Kaplan GRE Exam, 2007 Edition: Premier Program (Kaplan GRE Premier Program (W/CD))

 (25 customer reviews)

I, like many people, bought this book along with a plethora of other GRE prep books (Barrons, Arco, ETS) hoping that a combination of all these books would help me attain the high score I wanted. I figured if one book did a poor job covering one aspect, the others would pick up the slack.

Kaplan's GRE prep book was poor in all aspects of covering the material on the exam. First of all, this book essentially gives few to no facts, just tips and tricks on how to approach problems. Trust me, without reviewing the material, tips and tricks will get you nowhere fast.

Kaplan also does a poor job preparing you on the verbal section, in particular. Whereas Barrons contains an extremely useful 3000 word list, Kaplans has a pathetic 300 word list contained at the end of the book, most of which aren't even that difficult. Truthfully, if you want to do well on the verbal, you need to beef up your vocabulary. Its that simple. Barrons succeeds wonderfully here, as there is no...Read more

This book stood out to me for my students because it offered online tools in addition to a CD-ROM with quizzes and practice tests. I've invested in actual Kaplan courses before for students, however, and think that I had my hopes up very high about what was available online. The online diagnostic was disappointing in that the analysis it provided was only correct/incorrect answers and the amount of time spent on each question; clearly not enough to let a student know where they stand in strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, the text is full of great strategies (one has to break his old habits first) and the practice tests online and on the CD-ROM are great for getting used to the CAT as compared to paper tests. GRE test preparation books are certainly great for structured studying so I dont think that people should expect anything more from them.

I bought this book as I prepared to the take the GRE again. I have yet to take it, and so I don't know how helpful this book will be, but so far it does not seem to be as thorough or polished as the Barrons Guide. The Barrons Guide gives you a much longer list of vocabularly, goes over all of the math (including the more difficult quesitons) in full detail, and I think it is a bit more difficult. The GRE Kaplan CD pales next to its much better LSAT CD which had a much more friendly user interface. This cd merely directs you to select quizes from a drop down menu... couldn't you at least have created a simple GUI for this program?

Still, if you want some additional prep, this books seems to

be alright. But I would definitely go for the Barrons Guide first, mainly for its wonderful vocabulary list (3000 words I believe).