Best prep book for the new GRE?

Hey everyone, I'm giving myself a month to study for the GRE, and I don't know which book to choose. It's so confusing, since most people don't have experience with this new test, but does anyone who HAS taken the new version have any recommendations?

I haven't taken the test but I am taking it in September. I'm using Barron's New GRE 19th edition. It's based on the new test. It comes with one diagnostic test and two practice tests based on the new GRE. I would recommend it.

Depends on what you want to focus on. I'm taking the GRE tomorrow (procrastination!) and I've used different books for quantitative and verbal. If you're rusty on math definitely get the Cliffnotes Math Review book; it's a thorough and really useful read, and covers pretty much all the math I've seen on the practice tests so far.

The Barron's book is alright, I liked their strategies for writing. You can supplement it with the new Kaplan GRE Premier book which also has a huge vocab list towards the end. More useful might be the vocab flashcards that all these companies sell; I ended up using TPR "500 most common word" ones. Reviewed them for a couple weeks and saw on average 2-3 words in each test.

Yes, I also recommend the Princeton Review vocab list. I believe it's called the hit parade. I see the words all the time on the various practice tests. I don't think they've updated the list based on the new GRE so you should be fine with one of the old books for that.

partlycloudy said:

Hey everyone, I'm giving myself a month to study for the GRE, and I don't know which book to choose. It's so confusing, since most people don't have experience with this new test, but does anyone who HAS taken the new version have any recommendations?

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I took the revised GRE last Friday. Some people can get away with just using the free material on the ETS website, but if you feel uncertain I would just get a book that focuses on math practice problems and then study vocabulary.

I took the old version in May and I thought the math was much easier on the new version. The vocabulary aspect is just as hard as the previous version despite the format change. The most difficult part about the new test was that there are quite a few questions that have several parts and you have to get all of the parts correct to get any credit. It also had more reading comprehension, but that wasn't a problem for me. Although I didn't like that it is no longer adaptive, I did appreciate the option of being able to mark questions and go back to them. It came in very helpful and takes away some of the stress.

I hardly studied for my first attempt and didn't study at all for the revised. I would recommend using the free materials on the ETS website and then studying vocabulary. If you think you need to practice math, get a book that focuses just on that. I wouldn't bother with one of the books that cover the whole test, especially with the changes being so new.