Books for Prep | |
 - Most thorough prep ever!!!I had both the Kaplan and Princeton Review books. But the Nova GRE prep was by far the most thorough guide. Warning...this book is not for the weak...there's not a whole lot of white space in it. While princeton review is great if you want quick strategies, I think the Nova is best for those who really have the time to study for the GRE. Also in terms of difficulty, the problem sets in nova are more complex I think.. and the math is a bit more challenging, compared to the Kaplan and Princeton Review books. I only wish I had started with and focused completely on the nova prep guide. I felt like I had wasted my time on the other two books because of the name. The other two have good stuff, but I'm saying if you really want to drill yourself and if you've been away from math and words for very long, go with the nova...it will get you up to speed if you take the time to go through it. there are a couple of mistakes here and there in the book but not enough to detract from the overall value. Man I wish I started on Nova sooner!!! Rating:  - GOOD BOOKThis is a good book for Quantitative Section.This improved my Quant score. But dont prepare Verbal from this book.Its a kinda mess. Still it is a good one for Math. Rating:  - do not recommendThe author puts too much of his opinion in the reading comprehension section. Answers are vague and i questioned whether I should learn why HE justifies his answers. Perhaps a different answer would be correct on the GRE! He comes off as pompous and sexist and the author's voice should not come through at all in an instruction book. Rating: - To all who had a part in writing the GRE Prep Course book.I took the GRE for the first time in November 2004. I used books like Princeton Review and Peterson's material put out by ETS. I used these books to study mostly on my weak area, math. I decided to take the test again in December 2005. I only studied math and used the GRE Prep Course book. It was hard at first. The book was different than the rest -- it actually had hard math problems in small print on 300 pages, instead of large print baby problems like in the Princeton Review. I've never done well in math, but your book made sense. It made the other prep books seem like they were written to make you have to take the test twice. Anyway, when the date to the test came around, I felt prepared. I got up at 4 AM on the morning of the test to drive 2 hrs. to the testing site. On my way, my car started to have problems. I called my mechanic uncle and he said the car wouldn't make it. I was passing the airport, so I pulled into a rental car place, rented a car and got myself there with minutes to spare. Two hours late, I got my scores: 240 points higher on my math! Your book works, Thank you, Leah Rating:  - Contains some good features, but has serious flaws, as well.This book has a good introduction and description of the GRE. The math explanations are clear, and the math problems are well constructed. The word list is helpful -- I already knew most of the 4000 words but the list is a good guide for the vocabulary to be tested. However, the definitions for many of the words were from an older dictionary (circa 1913). Furthermore, many of the word problems were simply incorrect (e.g., "seasoned" is not an antonym for "verdant" by any stretch of the imagination. We can't use the transitive property as in mathematics for definitions, especially when the intermediate terms involve using figurative language! Another bizarre example was having "convocate" be the antonym for "mete".) Luckily, you can see that the actual GRE questions are more straightforward than this. The best thing to do is use questions from ETS's actual tests. The other reference books I've found to be better in the verbal practice sections and definitions are Barron's and Kaplan's. In association with Amazon.com | |