Price: $23.10

December 24, 2008.

Technical Difficulties.

Rating: 3
The printed prep manual was very thorough with regards to the verbal and quantitative section. I do not think it did adequate preparation for the verbal section.
The disc on the other hand left much to be desired. It was touch and go as to whether or not Windows would read the disc. Frustrating is the polite term I can think of.

December 23, 2008.

Terrific Resource!!.

Rating: 5
All I can say is "Thank God!" I purchased this book knowing I would only have 3 days to study for the GRE (thanks to an over-booked schedule). As I read the book I became so stressed out because I realized the depth of the GRE. However, after stressing me out, this book provided all the help I so desperately needed.

Buy it, read it, do what the book says... it will help!

December 20, 2008.

Better than Barron's.

Rating: 4
I initially used the Barron's GRE prep book and got a 540 on the verbal section and 640 on quantitative. My math score was low relative to those of accepted students for the programs I am applying to, and the Barron's book didn't have enough examples. I know all the concepts behind the math questions so the concept explanations in the Barron's book didn't help me...I was having trouble seeing through the "tricks." I bought this book along with the Kaplan vocabulary flash cards and was able to raise my scores to 710 in verbal and 720 in quantitative.

I really liked the Kaplan book because it is very explicit in all of its explanations. The most useful part of the book was the section listing the dozens of math question types one will encounter and the steps to solve them. There were fewer practice questions than in the Barron's book, but those explanations more than made up for it. The tips on answering verbal questions were also very helpful, though the exercises were kind of silly. The tests on the CD had a similar setup to the actual GRE and were accurate in terms of question types and difficulty.

I do have to dock a star for the numerous typos and errors in the book as well as the fact that I couldn't get the online tests to work and Kaplan never answered my email requesting help.

All in all, I am very happy with this review book. It is WAY cheaper than those courses Kaplan offers. Between this book, the vocabulary flash cards, and doing as many practice tests as possible, you almost certainly raise your score.

December 15, 2008.

online practice is not available.

Rating: 1
the online practice key number in the new book I bought from this seller is already used: (

December 06, 2008.

Helpful but not THAT helpful.

Rating: 4
I had to cram for the GREs, had two weeks to study and definitely no time for a class. So I bought this book and went through basically the entire thing. The review sections are pretty good, more helpful for math than verbal because they don't actually define that many words and the instructions for the analytical writing section are more or less for people who have never written a one page paper before. Anything more in-depth than that or tricks to save time were not there.
The practice test in the book is ridiculous - way harder than the actual GRE. The cd rom is a good resource because it does have several practice test sections and 3 CAT tests, though they're not full lenth - the math and verbal sections are half the length they are in the real test. THey're helpful, although I think also harder than the GRE itself.
My main gripe with this book is that the explanations of how they solve the problem or why certain verbal problems are correct are terrible. They basicaly give a one liner on how they got to the answer but don't explain any nuances of the problem or give help on how to do a better job next time, drawing connections between the problem and the general math concept being tested. The online syllabus tool is also kind of hard to use and not that much more helpful than a daily planner that you write out yourself.
Overall this is a good product - definitely helps if you need to study really quickly because it's not too long and involves all the basic review that you need. If you want to get into more detailed and harder math stuff, you'll need another math review book, so be aware of that.