Customer Reviews

Cracking the GMAT with CD-ROM, 2002 Edition (Princeton Review: Cracking the GMAT (w/DVD))

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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought 5 books for my GMAT preparation and unfortunately saved the Princeton Review for later in my review process. I started with the Kaplan books and although I found them to be a good review of the basics, that's about all I thought they were useful for. Now, the book isn't without errors. The CD that comes with offers practice tests and drills. The Reading Comprehension questions in the verbal portion of the practice tests are a bit messed up. YOu will sometimes get only 1 question per 350 word reading passage, then another passage will appear, followed by only one question- overall, you end up spending an enormous amount of time reading 6 or 7 different passages. The plus side is that once you have read them you are ready for all the other practice tests b/c they apparently use the same 7 or so passages for all the tests. However, with the exception of RC sections, I believe this book to be one of the better ones and the practice questions are similar to those on the real test, which is not the case with Kaplan. IN fact, the day before I took my test I took a Kaplan practice test since I had already completed all the Princeton tests and the Official GMAT Review tests. I scored a 490, which was not only 150 points below my last score, it was the lowest score I had ever gotten. I dismissed the score since I had already come to terms with the fact that Kaplan's questions and style were not a real representation of the GMAT. Anyway, the next day I got a 650 on my test, which I was happy with. I noticed that the majority of the GMAT book reviews are written by those who are trying for a 750 or something close to that, so I just wanted to share my experience, since I bet the majority of people applying to MBA programs are not looking to get a 750. My suggestion is to take as many practice test as you can and get a few different books, but please make the Princeton Review one of them.

I've never written a review before, but felt compelled after taking a test on the Princeton Review CD. This CD is riddled with errors and is as a whole, poorly designed. Let me explain:

1. The CD only contains the tests. Not by itself a flaw, but compared to Kaplan it's really lacking. Not to mention the fact that the overall design is poor. (It's hard to use with no instructions)

2. In the verbal section, it randomly switched among Reading Comprehension passages. It would have one question from one passage and then jump to another. Later, it would return to an old passage. This is NOT how the real test behaves. It asks you all of the questions from a particular passage and then moves on.

3. SOME OF THE ANSWERS ARE WRONG! I did poorly in the math section so I started to review the section. Many of the questions I answered were correct, but the program "thought" another answer was correct. (I did confirm this with two other people to make sure I wasn't crazy).

4. THERE ARE NO EXPLANATIONS. How can you have a bank of problems without explanations? Well, you can if you're the Princeton Review. But it's not going to help you if you'd like to actually know WHY you got a question wrong.

What a waste of money. I expect to throw this in the garbage, but before I did, I needed to vent some of my anger. Thanks for listening/reading.

By the way. The Kaplan book is excellent. And you don't need the Princeton strategies unless you are a sub-par student. The strategies don't assist those looking for 600+ and can actually harm those looking to go 700+.

This book offers some valuable tips and suggestions especially for cracking math. But overall it focuses more on the "Joe Blogg" tips and tricks approach, which may work for some people and not for others. I still believe knowing sincerely how to solve problems will get you far. But the PR book makes for an interesting read, gives you some excellent strategies (e.g., about the essay sections etc) and does the best job of introducing the concept of "difficulty level bins" -- which is how the CAT works. I, much to my surprise I admit, ended up with a 780 and for those about to take the GMAT, some tips:

1. Definitely get yourself the 'Official Guide' (published by ETS) -- that is indespensable. You should aim to complete it from cover to cover - it gives you a really good idea of the test questions though the math is a liitle easier than what I saw on the test. It even has a comprehensive, complete list of essay topics.

2. Practice tests -- my scores in Powerprep : 780,770; Kaplan : 670,650,690; Princeton : 750,720. So I'd venture to recommend this book to get a decent estimation of where you really stand, and therefore u must take the included tests seriously -- i.e., emulating the real testing conditions -- in order to get an accurate idea of your potential. Kaplan is really tough - I haven't seen too many folks scoring above 700 in thier tests - infact when i gave the first test straight after a 780 in powerprep and got a 650 I was pretty turned off - but later found out that it wasn't really a big deal. Get Kaplan for practice, but the PR and the official guide should be enough.

3. PREP BOOKS: Well other than the Official guide, I used PR and Kaplan. I found the math tips in Kaplan (50 of them) quite impressive but the practice tests in PR give you a very good idea of difficulty levels of math/analytic. This book lays out the test in "bins" (easy bin, medium bin, and the tough bin). I found this to be a very unique and useful feature.

