Customer Reviews

Cracking the GRE Chemistry Test, 3rd Edition (Graduate School Test Preparation)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

You would like to think that Princeton Review would do a good job with something like this, but it's pretty miserable. It's obvious that they just hired some first year grad student to write it.

The organic section consists of a list of reactions with little to no explanation. No mechanisms are involved and it's just expected that you memorize all 50 some pages of mechanisms.

The physical section is absolutely miserable and they don't seem to want to stick to a sign convention when they talk about thermodynamics.

The analytical section is not comprehensive.

While I have been impressed with the Princeton Review materials before, their chemistry review book is a bit lacking. This would be a good book to go through maybe a month or two before the exam, but for GRE studying, the most helpful resources are always practice exams, and the one with this book is definitely much easier than the real thing.

I must admit I found the free material you get from ETS upon registering for the test more helpful than things I found in this book. The fact that the structure of the book does not follow a logical path (e.g. you will find some topics of analytical chemistry in the middle of the quantum chemistry chapter)plus the signs of poor editing (this is the 3rd edition, yet there are still lots of typing and other mistakes in the text) are the main reasons why I would recommend people not to buy this book.

This book packs most of the topics on the subject test into ~300 pages. While it is not as detailed as four separate text books for organic, inorganic, physical and analytical chemistry, it serves as an excellent summary and brief review, especially for people like me who is only willing to spend 2 weeks at most to prepare for the test and don't want to go back to the notes I took years ago.

The only problem I have with the book is the way they count electrons for organometallic complexes. They treat all metals as neutral unless there is an overall +/- charge and ligands such as Cl or Cp as neutral. This is very wrong. Cl- and Cp- are anionic ligands and donate 2 and 6 electrons respectively, not 1 and 5 as listed in the book. Their way won't affect the final electron counting result, but is still very misleading. There are quite a few typos but these are obvious and minor.

I really don't have much to add, to be quite honest. Almost everything that needed to be said about this book has already been said. For example, the first half of the organic chemistry section is well written, but it quickly goes downhill from there. In addition, the physical chemistry section is abysmal. As somebody else previously said, the authors aren't even consistent with their sign convention for the first law for thermodynamics! They define the first law in one way, and then less than 2 pages later, go back on their own convention. The statistical mechanics section is just painful to look through.

The reason I'm writing this is to correct a common opinion that has been expressed in other reviews. It was mentioned that the actual chemistry GRE was much harder than the practice exam given at the end of this book, and I strongly disagree with this proposition. Actually, the two are almost incomparable. They are very different, which goes to show you how much research the authors did while writing this book.

In my opinion, the actual chemistry GRE was much easier than the practice exam that came with this book. The practice exam focuses on obscure definitions and oddly specific equations that nobody knows off hand. However, the actual GRE focuses on testing one's general knowledge of chemistry. In my opinion, the best way to prepare yourself for the exam is to review your lecture notes, old textbooks, and old exams. When this is done, download and print off the two exams that ETS officially released. This is the best indicator of how you will do on the actual exam (of course).

The only reason I went through this book is to feel accomplished. If I had spent more time on the official ETS practice exams, I'm sure I would have scored higher. In my opinion, owning this book is unnecessary, and it shifts your attention away from studying material that will actually help you.

I haven't taken the chem gre yet but I'm assuming this book covers the topics you'll need to know. Saying that, its good book for review, but not detailed enough to teach you the info if you haven't gone over it in a class or textbook. Also the book has many mistakes so if you haven't already learned the info & don't just need a refresher, be wary of some typos and incomplete truths. I got this book with the REA chem gre test book with 5 tests in it.

This book is an okay start. It has less mistakes in it than the older edition, but there are still some. It is definitely not enough preparation though.

This book has so many errors - textual and content based - that it is almost detrimental to lead when preparing for the GRE Chemistry subject test. One has to wonder if the editors even bothered to edit this book, because there are many instances when they misspell words or simply leave them out altogether. On the context side, I think I can just rest my case with the fact that they did not even get the van der Waals equation of state correct. Other than these blatant errors, I feel the book is not particularly well organized - specifically in the organic chemistry section. They do not seem to follow any logical pattern and, for example, lump fairly different topics, such as SN2 and SnAR together. Overall, big disappointment. I will not be buying or recommending a Princeton Review product again.

Yes, I used it, and yes, it was nice to have a review. But it was full of typos. Important ones-- like the ones that totally change the equations they want you to memorize. Furthermore, it contains information that is just wrong (a reaction is NOT spontaneous, despite negative change in free energy, because of a high activation energy?). Low, low quality like this is unacceptable.

To preface: DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK

The book covers all the material necessary, but there are barely any practice questions with each section leaving you wondering what is important to take away from the material and what is extraneous? Should it be understood from cover to back? There isn't even an introduction portion explaining how to best make use of the book. Doesn't really qualify as proper test prep.

To make things worse, there are crucial errors. Not grammar errors, they clearly hired enough people to hammer those out, but science errors in terrible places that will screw you up on the exam. I find a significant error, the wrong variable used or name given, every 10-20 pages. For something as crucial as test prep, where the student is filling gaps in knowledge, such errors are inexcusable. For shame Princeton Review, your company clearly has no motivation to actually aid people and is concerned only with getting money out of them for this exam before the user realizes how bad the text is. On an exam that is not particularly well attended, I can see you lack impetus to make a good prep book, but it doesn't speak well of your corporate policies if you're just trying to deceive the consumer instead of being grounded in a quality product. Eventually this will catch up with you.