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102 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK, August 2, 2005
This review is from: GRE Computer Science (REA) 5th Ed. - The Best Test Prep for the GRE (GRE Test Preparation) (Paperback)
This book is a waste of money. Not only does it not review any content, but the practice test is full of errors. Just for a single example, look at the first question on the practice test. They claim the answer is C. Actually, C would be an in-order traversal; the correct answer is E. Trying to learn from this book would only confuse you.
This book is 170 pages. 100 pages are devoted to a single (only 1!) practice test. 30 pages are basically boilerplate prep book garbage (here's how to register; here are some general "test taking strategies). The remaining 40 pages claim to have content review. In fact, they only tell you what you should know, they don't review it at all. For instance, in the section on "Recurrence Relations," (p41) it says: "You need to be familiar with a few simple examples of solving reccurence relations, which will provide adequate review of the basic methods and tie them to concrete applications." That's it. It doesn't review what a recurrence relation is, or give any equations, or remind you how to solve them. It just tells you that you should know them, which you could have figured out from the ETS website.
I bought this book because it was the only CS GRE review book my local bookstore had. But I am going to return it right away. Don't make the same mistake I did! This book contains no useful review, and actually has major errors in the practice test.
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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The easiest way to sabotage your test grade., November 28, 2006
This review is from: GRE Computer Science (REA) 5th Ed. - The Best Test Prep for the GRE (GRE Test Preparation) (Paperback)
I guarantee that using this book will lower your CS GRE score, between the misinformation and errors it contains and the time you'll waste that could be spent on more useful review tactics. I can only hope I stopped reading it soon enough.
Interestingly enough, the author of the brief review section goes on a rant about what makes a bad practice test, in which he manages to describe many features of the practice test in the book itself. I wonder if he saw the questions that had been written by an outsourced team, felt a little remorse, and decided to give a bit of a warning to careful readers to atone for the fact that he'll profit from having his name on this piece of trash. Or maybe he never saw the test questions. Or maybe I'm giving him too much of the benefit of the doubt, and he's simply an astounding hypocrite who knows that you can sell anything as a test review book.
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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't buy this book!, November 10, 2005
This review is from: GRE Computer Science (REA) 5th Ed. - The Best Test Prep for the GRE (GRE Test Preparation) (Paperback)
I ordered this book before any of the customer reviews were written, and therefore had no idea that this book would be so bad.
The first "useful" page of the book confused me (page xv). I didn't expect glaringly obvious typos on the section "Notation and Conventions", but they were there: the symbol for the floor of a real number is defined as both the floor and the ceiling. Also, supposedly, the notation "A" is used to mean "NOT A".
I skipped ahead a few pages to the claimed "Comprehensive" review of all exam topics. Once again, I was disappointed: the discussion was on the probability of each topic on the exam, instead of the topic itself. I decided once again to skip ahead a few pages and take the practice exam, because that was why I bought the book in the first place.
Foiled again! The practice exam had errors in every other question. Some questions had missing diagrams; some questions had extra diagrams; some questions had no correct answers at all! But the worst past was that most of the questions in this book are nothing like the questions on the actual exam! I've taken it once before and I'm seeking to improve my score; but reading this book only made me doubt myself even more.
Well, no. But it did make me doubt author's competence. I haven't learned anything from reading it, and I don't think anyone else will, either. Avoid at all costs. Beware!
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