All in all, this particular book is superb for its purpose and complements the ETS OG fabulously. Highly recommended!

Although this book delves deeply into the twisted psyche of the GMAT test writers, it is little more than a supplement for Kaplan's GMAT Review. I found the abundance of typographical and math errors to be rather confusing. Also, several example questions lack explainations, often leading me to question the accuracy of the selected answers. Most of all, after reading the Kaplan book, I thought this book was rather stale and trite, and, aside from the abundant amount of paper contained within, a waste of money.

My suggestion is to definitely buy the book by Kaplan, and then, if you feel like you need extra practice, download the practices from GMAC and scour the internet for free tests, because my "Princeton Review" has just become 432 pages of toilet friendly recyclable paper.

I used this book and the Kaplan book and ended up liking this one a bit more. The tips were useful (and entertaining) and give a good understanding of how the questions are structured and how to plan strategies for beating them. Don't let the cheap newsprint paper that this bok is printed on fool you, this is great.

You should use this in conjunction with the the ETS book - "The Official Guide for Gmat Review" (as the book recommends).

Princeton Review's Cracking the GMAT 2002 teaches you the GMAT test writer's thinking through Mr. Joe Bloggs. While there are several Joe Bloggs out there who would fall into the test makers' traps, a careful study of the tricks will lead you away from those GMAT landmines.

All the areas are covered adequately. What is not covered, though, is an in-depth study of math or grammar. The book itself is pretty sparse on the practice questions - often asking that practice for each type of question be supplemented by the Official GMAT Guide. However, if you have the CD-Rom version of the book, which I highly recommend, then you are not short of practice. The questions are very representative of GMAT, varying in difficulty, although, there are really few questions that fall into the "really tough" bracket.

What is contained in the CD-Rom is a huge set of practice questions along with 4 full-length CATs. The most IMPRESSIVE feature, that is not provided in any other CD-ROMs (such as from Kaplan), is the fact that the entire question pool from which the CATs are generated becomes available after you attempt all four CATs. This gives you access to well over 300+ sentence correction questions, 450+ data sufficiency questions, 650+ problem solving questions, 200+ critical reasoning questions and 200+ reading comprehension questions.

Now that is what I call practice!!!

Although some part of verbal & math section in the book is quite helpful, the GMAT test from the CD is too easy, doesn't reflect a real question in the test.

Get Kaplan & ETS test-prep materials, allow 2-3 months for intense study, you will get a good results. Score above 650 is not impossible, if you study hard from this two books.

Unless you are already on your way to a 700, this book should improve your score. I took the GMAT without reading it (just used the powerprep software. BAD IDEA) and did not do as well as I should have and will need to take it again to get the score I need. My wife bought the book a few months later and used it for her test. She was impressed so I took a look at it. a read a few chapters and picked out several items that would have improved my score. I imagine that once I have time to sit down and study through the entire book, I should be able to get the score I need.

The first thing I did when I got this book home was to take one of the practice tests to approximate what kind of score range I was looking at. I scored a 690 on that practice. I say this to illustrate my starting point and my objectives in using this book. After having done this, I decided that my goal would be to score in the low 700s if possible. And then, I started reading the book. The book gave almost no review of basic algebra, geometry, or grammar (the three elements tested on the GMAT). Instead it was full of tips on how to avoind having to learn or remember the very concepts that are being tested. The problem with this is two-fold: 1) The tips given should be common sense for anyone who expects to score in the mid 500s or higher. These include using process of elimination and plugging if you get desperate. 2) The questions used throughout the book as examples and practice questions were far easier than anything I would ever see on the GMAT. This is because the GMAT is a computer adaptive test that does not give "easy" questions to those that are doing well. So, for me, the book was a waste ... In tribute to this was the fact that I got a 690 on the real test as well, even after many hours of studying from this and the much more adequate "ETS Official Guide to the GMAT." Perhaps, the PR tests are a bit misleading.

However, I might recommend it for anyone who is concerned about whether their GMAT score will prevent them from going to B-school at all. By this, I mean, if you are concerned about whether or not you will break 500 or even 450, this book will probably help you accomplish that. If you fear algebra or geometry with a passion, this book may be for you. If you are generally intelligent but have trouble showing that on standardized tests, this book might be for you. However, if your biggest fear is that you might score a mere 650 on the GMAT, save your money. If you are going to score a 650, you will do so with or without this book.

I haven't really had a chance to dig into this book yet, but so far it seems very informative.