Barron's GRE

As a former graduate student and someone who has already taken the GRE before, several times, I went into preparing for the GRE in a way that a former prisoner goes back into prison. Those who have taken the test before will understand what I mean. The GRE forces some people, those who want to do particularly well on the test, to kill their social life and become prisoners in their homes studying for this test every single day!

I want to wholeheartedly and without reservations recommend the Barron's GRE book, as it takes the time to cover the subject matter at a degree which surpasses any $1000 Kaplan class you will ever take. It forces you to analyze the questions, analyze your own approach/method, and to truly (I cannot stress this enough) LEARN (not just regurgitate, my friend) the material need for success on the GRE.

The GRE is not a test of regurgitation, but a test of your ability to problem solve, and problem solve well. Match this book with the...Read more

In preparing for the GRE, I did some research as to which prep books were user's favorites and then narrowed them down to the top 3: Barron's, Kaplan and Princeton Review, not necessarily in that order but it turned out that way for me. I used the Barron's GRE as my main prep book, in terms of memorising word lists, studying the basic math formulas, and applying math skills towards problem-solving. However, Barron's is not very helpful in terms of preparing for the essay component which didn't really matter that much since the essay component is the least important component of the GRE anyway. So for the purposes of preparing for the verbal and quantitative component, Barron's was adequate.

That being said, I would recommend supplementing Barron's GRE with at least two other prep books. I found Kaplan's and the Princeton Review prep books [with the CD-ROM] to be excellent resources in helping me develop familiarity with the CAT model. However, I place Kaplan above the...Read more

NOT for math practice!!

I own this book along with the Princeton Review "Cracking the GRE" book. I've used this book mainly for the math practice/help... I test fairly high on the verbal practice tests so I've been hitting the math practice hard (I can't say how the verbal part of this book is) . I'm NOT a math person. Luckily my husband IS. After working through the problems and looking at the explanations for the solutions in both books, we both agreed that this Barron's book will show you the mathmatically correct way to do things. However, the Princeton Review book will show you easier ways and quicker ways to do the same problem in a more understandable way for us non math people and it will help math leaning people look at the same problem differently so that they can finish it quicker. Sometimes the mathmatically correct way to do things is NOT the quickest or easiest... it would be easy to get hung up on doing a problem the "correct way", thereby...Read more