Number Properties GMAT Preparation Guide

I scored 750 (49, 42) on the GMAT and from experience, high GMAT score is not about tricks or solving thousands of questions - it is about having a strong foundation. Arithmetic is critical for the GMAT - close to 50% of quant questions you encounter will rely on arithmetic to solve. If you are rusty with math (primes, powers, roots, etc), this is one of the best books to refresh the basics of Arithmetic without spending months on it. Besides review, it also lists ways to save time on calculations. The faster you can do easier questions, the more time you have for the hard ones, and those are the ones that count on the GMAT. Pros: - This book comes with a code that provides access to 6 Manhattan GMAT tests for free ($45 value; online access) - The book is split into 2 sections - basic and advanced, which is a better approach than dumping everything at the same time. By covering 2 separate sections for basic and then in the second half of the book advanced section, it makes you review the basics again and burns them in the memory. - Strong section on divisibility rules (how to quickly tell if a number is divisible by 3, 4, 6, 7, etc). This will save time on the test. - Coverage of multiples - Primes, factoring, odd, even, positive, negative - Powers, roots, consecutive numbers, remainders - Bonus Question bank (online access) Cons/Areas of Improvement - No systematic coverage of numbers between 1 and 0 and 0 and -1, and these are some of the trickiest ones - No strong coverage of absolute values - few of us remember how to do these - Has exercises but relies on the Official Guide for practice GMAT questions Bottom Line: Absolutely get this book in addition to anything else you are using. It is worth the time and money. This is one of the most popular GMAT books among the GMAT Club community and is always in the top 5 of the "Top 20 Best GMAT Books" list. Good Luck on the GMAT. BB - Founder of GMAT Club Community.

The Manhattan series was the most helpful for me on my GMAT because other GMAT prep books only shows time saving or test taking tips but does not go into details about the various topics which I needed because I don't have a strong quantitative base. In fact, I didn't know even the basic idea of number properties or even odd plus odd is even (must have been asleep in math class) and so these guides were a must for me. Except for the critical reasoning guide, I give them all five stars +++! Too bad I found these guides too late (just 2 weeks before the exam) and by the time they arrived in the mail, I didn't have time to do any of the practice exercises but I still managed to improve my score from 500 to 640 from just skimming through these guides. 640 may not be a high score, but for someone who didn't know what a cube root is two weeks before the exam, these guides sure did a good job getting me up to speed. In my situation, these guides were heaven sent. If you're really good with math then they might be too easy and too basic for you. Even then, they would still serve as a nice 'refresher'. They are short and concise and it only took me about an hour or less to skim through each and so they are pricey if you're just using them for a quick review. But if you don't know math like I don't know math, BUY THEM ALL!!! THEY ROCK!

The Manhattan GMAT quantitative guides are great for reviewing or just flat out learning the quant concepts tested on the GMAT. Don't let the thinness of the books fool you; they efficiently pack in alot of material and do not pad the books with lots of practice questions created by them. It's far better to work off of Official Guide questions, and each Manhattan GMAT guide has a handy list of all OG questions subdivided into Problem Solving & Data Sufficiency, and further subdivided according to the concept tested. There is an additional problem set of the most challenging OG questions spanning all concepts. I am decent, but rusty at math, and after using a couple of the Manhattan GMAT quant guides, was able to improve my quant score from high 40s on practice tests to 51 on the real thing! I can't recommend these books enough.

GMAT has been getting more difficult over the years. If you have any doubt, take the GMAT Prep (just google it) and compare the level of difficulty with the Offical Guides. The difference is very substantial. Unfortunately, most GMAT prep companies, includng MGMAT, have been behind he curve of the changes. But you are in luck as this new MGMAT book succeeds where other books, includng the previous edition of MGMAT number properties book, have failed. This new edition provides a very comprehensive explanation of GMAT number properties (primes, odd and evens, postive and negative, consecutive intgers, exponents, roots etc) which the previous version was lacking. Most importantly, this book is far better at emulating the difficulty and types of questions of the current GMAT test. Number properties is perhaps one of the most difficult components of GMAT Quant section. Although GMAT tests only high school math, do not mistake its quant section for an SAT. For example, how many prime factors (odd or even) does a perfect square of an integer have? Can you find the total number of factors (not just prime factors) of number 2000 in under 2 minutes? Even if you are good in math, you probably can't without the help of this book. And yes, GMAT does ask you such questions which you should answer in 2 minutes or less.

After using the Manhattan GMAT prep books and having looked at EVERY other book on the market, I'm convinced that this is the best set! Over half of their students get a 680 or higher. I got 710!!!!!