Should I buy an earlier OG book set?

[BidabanB774]

Hi! I purchased the MGMAT series books and I love them and the GMAT navigator! I also purchased the 2017 edition of the OG, Quant, and Verbal, but as I'm practicing FDP sets there seems to be a limited number of MGMAT created explanations available for the 2017 guides. Is it safe to assume that if I buy an earlier version that there will be many more MGMAT explanations available in the Navigator? The OG explanations in the back of their book are terrible in comparison to your rationales. Thanks in advance for your help!

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi! Yay, I'm glad you like the material.

I would buy a later version of the OG, actually. We have 100% coverage of all problems in the more recent OGs. Also: They change out a certain percentage of problems every year*, so I would not do 2018—I'd jump to either the 2021 or 2022 edition, so that you get as many new problems as possible.

*They did not actually add new problems to the 2022 edition; instead, they went back and rewrote / updated a couple of hundred explanations to try to make them better. So just in terms of the problems themselves, you could do either 2021 or 2022 and get the same problems.

Note that if you do 2021, you would have to buy it used, and the one-time-use code for the online resources will likely already have been used, so you won't get that access. If you want access to all of the online materials that come with the book, get the 2022 edition. (I do think the ability to do random problem sets online is valuable as you get later in your studies. At first, you want to do specific problems that correspond to the content you're learning right now, but later, you're going to want to do mixed problem sets, and that's much easier to do using the online interface. In my opinion, it's worth the extra $20 or so you'll pay to buy the current edition vs. buying a used version of the prior edition.)

Good luck with your studies!