As many readers of this blog have likely noticed, the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) recently released the 12th edition of its bestselling title, the Official Guide for GMAT Review. Prospective test-takers are anxious to learn if they can glean any insights about the GMAT from the latest edition of the venerable OG. We can save you the suspense: while the latest version of the Official Guide is an indispensible resource for practice questions, it does not provide any definitive conclusions about the evolution of the GMAT itself.

Please consider:

• The previous edition of the Official Guide for GMAT Review, the 11th, consistently ranked on Amazon as one of the top 100 books sold (on any topic!); quite frankly, the release of a new edition was bound to generate significant sales and lots of Internet buzz
• GMAC was careful to note that the proportions of question allocated in the Official Guide are not necessarily representative of the proportions that test-takers will face on the actual GMAT, or of the allocation in the GMAT question pool at large
• Questions featured in the Official Guide have been retired for at least five years from active use on the GMAT, so the Official Guide is best viewed as a snapshot of what the test looked like previously, but not necessarily what it looks like now

The latest version of the Official Guide is not a definitive representation of all that a test-taker needs to know before test day, or even a new standard for GMAT preparation. The 12th edition, in which approximately 2/3 of the questions are identical to those in the 11th edition, remains what GMAC has always intended it to be