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 - Under No Circumstances Should You Buy This BookAlthough I was suspicious of the promises made by the company marketing this book, I decided to take a risk and order the PDF version. The only positive thing I can say about the experience is that my complaint was dealt with promptly when I demanded my money back. As for the book's content, all 82 pages of it, there are a few test tips that are perhaps marginally useful for general test taking, but there is absolutely nothing in this book that addresses anything one is likely to encounter on the GRE advanced test. The first 24 pages are devoted to mostly common-sense tips for taking tests. Then a truly egregious math "review" begins. On page 27, for instance, we're told that a negative times a negative is equal to a positive. If this is news to you, I hope you are not seriously considering graduate study in mathematics. A number of useless facts at that general level are given, and then one gets pages of "definitions" that pad out the review. (The "definition" of parallel: "Everything is equal distance." Sigh.) And to add injury to the already considerable insult, some of the grade-school-level mathematical information is incorrect ("Volume- is equal to base multiplied by height" [p. 29] is not only nebulously worded but also incorrect; consider a cone as but one counterexample). Obviously sensing the stark lack of equations early on, the author then throws in a few laughable cut-and-paste jobs complete with fuzzy equation images apparently downloaded from the Internet, along with admonitions for you to "make sure you know" one thing after another that you will never see on the actual test. (Here's a priceless tip from page 28: "Be familiar with the symbols greater than, less than, and equal.") Then comes the sample "mathematics test," in which you'll find questions such as: "Janet can type 250 words in 5 minutes, what is her typing rate per minute?" (I'll ignore the book's grammatical troubles, since those are the least of its problems.) This useless mishmash barely ever approaches the level of mathematics called for on the general GRE, let alone anything that could be addressed on the advanced test. I trust that you get the picture by now. Those reviewing for the math GRE have limited options, but I do recommend that you check out the Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE Math Test, 3rd Edition (Graduate Test Prep). It's not perfect, but it is at least relevant to the test, and the review is actually pretty decent and quite thorough. Avoid at all costs this utterly dishonest and shoddy piece of work, whose only potential beneficiary is the author if hapless buyers' refunds are not claimed in time. page 1 of 1
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