. So, even if you get harder questions in India the final MATH scores are probably higher (on an average).

The problem in this case seems to be that people only talk about getting the harder questions, and not about getting the higher scores. An average person in India will probably say the questions were harder than what an average American student would say and hence the perception (and hence the difference in scores).

[dharu8]

Thanks to all you guys. I shall definitely buy the OG. And shall prepare for the GMAT without worrying abt the rumors. One more question---- how important is thw AWA? How much preparation time should be given to AWA?

[pb_india]

1 day for AWA.