Customer Reviews

GRE Biology (REA) - The Best Test Prep for the GRE (GRE Test Preparation)

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In preparing for the GRE, I had access to three different prep books. This was by far the worst. It is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, and the illustrations are very poor and difficult to decipher. I got this book because it includes three practice tests, but I found over 20 factual errors in either the questions or answers in the practice tests (and those were just the ones I caught! I hate to think about how many there were that I didn't catch). Many of the questions were unclear and grammatically problematic, so that much of my time was spent simply trying to figure out what the question was trying to ask.
This book needs an editor badly! As it is, it is a crime they take money for it. As far as I am concerned, you would be better off not buying a book at all than buying this piece of [stuff] and receiving bad information.

This was far and away the absolute worst review book I have ever seen for anything. It was full of poorly worded questions with even worse answer explanations. Tons of spelling and grammatical errors and other mistakes, like an answer being listed with the wrong letter. Is the letter or the answer correct? Who knows? These people need an editor, or need to go back to grade school. I can't believe they publish this book without spell checking it. Very frustrating to attempt to study out of this. Completely useless and a waste of valuable study time.

As the previous review mentioned, this book is full of errors of various sorts. Some sections of it repeat almost verbatim other sections, while some sections gloss over important bits entirely. The entire section on plant biology is only 10 pages long. If you think you might need to know anything about plants, try another book. The diagrams aren't very helpful either. There are better Biology review books out there. Try "Biology Made Simple" by Rita Mary King for a very basic overview of biology or try "Biology The Easy Way" from Barrons which is much more in depth.

I don't even know where to begin with this book. Its written in granny print so just because the book looks huge and full of information its because the font is big enough for you to read from 10 feet away. Has very little information and this is evident when you start taking the "practice" exams in the back of the book. Sure they explain the answers but you wouldn't be able to find any of them in their so called "comprehensive" review. The practice tests are full of spelling, grammar, and answer errors. The tests don't even closely resemble the format of the GRE practice book. In the practice book from ETS there are approximately 40 questions based on data analysis, the tests in this study book contain 4. This book was a rip-off. Shame on the publisher for releasing such an unrefined piece of crap.

This book is not as bad as the previous reviewers had said it is. I used it to take practice tests for the Biology GRE and (with the help of my Campbell's Biology text), I got a 650 on the Biology GRE.

1. Page 17. Isoleucine is wrong. The methyl group goes on the other side. It looks like you are showing L-allo-isoleucine, which does not, to my knowledge, occur in biology.
2. Page 17. Threonine is completely wrong. It has a methyl, not an ethyl group built on Serine. You show it having 5 carbons when it has 4.
3. Page 19. Histidine is wrong. The CH2 off the central carbon of the amino-carboxyl end is shown attached to the wrong carbon atom in the pent-ring. They are showing a nonbiological isomer.
4. Page 28. List of essential amino acids is wrong. List leaves out Arginine. List doesn't even agree with the count in the paragraph. The correct number is 9, with 10 for infants.
5. Page 36. Shows Pyruvate Kinase as the end step. It's the enzyme, and Pyruvate is the product.
6. Page 36. Dihydroxyacetone, not diydroxyacetane.
7. Page 36. Dihydroxyacetone phosphate, not just dihydroxyacetone.
9. Page 36. Phosphoenolpyruvate, not phosphoenalpyruvate.

That's as far as I've read in detail so far. Forgive me, but this book looks thrown together in pretty slapdash fashion. I suppose it's a bit amusing to be kept on ones toes while reviewing material by looking for errors, but I hope nobody is expecting this book to be correct.