Books for Prep | |
 - Just AwfulFirst, many of the types of questions in the 6 practice exams are pointless to study, since you won't encounter anything remotely resembling them on the real GRE. Second, the explanations of the solutions are rarely satisfactory. Third, the review section is a complete joke and, like the questions in the practice exams, many of the topics it covers are completely worthless with regards to the GRE (e.g. cubic spline interpolation, fourier series). I didn't read the review section very thoroughly (though I did glance over subtitles, so I know that a lot of time-wasting material was included), but what I did look at in some depth was poorly explained. All of this said, the book isn't entirely useless. If you use it as a companion to a better GRE prep book (cracking the GRE) and have a discerning eye for what will and won't be necessary to study, it does offer some good review questions if you have time to weed through it. Rating:  - good review, bad practiceAll in all the product was a decent review of the math covered by the GRE math subject test, but the format of the practice tests is not at all in line with the version that ETS has on their website. As far as I can tell, ETS doesn't ask you ugly computational problems which is all these tests are. Use the review section to remind yourself of the most prevalent theorems and do some of the test problems to review the computations. But don't use your results from these practice tests to make any prediction about your real score on test day. There is no way ETS would expect you to finish a test of this style in under 3 hours. That would just not be feasible. Rating: - Poorly proofreadThe level of difficulty and depth of the questions in this book is generally much higher than the real exam. While studying questions that are modestly harder than the actual test is often a good way to score high, this book goes well beyond that level, to the point of being almost useless. The proofreading of this book is remarkably poor. Several problems have incorrect solutions. Such inaccuracies (as well as many typos) leave a reader wondering whether any of the content can be trusted. The typesetting is also very poor. While this is primarily a cosmetic issue, in some places it makes the content less comprehensible. Rating:  - Excellent practice tests, worthless summary of topicsThe book summaries the main topics very briefly. This make the summary a bit useless (it's more like a formula sheet with all the theorems/lemmas than something you can learn of...). On the other hand, the book contains six fully solved practice tests. The practice tests level are much higher than the real GRE Math level, but still, it is a good way to learn for the exam. I would recommend buying this book with "Cracking the GRE Math Test" by the Princeton Review which has a much better summary of the main topics. Rating: - Poor Review and Practice TestsThe material covered in this text is actually much more difficult and frankly ridiculous than what's actually covered in the subject gre. The book includes problems with complicated substitutions, series, etc. and does not present an accurate representation of the test, which from my experience seemed much simpler and would be better studied for by reviewing old class notes and problems. In association with Amazon.com | |