Customer Reviews

Cracking the GRE Biology Test, 5th Edition (Graduate School Test Preparation)

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

 

 

Barring the Hugh Grant look-alike on the front, I first thought this book was nearly worthless. Then I looked at the vocab list and took the practice test -- they were both very helpful. It's too bad the rest of the book is sinfully shoddy, made on cheap newspaper, all black and white type -- if you didn't learn it in Freshman Biology with the color photos and CD-ROMS and 3D glasses and cattle-prod or whatever they use now, then cheap newspaper and crummy drawings won't help now.

If you're trying to save money, you could just go to a book-store and copy the vocab list at the back. See if you like the p. test, you might buy the whole book (esp at the price Amazon has now -- I paid almost 30$ for it from a regular bookstore). But do get that vocab list -- it's about 30 words that were all over the test, words nobody in their right mind would know unless they knew it would be on a test.

The practice test was helpful because UNLIKE ETS, the Princeton Review p. test gives explanations for all the answers and I did learn a couple of terms/ideas that were on the test from which I benefitted by going through answer explanations and correcting my test.

I started off using this book, the Kaplan 2009-2010 edition, and my intro bio book to study for the Gre Bio, and very quickly realized that the Princeton Review book is utterly useless. It doesn't cover the material with enough depth (1.5 pages on digestion compared to 9 pages in the Kaplan). If you compare the material in the book with the checklist given by ETS, you'll also see that it doesn't fully match up. It is also riddled with mistakes. Save your money, go Kaplan for study guide + Intro Bio book for clearing up concepts here and there + wikipedia for alternative definition of certain terms. Good luck

This book is poorly written. It only covers, at the most, 50% of the test material. Some contents might be wrong. The practice test is also bad, some of the questions are not clear. so DON'T BUY THIS BOOK!

The book is easy to read and gives background information and a general review but does not cover all topics, although it did mention some subjects not included in the Kaplan book. I think if used with proper review material to expand on the subjects mentioned it is useful.