Best GRE study guide?

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The best investment I ever did was take the Kaplan online course. This includes all the books, lessons, and practice activities. I initially went with Princeton Review and did not get anything good from it. Additionally, use the website quizlet.com to make your flashcards for vocab words. Hope that helps.
 
I initially studied with a Barrons GRE book and I recommend against it. The material in there is not as hard as the actual GRE so it gave me false hope that I was going to do really well my first time taking it and the results were not so great. The second time around I used Kaplan Premier and their vocab flash cards. They have tons of practice tests on a CD rom which I think were really comparable to the actual test. I did much much better the second time. Good luck!
 
I had a private tutor for the GRE who has been tutoring for the GRE and other Standardized tests for almost 20 years and she highly suggests studying primarily from the ETS study guide and using other books, such as Kaplan and Barron's, for additional practice. ETS's study guide is effective because it gives you practice questions that are very similar to the ones on the test. I also suggest ETS because it comes with an online practice test which is identical to the actual test. My score on the practice test was identical to the one I received on the actual test. To study for the verbal sections I HIGHLY suggest studying Kaplan's 500 word flashcards. They reflect the most frequently used words on the GRE. My verbal score improved exponentially after studying these! Good luck with your studies!
 
I had the manhattan, Kaplan and ets guides. All of them were pretty good and all offered a lot of practice test that were similar in difficulty to the actual gre. However if you have an iPhone the best app is GRE Vocab by brainscape, flash cards without the pain of making them and carrying them around. I'm not a Vocab whiz, but I just studied that app for a couple of months'and scored in the 97th percentile on the verbal section. Just my two cents
 
I did really well on the GRE and used Kaplan's Premier as my main guide. I also went through the ETS guide, which was helpful for finding out all of the content that could appear on the test, but I found Kaplan had better strategic advice than the ETS guide did. It was nice to take the ETS Guide practice tests, because they were very similar to the real test. I also read through the book "Word Power Made Easy" by Norman Lewis, which was written several decades ago and can come off as rather dated, but was incredibly helpful to me for the verbal section. It turned out that quite a lot of words from that book were on the test, and the book has lots of interactive exercises and stories to help you learn word roots, so it's not just memorizing. It starts out very easy and progressively gets more complex. I also used Kaplan's vocab cards, which I would also recommend. Good luck!
 
theres this online tutoring website called magoosh. the online instructors have really good videos. i am the worst writer when it comes to writing under pressure and i got a 5 on the writing portion on the gre and only prepared a few days for the writing part. the guy works wonders! i would have never gotten my 5 without magoosh!
 
I bought princeton verbal and the kaplan book with 5 online exams. Memorized all the words in princeton book. Scored mid 320s
 
I used the GRE official book + dvd and did good on my test. I'm selling it if you want it. It's in pretty much new conditions.
 
I agree with marco--the ETS materials are the best way to go. I did quite well with them, and I'm awful at standardized tests.
 
I have the KAPLAN 2012 Premier rather than the 2013 version, any point investing in the newer version or will the current 2012 i have suffice?

JD
 
From reading the amazon reviews, it looks like the Kaplan 2012 and 2013 are basically identical. Looks like Barron and Princeton doesn't change much either. A few changes and an extra test is what you get.
 
jdaniels360 said:
I have the KAPLAN 2012 Premier rather than the 2013 version, any point investing in the newer version or will the current 2012 i have suffice?

JD
Click to expand...

Ya I would save your money, as long as the book has an adequate number of practice tests you should be good to go.
 
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