Customer Reviews

Kaplan GRE Exam 2006, Premier Program (Kaplan Gre Exam (Book & CD-Rom))

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

As mentioned below, this book is filled with typos. Sometimes it is just annoying, such as when the heading reads "Kaplan's basic principles for success on Antonyms are:" in a section about Analogies. Other times, it's downright dangerous, such as when it tells you that the correct answer is, say, "D" and then on the next page they mention that "D" is obviously wrong because it illustrates a classic trap. What was the correct answer then? They never tell you. Whoops.

I suppose the strategies are worthwhile (so long as you like "Here are some traps to avoid," but no help on what to do when you see that particular trap), but the practice tests are, as far as I'm concerned, absolutely unreliable, and thus worthless.

And what's up with the "Higher Score Guaranteed?" If you spend the many hours it would take to go through this book, spend the hundred + bucks on the test and get a lower score, they'll refund you the fifteen you spent on the book? How about refund the money I spent on the *test*? Or the dollar-value of the time I wasted with the lousy Kaplan GRE Exam Comprehensive Program?

It's almost a scam. Kaplan should be fined for producing such tripe.

If you must, get this from a library, skim it quickly, and then thank yourself you avoided this truly awful book.

The review that this book provides is helpful, however it has many typos, that can get very irritating when trying to test yourself. For instance, some of the headings are in the wrong place, and some answers are clearly marked wrong, with a contradicting answer in the explanation. Kaplan needs to get a new editor before their books can get a better rating in my opinion.

I bought this book primarily to review for the quantitative portion of the GRE, although I planned to spend some amount of time on the verbal as well. This book appears to be written for someone who is afraid of numbers and who is looking to just get a mediocre score on that portion of the test. The examples were always dumbed down and solved as if the test taker lacks a basic understanding of math concepts. To make matters worse the "most difficult concepts" are not even covered in the practice/examples sections. Instead they are placed in the back of the book in the summary/review section, so while you can review the concepts, you never get to actually practice doing the hardest types of questions. All this may be a ploy to get the customer to purchase their GRE 800 series of books- I don't know, but in either case this book is very dissapointing. Also the practice tests on the cd are 30 questions with a 30 minute alotted time. This doesn't mimic real test conditions as the actual test has 28 questions with a 45 minute alotted time. You'll find yourself rushing through the practice test just so you have the chancce to see all the questions, and you'll pick up bad habits from rushing along the way! DON'T buy this book if your looking to study for the Q section. I can't comment on the V section because I returned the book. I couldn't waste any more valuable test prep time. I returned my book and have yet to recieve any check from Kaplan as their satisfaction guarantee promises. Go get a Barron's book instead.

If you use a Mac, AVOID this book. The reason I state this is that you won't find out until you've opened the envelope containing the CD that it works on Windows only. They do not have a Mac CD to send you -- you are up a creek.

As for the rest of the book -- it's standard test-taking skills. If you need that, it's fine.

Supposed to be instucting us toward "flawless" GRE performance??? How can they charge that much for something with an inexcusable number of errors? I printed the corrections sheet from their website which covered only a few of the many errors in the book. In the section on "tricks" to doing GRE math problems, I found ways to solve the the practice problems that were missed in the answers section! (And I didn't do all that well on the math part of the test.) What does this tell us about the level of the people writing the answers?! Sorry, but it's just annoying! These people are making the big bucks off all of us!

This book was a great help for test strategies and also review. The overall vocab and math reviews in the back of the book were great! If you are good in math, you should def. study the level three math in the back because you will def. get those types of questions on the GRE's. The problems were a good indicator of the difficulty of the problems on the actual exam.

The book advertises its online resources with links mentioned throughout the book and by providing an ISBN number at the inside back cover of the book which supposedly lets the owner of the book to log in to their Kaplan website to retrieve helpful hits, sample tests, etc. I have not been able to access any of it.

Don't buy this book for the online test. The registration code in the book didn't work. They sent another after I called. Then, after filling in several really annoying registrations forms multiple times (each time I logged in I had to repeat the same forms to "confirm" the information-and you have to fill out every annoying field!), another phone call and much frustration, I still haven't been able to access the free online test. Over an hour wasted. UGH!

This book was encouraging and comprehensive. I highly recommend it. You probably won't work through the whole book thoroughly unless you have three months to prepare but it is nice to have all of these resources at your fingertips even if you only have a month to prepare. The numerous practice tests help you to realize that it is difficult to finish the quantitative section and so you have to figure out how to deal with that. I also recommend Kaplan's Flipomatic book for Vocab and something by Barron's to get a different point of view from Kaplan.

This book proved to be very useful to me when studying for the GRE. The vocabulary words, word groups, and word roots were extremely helpful. The Reading Comp tips were in-depth. The math review and tricks were also very useful, but I do recommend downloading the free Math Review packet on the GRE website, where all concepts are reviewed in a logical format with practice questions to be used alongside the math portion of the Kaplan book. In addition, the writing section format was very useful...the essays graded 6 and 5 in the book were useful to look at when getting an idea for the format for the essays. I ended up with a 5.5 on the writing section because of it, and a 1210 combined score on the verbal and math sections with only one week of studying. Highly recommend!!