Customer Reviews

Kaplan GRE Exam with CD-ROM, Fifth Edition: Higher Score Guaranteed (Kaplan GRE Premier Program (W/CD))

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Over 5 years out of college and having not studied math since my Calculus AP years ago, I was in sore need of review for the GRE. I bought this along with Barron's "GRE Test" and "GRE: 9th Edition" put out by the ETS. Getting all three was expensive, but I felt it was a worthwhile investment for my future. Just in case you don't want to do the same, here is a comparison review of all three.

KAPLAN: Practising with a computer (via CD-rom or whatever you can get from ETS online) is ESSENTIAL. The Computer Adaptive Test (CAT for short) is nothing like the SAT some of us "fogies" (I'm only 27!!) took way back when. Filling in circles with a #2 pencil, flipping between sections, and leaving the hard ones to last is a great deal easier than the CAT. If you are used to working out answers on paper, jumping from screen to paper and back again is something that requires practise to do quickly and efficiently. So for preparing you for that, the CD was excellent with its multitude of practise sections, practise full-length tests, and to a much smaller extent, a couple of the drills. You can also benefit from the immediate feedback that it gives you, showing your weak sections and strong ones, where to review, and so forth. Also, I found that all of my test scores tended to rank me much lower than the actual test. It was discouraging but helped me push myself harder. Still, the actual test was a relief compared to that, and I wonder if I didn't waste some time practising harder problems that would never actually appear, as opposed to studying more vocabulary. Is this the BEST CD out there? I don't know. I didn't try the other CD's, but I did find it very useful for what it was. Perhaps you can do better with another CD or with ETS online, which does offer a free practise test. But please do try some computer-based testing. As for the rest of the CD and book, do not even both with their review. The book and review sucked. Quite seriously. Waste of time.

BARRON'S HOW TO PREPARE FOR THE GRE TEST: For the BEST review, particularly in Math, (which was my major concern,) Barron's was the absolute best. Very clear explanations that slowly led you along to a very good understanding of the fundamentals and then progressed you to the more difficult problems in a way that you could easily understand. Practise problems WITH explanations so that you had one more chance to understand how to work a problem. Their vocabulary review list was tediously long, and that typically being my forté anyway, I was tempted to skip it. I found, however, that they included many words for which one might expect to know the definition but of which most of us probably have an inaccurate understanding. (I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.) It was a surprisingly good education for me, and I have referred back to it even after taking the test.

ETS PREPARING TO TAKE THE GENERAL TEST, 9th EDITION: Ugh. Just plain "Ugh." No CD. The review is PATHETIC. Don't use it for anything more than practise tests. BUT let me give you a not-so-sublte hint here, A FEW OF THE QUESTIONS ON MY EXAM CAME STRAIGHT OUT OF THE ETS 9TH EDITION REVIEW BOOK WITHOUT ANY VARIATION WHATSOEVER. I kicked myself for having only taken one practise test, because who knows how many more questions might have been in some of the other tests? (Probably an attempt on their part to get more people to buy their books. Shamelessly self-promoting and completely unair, but now that you know that, why not take advantage?) Use that one for its practise tests in the hope that some of the questions may be repeated AND to get the best idea of how well your knowledge meets the needs of the exam. BUT DO NOT COUNT ON ETS FOR A REVIEW.

Okay, now the part that is supposed to sell you. Every reviewer seems to put his or her score, and I have perceived these spaces more as a brag-box than a real desire to help other prospective grad-students. Truthfully, anyone can ace the test if they put in the time and effort to studying, and no single book is going to guarantee you the perfect score. To emphasize the importance of review and to keep this from being a brag box, I will tell you the embarrassing truth of just how badly my scores started off to show how these books and a lot of effort helped me. Verbal went only from a 690 to 710, but that was still an improvement. My math score went from a 400-something on my very first practise to a 730 on the actual test. And best of all, Analytical went from a 500-something (I wasn't even able to finish the section on time until many practise tests later,) to a 770. Need better better testament than that? Oh, and as for that other review box habit of bragging about all my schools accepting me, yes they were impressed by my scores, but they ALL said that academic record and experience counts even more. So put this test into perspective for what it is, don't stress too much about it, and good luck. You'll do fine. :o)

I found the book and CD to be very helpful. I used the CD more than the book to review all the lessons and then the practice tests. The CD looks just like the real GRE test which made it easier for me to feel comfortable when I took the test. CD also contains some great games to learn the vocabulary as well as antonyms, sentence completion & math review. I purchased the book based on the reviews that were on Amazon at that time. I am happy with the book and would recommend it to anyone preparing for the GRE.

