Customer Reviews

Kaplan GRE Exam Advanced Math: Your Only Guide to an 800 (Perfect Score Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I've already found 2 errors in the first 9 questions of the practice problems. I felt confident I was doing the problems correctly, but couldn't come up with an answer that matched the correct choices. When I finally gave up and looked at the explanations, the printed answers contained simple math errors (in problem #5 the square root of 2 times the square root of 2 equals 1 instead of 2, in problem #9 9+10+11=20 vs 30)

I had the same problem with the general Kaplan review book I bought. Don't they proof read these things?

I have not yet decided whether I'll return this. It's a big waste of study time to redo a problem 3 times looking for the right answer when it isn't actually listed, and you can't trust any of the explanations. That said, there are a good number of pracice problems at a higher level than I've seen in other books. And if you're trying to get an 800, you're probably comfortable enough with the basic math concepts to find the errors without getting confused (although it's still annoying and a waste of time).

Does anyone know of another book with the same level of practice problems?

This was a terrible book. As others have stated, it's filled with errors that waste your time and make you unwilling to trust any of the information. It also fails to address the issue of time, which is the biggest problem on the GRE--I mean, all the problems are doable if you have enough time...but there is no advice on practicing with these problems in a timed environment. And it is also focused almost entirely on the specific solution for each problem, rather than on general rules or strategy--other than what you already get in the regular Kaplan book. If you can buy this book for cheap and determine a good method for timed-testing, this could be helpful, but I can't really recommend this at all.

Here's a list of the mistakes I found:

p11 #21 - should be 27^n not 27n
p11 #22 - part of the problem is missing
p12 #27 "c=" missing
p17 #6 2^12 not 12^12
p18 #9 summation is wrong in explanation
p19 #20 8^5 not 85
p23 #35, should be negative not plus
p34 #2 add 4 not 5; also 2*4 = 8 not 28
p36 #11 "1" and "2" should be listed as exponents

I have been using this book to review my math and it has been pretty good at getting me to think. However the mistakes are torturous. From the other reviews, you can get the sense that this book was never proofread. After running through a section, I correct my answers with the key and miss enough to be very discouraged. I go through the explanations and realize that I did the problems correctly and the book is wrong. If I can find my receipt, I am going to take Kaplan up on the offer of a money back satisfaction guarantee directly from them. I recommend that you wait for a second edition.

Reading a lot of the other reviews, I found myself perplexed because the errors listed were not in my copy. Looking up the list of corrections on Kaplan's website, they must have corrected the errors before whatever printing that I have. In any case, this book is very useful for giving you challenging questions with plenty of traps that force you to be conscience of easy mistakes/assumptions that you can make that can cause you to get a wrong answer. Its also a good refresher in concepts that I know how to do, but haven't used in a long time.

I made the mistake of thinking that, because Kaplan is a well-known test prep company, they would have quality study products and was suckered by the title/concept of the book when I came across it in the bookstore. I've hopefully learned my lesson to always read user reviews before making important purchase decisions.

There are already enough reviews lamenting the numerous errors in the book and I wholeheartedly agree that its error frequency is at an unacceptable level.

Moreover, I think the content of the book failed to live up to its promise of being a good guide for advanced test takers wanting to perfect their math scores. In my opinion, many of the problems were way too easy and thus a waste of time. In every test I come across just a few questions that I find either difficult or too time-consuming and what I need is to practice many of just those types of questions to familiarize myself with them and find quicker ways of solving them - or judging upfront whether a certain question will be too time-comsuming and cutting my losses there. I don't believe this book meets that need. There are too many easy questions wasting time we could be spending practicing hard questions, and the questions that are hard don't have good enough explanations.

Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, there was zero discussion of pacing in the book. The most difficult thing for me on the Computer Adaptive Test is the inability to return to skipped questions. On the SAT, when I came across a somewhat tricky question, I skipped it and did all the hard questions at the end, ensuring that I maximized usage of my time. On the current GRE, however, I face a dilemma when I come across a question that looks like it might take me a long time to solve. Handling of these cases - whether to keep working until we're fairly sure of an answer, cut our losses after two minutes, guess randomly and move on, or move on right away when we see a question we're not sure of being able to answer in three minutes - is the most critical issue for me, and this book provided no advice on how to approach such situations.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any other resources that even claim to do what I'm looking for. Suggestions in the comments section would be welcome.

I was seriously considering taking a Kaplan GRE course, along with two of my friends, but after my experience with this book, none of us will be doing so, as their approach to profits is clearly aimed at riding their reputation to take in revenue and skimping on quality to save on costs. I hope the low average of these reviews causes Kaplan to reconsider before putting out another shoddy product like this. Unfortunately, I'm sure the book's title alone led to many sales of this book by people like me who ran across it in stores and failed to check reviews before purchasing.

I'm on Question 9 of the book. And I've already found 2 errors!! They are kind of ridiculous too: 9+10+11=20 and sq.root(2)*sq.root(2)=1
I would only suggest this book if you can get it free and are confident enough that you will be able to catch their mistakes without wasting a lot of time.

I agree with another review, which suggests that Kaplan seems to have done this on purpose -- to save money on proofing this publication before releasing it.

The book does a good job of covering and explaining the different types of problems on the GRE. However, there are quite a few problems that have typos that lead to solving the problems wrong or making the problems unsolvable. An example is "if 27n = 94, then n= ", the problem is supposed to be "if 27 to the nth power = 9 to the 4th power, then n = " (sorry for the lack of power symbols - use your imagination). Another problem states "if xyz does not equeal 0, then" and never gives the actual equation to simplify. Most of the time, the answer's explanation at the end of each chapter has the right explanation so you can figure out what key bit of info was left out of the original question. I'm disappointed that a Kaplan book claiming to help achieve the perfect score has typos.

I have already found 19 errors and I am only half through the book. I think Kaplan has done this on purpose. They want us to send the details of typos and errors to them so that they can save money on hiring a professional proof reader. They can then fix these errors in the 2nd edition of this book.

Great way to save money!

Buy this book if you want to edit or proof-read this book on behalf of Kaplan.

Do yourself a favor, and download the errata sheet that has all the corrections from kaplan's website, and then you're right as rain:
[ ... ]

I too am very frustrated by the lack of editing that went into this book. In the first 22 questions, there are 4 questions that are defective. Questions 5, 9, 21, and 22. I've stopped working problems and am going to send my materials back to Kaplan for a refund. I love "question" number 22 though. It's not even a question. If xyz does not equal zero, then ... the five multiple choice questions are simply xyz to different powers. Lovely.

I think it is criminal that Kaplan can get people to buy this product. I think people sending in specific questions that are incorrect should be paid a fee for their assistance in editing. They will certainly make money of these services when they publish the next edition.