Looking for any advice on good GRE prep books. I want to study them over the summer then take a class next semester and take it. I think i will need the most work in math and vocab. I am seeing a lot of mixed reviews between Barron, Kaplan, and Princeton, Any suggestions? ( i just bought the cliffnotes math review and am waiting for it in the mail)
Good GRE prep book
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I used the Princeton book and I didn't take a class to accompany it--it worked pretty well for me. You'll get different responses from people, so in the end you'll still have to choose one on your own. One thing I will say is that no matter how much you study the list of words in that book, you're always going to find new words that you can study and you're not going to be able to know all of them. More than half of the words I studied weren't on the test and there were several on the test that I had never seen before, and I don't think it was a reflection on the book--that's just the nature of the test itself. I could be wrong though--obviously my opinion has its limitations, since I only took the test once and only used one book to study for it.
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I think most people use a couple books to prep; classes work for some but you can get a pretty good score without one. For GRE I usually recommend number2.com. The practice questions are of medium difficulty but it's free, and they also tell you when you pick the wrong answer what "tricked" you into picking it. And for math that's quite useful. Hope this helps! Good luck!
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I used the REA book, which I thought was helpful for the verbal section. This was for the old test though, so I'm not sure about the new one.
I feel like vocab is such a crapshoot, honestly. I have a very broad vocabulary already and learned 300-400 new words from the 2011 Cracking the GRE (before it changed) and Baron's flashcards. There were almost a thousand total, most of which I already knew so I was mainly worried about math. I ended up getting a 700 quant without much studying on that end. As far as the verbal, I had all of those hundreds of new words down pat through brightly colored flashcards (they help by the way!). I think 1-2 were on on the test and most of the others I'd never seen in my life. I got a 570 V and was so mad. I swear I just had really bad luck/ crazy hard words. I guess we'll see when I retake though. So now I'm going overboard on learning new words. Anyway, my whole point was I downloaded this $5 GRE Vocab app from brainscape and it has about 850 GRE words and 300 roots. Really helpful. Just learn as many words as you can. I've heard math is easier to improve. I suggest just doing powerprep and getting as much practice as you can. You'll notice a pattern with the material. I liked Cracking the GRE. I also have 1,014 Practice Questions for the new GRE, which is helpful, but I feel like the math is kind of overkill. Don't waste your money on the official book or whatever it's called... spent $30 and all the stuff, including powerprep is on the sign. Sign up for a Kaplan test if you can.
