Customer Reviews

Cracking the GRE Chemistry (Princeton Review Series)

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I just began using this book to review for the GRE in April. I haven't gotten very far into the book, but in the first 15 pages I have already found four seriously misleading errors (and that's just the ones I've caught!). Some of the equations (even the Henderson-Hasselbalch) they provide are wrong. There is even a convenient example worked out with an erroneous equation. You can use this book to learn about what topics you should study for the GRE, but do the actual studying from real chemistry textbooks.

Poor chemists -- don't you wish a book existed that could meet your needs at this level? This book, as previously noted, contains more errors than you probably made on your last organic chemistry exam. Some mistakes are obvious, but I highly recommend avoiding this book because even the little things may mislead you. If you are looking to study for the GRE, I recommend picking up the Harcourt Brace College Outline Series books on College Chemistry and Physical Chemistry if you haven't already. If you want a book to study for organic chemistry, try finding a Kaplan MCAT book on organic chemistry, or at least one that has an organic chemistry section. As for instrumentation and inorganic, go back and ask friends or reread your notes and textbooks.

The topics covered are generally clear, but there are numerous errors and typos. There are bonds missing in the organic chemistry section and at least one error that is of a seriously confusing sort.

Avoid this book at all costs. It contains numerous errors, misleading items, and misspellings. In the example problems, many of the answers are worked out to find something other than what the original question asked (i.e. oxidation state instead of coordination number). I suggest the author, Monique Laberge, allow someone else to write the next edition.

I agree completely with the other reviews of this book. I just spent an hour deriving and re-deriving the Henderson-Hasselbach equation, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. The previous review tells me what I need to know -- it is incorrect in this book!!! There are so many errors that it is actually more work to review material that I already know than it was to learn it the first time. It's a shame I can't give zero stars on this review.

As other people have said, this book is full of typos, wrong formula names, mis-representation of structural formulas, etc. I can't underestimate the number of mistakes in this book. I bought the new edition of the book hoping that these issues had been addressed and resolved, but they have not. New typos have arisen and are in the same magnitude as the first edition.

It is a nice, general, concise review, but only if you want to double-check every fact in the book that may seem questionable. I have been using this book to review for my Qualifying exams for grad school and find that it's frustrating to use. However, it does keep you on your toes and constantly running to your text books to double check facts. I'm not sure if that is a good thing though... Come test time, it wouldn't be hard to become confused between what is right and what you saw in the book. A much better review book would be Schaum's Outlines, but they are much more detailed and not as general. This is both good and bad. I was hoping to have a general review book that I could use to supplement my undergrad texts. Obviously, this is not the book.

In general, run away from this book. Even if they come out with a third edition, I would NOT trust it.

The author's alleged PhD is quite polemical. I think it averaged an error per page or so. For the 15 minutes I glanced it over, I think I became dumber.

You know how they say that an infinite number of monkies on an infinite number of typewriters would eventually produce Hamlet?

Well, for this book, I'd guess that Dr. Laberge employed 3 monkies for 10 minutes.

I had three books to help study for this exam including this one. This book has many errors and it also doesn't explain things very well. I don't even know if there is a good study guide out there because the one from ETS doesn't even tell you how to do the problems, it just tells you the answers.

This book is loaded with errors and typos; structures and chemical names don't correspond. A cyclohexane is called a benzene. It makes me doubt the author's credentials. If you are already confused with Chemistry, this book will only make it worse. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. Do not attempt to use it to prepare for your important graduate school admission exam either. You'll be better off without it.