Use Official GMAT for Verbal Practice (it’s got that special flavor you need!)
Easier said than done right? You’re probably taking a GMAT class that relies on third party poopers. That’s somewhat OK if your teacher just uses those in the classroom as examples. But for HW avoid those mutants! Sure, they seem similar to GMAT questions.
And, if you haven’t been doing this for 10 years you might thing: what’s the harm? I need to practice critical reasoning and this is a critical reasoning question.
Who cares who wrote it?
If you care about your GMAT score then you should care about the answer to that question, especially on the verbal side of things on which flavor matters a great deal.
Official GMAT Questions take $$$$ to develop and are tested extensively
The GMAT people (GMAC and whomever they use to develop questions) have very specific guidelines that they use to construct questions. They also test questions in a live setting (experimental questions on your exam) to make sure that the questions behave properly.
It takes thousands of dollars to create one question.
How much effort and cash do you think “fill in the blank test prep company” spends to develop one question? I’ve seen this first hand. It wasn’t confidence inspiring.
The end result: third party verbal is inferior and can even hurt your studying. You may be stuck reviewing some third party questions using whatever platform you are using to study (our GMAT tutors use all Official Verbal!) but do your best to keep your GMAT verbal studying firmly centered on Official GMAT questions. Here are all official GMAT resources and some notes on them to help you select what makes sense for you.
What if you run out of Official GMAT verbal questions?
If you run out of Official Resources then the next best thing: Official LSAT. LSAT questions are constructed to same high standard as GMAT ones and can make for fantastic practice. We use them for just about every GMAT preparation here at Atlantic to perfect verbal scores (LSAT questions are tough so can be key for making a good verbal score great or a great verbal score perfect).