In a previous post, I gave a qualified endorsement of GMAT Focus, which is a series of 24-question quant tests sold by the makers of the GMAT. GMAT Focus consists of retired GMAT test questions, and I was pretty convinced that the test is a useful product, since so many real GMAT test questions seem to (very, very strongly) resemble questions seen on GMAT Focus. The only trouble is that the tests are too short, overpriced (in my opinion), oddly timed (24 questions in 45 minutes? huh?), and a little bit of a rip-off, since some of the questions also appear in the GMAT Official Guide and the GMAT Quantitative Review Guide. If you don't believe me, click here to see a brief discussion of this in a Manhattan GMAT forum.
Over the past year, I've strongly encouraged my students do use GMAT Focus, but I think it's time to advise everybody to stay away from it. Believe it or not, one of my students just took a GMAT Focus test that had 14 questions that overlapped with the GMAT Official Guide (12th edition) or the GMAT Quantitative Review (2nd edition). That means that only 10 of them were fresh questions. Dude, my poor GMAT student totally got ripped off.
(Luckily, my student didn't recognize all of the questions, and still missed 6 of the 14 repeats. It's safe to say that he still got a good math workout; it's also safe to say that his GMAT tutor needs to kick his butt a little bit harder.)
Here's the complete list of questions that appeared on this particular GMAT Focus test:
GMAT Official Guide DS #33, 45, 48 (though I found it interesting that they removed the reference to the year 1989 in that question), 66, 70, 75, and 76
GMAT Official Guide PS #48, 81, and 89
GMAT Quantitative Review DS #33
GMAT Quantitative Review PS #142, 146, and 147
And if you're curious, here's the complete list of GMAT Focus repeats that I've marked over past few months:
GMAT Official Guide DS: #44, 45, 52, 53, 62, 66, 68, 70, 75, 76, 79, 82, 87, 90, 94, 110, 121, 123
GMAT Official Guide PS: #73, 74, 81, 89, 107, 117, 148, 163
GMAT Quantitative Review DS: #11, 33, 122
GMAT Quantitative Review PS: #142, 146, 147
I'm sure that I haven't caught everything, but this should be enough to convince you that GMAT Focus probably isn't worth $25 per test.