Customer Reviews

ARCO Master the GRE 2009 (with CD)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

As someone noted already, there's a big mistake regarding the presence of a calculator on the interface. There is no calculator on the interface.

I bought this book yesterday and did the first practice math test. I found two errors in the answers. Since there are are 28 questions, that's a pretty high error rate and I was fortunate enough to figure out that I was actually correct and the answer was wrong. You might not be so lucky.

I then did two more practice tests. Each contained at least two glaring mistakes in the answers. Do yourself a favor. Don't buy this book.

The only advantage this book has over the Barron's guide is that it contains some sample math questions where the answer has to be written in. Barron's doesn't contain that type of question. (And Barron's has some errors too but they're not as ubiquitous.)

This book and its accompanying CD have serious flaws. Firstly, they contain typos and errors clearly noticeable when you're going through the tests--for instance, they will tell you the right answer is wrong. I'm no math genius, but I know when I've done my calculations correctly, particularly when the calculations the book provides for why my answer was wrong are themselves wrong. Secondly, the verbal section is way off base from the actual test. This book is one of five different test preparation materials I have, and the questions and answers in it are markedly different from the verbal section questions of any other source, including the ETS computerized practice tests. My verbal score, and only my verbal score, was significantly lower on these practice tests than they were on any other company's practice tests, and many times I did not understand or agree with the explanations given by the book/CD for why my reading comprehension answer was wrong or why their analogies answer was right. Thirdly, the computerized practice tests that can be installed from the CD just don't work. Installing them on Vista takes a little extra work, which is not too troublesome, but the program did not save my test results from the first computer practice test. When I tried to take the second practice test, I noticed immediately that the math section questions were exactly the same. I tried to back out of that test to take the third practice test (there are only three total), but it also had the exact same math questions. When I tried to troubleshoot and reinstall the program, it completely stopped working.

All in all, not worth the trouble. Skip the verbal section and use the math section only if extremely desperate for practice, and even then take it all with a grain of salt because their answers might be wrong.

In the quantitative reasoning section of the diagnostic test, Question 5 is poorly worded at best and probably better described as totally incorrect. Question 15 is wrong as noted by other reviewers. My dad is a tenured prof in Statistics / Math and he verified that both of these questions suck.

The typos mentioned by others are also screwed up in my book.

Boo Peterson's!

I started using this review book to prep for the GRE, however the errors in this book are astonishing and have not been corrected on their website as of mid august 08. For instance, p 5 "an on-screen calculator is NOT provided and calculators are prohibited" and p 20 "confirm all but the most simple calculations using the on-screen GRE calculator." And in the diagnostic test on p 77 "The correct answer is (B)... Choice (B) is incorrect because..." I believe there is also a math error in question 15 of the diagnostic. Obviously I am unsatisfied and will switch to a different company for review material. The book does provide a lot of example GRE questions, but without knowing whether or not my answers are correct, they are completely useless.

peruse the other reviews. yes, it's unanimous. this is a one star study guide.

where i differ from, and what i would like to add to the other reviews is to provide more specific examples of where this guide is wanting:

1. there are some gems here. don't be fooled by all the mistakes. for example, there is a section on ALTERING FRACTIONS AND RATIOS that will be helpful if learned, Exponents You Should Know, a table delineating Exponents and the Real Number Line, a table of Roots You Should Know, a table of PYTHAGOREAN TRIPLETS, a nice geometry section, etc.

2. the section on PERMUTATIONS and COMBINATIONS, and PROBABILITY are wanting. insufficient and unacceptable for a study guide.

3. nice section on Circles and Inscribed Polygons, and Tangents and Inscribed Circles, although the explanations were wanting.

4. the reason why you want to avoid this book (or what section of the book to avoid) - the Analogies section:

but before I go there; the gem is ANALOGY CATEGORIES YOU SHOULD KNOW

now for it's flaws -

page 304 analogy incorporates the idea that mercury is unstable. look up mercury in the McGraw-Hill encyclopedia of science and technology. it isn't even remotely intimated that this element is unstable. if this analogy/reasoning were on an actual test, i'd be the first one to dispute it.

page 306 analogy asks us "is straightness a defining characteristic of an arrow? No ..." are you starting to get the picture? what of the idiom "straight as an arrow" ? what? are arrows suppose to be crooked? If this analogy/explanation were on an actual gre test, i'd be the first one to challenge it. i would think that even china has perfected the art of manufacturing straight arrows. which makes me wonder: who wrote that? who edited that? where is this coming from? who is going to think that an arrow is not, by definition, straight?

page 310 "does a clot reduce exposure to bleeding? No ..." whoever's heard of "exposure" to bleeding? a clot reduces bleeding. am i studying for the gre or a test in obfuscation?

page 312 - does a battlefield demonstrate a lack of strategy? sure it does. it is an expression of a lack of diplomacy. how a place where people are killing each other exemplify strategy? i would dispute this one.

page 316 is lying a form of insincerity? sure it is.

page 328 - verbal reasoning - what of this sentence: " ... nations are now tackling public-health problems jointly, through joint research programs." does this strike you as retarded? why not just say "... nations are now tackling public-health problems through joint research programs." ?

there's a reason for this study guide getting one star. it's because it's frustrating to read. it's stupid. i'm going to get over this book and move on to something more efficacious. and that's all i have to say about that.

I just did the math portion of the practice test that gauges your competence but I found alot of errors. some of them are like how is that even possible and the explanations are wrong. don't even use this book if you get it for free.

I honestly have to disagree with many reviewers of this books. I acknowledge the fact that for the verbal reasoning, the book is poorly elaborated. Questions about reading comprehension are sometimes much more difficult than those of the actual books and the list of word to learn is really poor. The author put much more emphasis on learning suffixes and prefixes rather than passively learning words in order to get a good score and i totally disagree with him. However, I found this book extremely helpful for the math and for the writing section. The math section is extremely elaborated, with all the rules and examples of exercises that can occur on the GRE. The way the books explain math concepts is really understandable and it contains many effective tricks for getting the right answer. For the writing section..I can say that I could not have survived without this books, This books describes exactly what evaluators want to read combined with a 7 step strategies that I have found really effective. In addition, the book illustrates many ways to maximize rhetoric techniques and to nicely organize the structure of the assay. Although I don't recommend this book for verbal I warmly suggest it for the math and writing sections.

From the same author I also found the book GRE-answer to the real essay questions extremely helpful It contains a large variety of very well organized assays covering a wide range of topics highly likely to occur on the GRE. This book is an excellent source of ideas and concepts for test takers. For the verbal, the best book I have found is the Barron's and Barron's essential words for the GRe (it contains 800 well-explained words)

After taking one of the computer-based tests (admittedly from an earlier version of the book) I found that my scores were MUCH lower than I was getting on ETS's practice tests. This makes me suspect that Peterson's is not properly adjusting the difficulty level of the questions --- a disproportionate number qualify as very difficult. While this might be good practice for someone looking to score an 800, it is discouraging to the average student.