Books for Prep | |
 - Good for general review, not for scoring extremely high...I feel that Princeton Review books are best for people that want a simple and easy to understand review of the most important concepts and strategies useful for the GRE. The math review is easy to understand. The strategies for the verbal section are clear. The Princeton Review books ARE NOT enough for high scorers. The math problems are far too easy for someone that wants to get an 800 in math. For instance, I scored 800 on the Princeton Review CD tests with tons of extra time left and while I was watching TV, playing with the dog and using half a sheet of scratch paper. I'm not THAT talented in math. Kaplan's, Barron's and other books have much more challenging CAT software. They are better for high scorers. So use Princeton if you want a painless review and need to score between 600 and at most the low 700s in math. The verbal section is better, but if you want to score over 700 in verbal you need more practice material. Kaplan's verbal tests are relatively challenging, in my opinion. This is especially true when it comes to reading comprehension passages. Rating:  - Solid -- especially helpful for the writing sectionThis is a pretty solid all-around GRE prep. Especially helpful, though, is the part about creating templates to deal with the analytical writing session. This advice in itself makes the book worthwhile. Rating: - good for review, but tests on CD repeat a lot of questionsthe math review in PR was, i thought, the best amongst the main players (barron's, kaplan) - though i am very good at math, so i didn't need a lot of explanations regarding some of the shortcuts, etc., they have in this book. verbal was pretty solid in terms of instruction as well. you want to supplement the vocab here w/ kaplan's word list and barron's top 300 words. vocab is key to the verbal part of the exam, but you don't need to go overboard and learn 3,500 words (in barron's) unless you have time to prep that much...it's overkill. 600-800 is about right, which is what you'll get if you combine all sources. the one major negative - PR's tests are really easy. well, moreso because they repeat a lot of questions from the book. not to say the real exam is much harder than PR's, but it would probably be a good idea to try a few different books for more realistic tests (kaplan and barron's are pretty good). again, it's not so much that the questions here are very easy, it's that a lot of them are repeats. Rating: - Decent, But Not the BestThis GRE prep book has a fairly decent Math review and Verbal review, but the practice tests both in the book and on the CD aren't very difficult compared to the actual GRE. It has some good points on how to write the Issue and Argument essays, but the Baron's prep book is much better in all areas. It's good to use this book along with other guides like the Baron's simply because they have a few different points, and getting all the practice possible is what will ultimately help you in the end. Rating:  - DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY OR STUDY TIMEPlease do yourself a favor and buy the Kaplan review book, as well as the book ETS publishes. This book has AWFUL advice and wildly unrealistic practice tests. The tests on the CD rom often repeat questions already answered in the book and have produced a range of scores which in no way reflect my scores on the tests ETS provides in their book (which are the real deal). The only saving grace of the Princeton Review book is the fact that they provide 4 or 8-week study schedules combining work from this book and the ETS book. My advice -- just make your own schedule and try to stick to it. In association with Amazon.com | |