Books for Prep | |
 - Not worth the money. Buy other practice materials.I found the verbal section of this book somewhat helpful, and did increase my grade for the section a few points. But the math section of this book is horrible. A lot of the pages have typos, formulas are given incorrectly and the solution isn't explained for many of the harder questions; they are quickly brushed over so unless you knew how to do them before the book, it is helpless. It's like they wrote the math section in 30 mins under a deadline. Rating:  - Outdated and of limited useAlthough the book can serve as a source of additional practice tests, its usefulness is highly questionable. The author is a former Princeton Review instructor who has failed to even keep himself updated. For example, the author advises the reader (test taker) to look at the questions before reading the text. Even worse, he suggests that "general" questions should be answered later, as if this was an option. Additionally, the concept of "Tom" is just the "Joe Bloggs" of the Princeton Review. Based on my experience, this concept is of little use for anyone other than the bottom 30 percentile. Additionally, the Vocabulary section is highly limited. On the plus side, the Math review despite its errors has a clearer layout. Overall, in terms of strategy, clarity, and the number of practice questions, Barron's, Kaplan's, and Princeton Review's guides all surpass the Acing the GRE. Rating:  - Some parts are great, LOTS of typos in math sectionWritten by a test writer, it certainly -feels- like you're getting insider tips. I haven't taken the GRE yet, so I can't say whether it's truly useful. The text is easy and fun to read, and the chapters are organized well. The content is straightforward to work through and the tips and strategies are highlighted well. The thing I don't like, and it's a big thing, is the quantity of typos in the math section. There are mistakes in the formulas (yikes!) and in the answers and explanations. For example, page 200 lists the surface area of a cube as 486 for a side length of 8 AND for a cube with a side length of 9. Page 202 gives information about a triangle: lengths of two sides and one angle. The problem asks you to estimate the length of the third side. Yes, it's an estimation, but the answer is nothing near the two lengths the third side could be, when calculated. (There are two possibilities given the setup -- one where the sides are more equal, and one where the third side is very short, but the answer tells you to pick something in the middle. Drawing it out by hand and modeling it with mathematical software give the same results -- and neither are what the book says is the answer.) On page 219, there's a function with an equal sign in the numerator: f(x)=1 -------- 1-x^2 On page 220, the formula for finding the midpoint between two points is listed as (x1 - x2)/2, (y1 - y2)/2 but the minus signs should really be plus signs. I consider that a serious error, since someone who doesn't know the formula will be misled. This review is of a 2007 edition. If they revise, much more attention needs to be paid to the math proofreading, and at a minimum they should fix the few problems mentioned above. (And will they send me an honorarium for catching these mistakes? :-) ) page 1 of 1
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