The book seems just fine, but with this being a CAT exam, one must be able to use the CD-ROM for the practice and full-blown exams and so here's my warning before purchasing this product: It DOES NOT WORK WITH WINDOWS NT OR WINDOWS 2000 platforms as I was so informed after being tossed around to 5 different 800 numbers, and no fix is coming down the pipe anytime soon. I told the IT helpdesk number they provide that I would be posting my comments and they seemed just fine with that (maybe this will quell the phone calls they are receiving on this matter :)).

The book is a good aid in all three areas of the test (verbal, quantitative, and analytical). However, the tests on the CD are not as difficult at those on the exam.

All three areas of the exam serve up more difficult questions than you'll find on the Kaplan CD. The area with the biggest difficulty gap was the quantitative: I got 740-760 on the CD, yet only earned a 690 on the actual exam.

My verbal and analytical scores were closer. 570 on the CD, 550 on the exam for verbal; 730 on the CD for analytical, 710 on the exam.

My advice for preparation would be to get this book and really motor through the CD. You'll get your timing down, which is especially helpful on the analytical, get a very good feel for the structure of the exam, and get a good idea of your scores. Best of all, you'll learn some very solid strategies.

Once you do all of that, get the GRE powerprep software -- it's free from ETS. This will give you a very good idea of how you will do.

Good luck!

This book helped me get an excellent score on the quantitative and analytical tests. Not so much on the language part, though. (English is not my first language, so I'm hoping that it won't matter much) I only studied for a week, and did about a third of the tests in the CD-ROM.

Does anyone remember those trigonometric rules from high school after college? I sure didn't. In the quantitative part, many review sections sure helped. Also, some practical tips can speed you up - when you face questions that make you divide or multiply larger numbers (more time consuming for me than I'd wish to admit), for example.

Studying for the analytical part was actually fun for me. I always found myself choosing to do the analytical tests rather than any other. I've always liked too solve logical problems, and the book, combined with some practice, still helped me on the speed.

Although I didn't get a high score in the english part, the tips on guessing better on the antonyms and word pairs, and many times they helped me on not guessing completely arbitrarily even though I only had a very small idea of what some words could mean.

The word game in the CD makes a good break when you're studying - or procastinating...

Have a BS in Civil Engineering (California PE). Have been out of school for approximately 12 years. I consider myself of average intelligence. I consider my test taking ability well below average. Looked at all the latest and available books for gre prep. Besides being a manager of a very busy office, I have four children so I don't have much free time. I chose this book because of its extremely focused, methodical and spartan approach in dealing with every aspect of the exam. It has just enough narrative to efficiently convey the information. Used only this book to study for about six weeks. I first skimmed the entire book. I then went back and read in detail working all of the practice problems at least three times. Did each of the practice tests at least three times each. Never could get the cd to work on my computer so didn't get a chance to try it. Took the GRE (my first and only time) at the end of the 6th week. Scored 580 on verbal, 700 on quantitative and 630 on analytical. The graduate school/program I was applying to at the time required a 550 combined. I was really surprised, happy and satisfied with those results. Based on my previous test taking experiences, I was sure I was going to have to take it at least twice. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is self-motivated and has made up their mind to take the gre.

Though the minimun system requirement given is 'Windows 95 or higher', the CDROM does not install properly (and is not meant to be installed) in any versions of Windows NT - that includes all versions of Windows 2000. So if you have any of these operating system, be prepared to install Win-95 to use the CD :-)

The practice tests on the CD were very well done and helped me a lot. On my first GRE, my Analytical score was 420. Two months later, my Analytical score was 660. Not that I attribute all of the 240 point increase to this book - I was ill-prepared for the first test, and the heavy construction going on next door shaking the building didn't help much. But the Kaplan book and CD clued me in on how to work those nasty logic problems and then gave me a way to practice them under realistic time-constrained conditions. But, there are downsides to the CD that you need to be aware of before you buy: While the tests are great, the CD's startup routine and interface, including the tour, are on about the same juvenile level as the CD based math-tutor that I bought several years ago when my kids were in grade-school. Just a little silly, and very clunky as far as user interfaces go, for a product that is targeted at college graduates. Also, beware of allowing the CD to load what it says is the latest version of Quicktime. It does not appear to check to see if Quicktime is already installed, and both the desktop and laptop I installed it on have been so flaky since the install, that I think I may have to format and reload.

While the book's CD may be ok for PC users, it's a disaster for MAC users. Although the book says the included CD works with the MAC, the included CD is Windows only. There's an 800 number to call for a MAC CD. Don't be fooled. When you dial the number, you'll wind up down an Alice in Wonderland rabitt's hole. After spending an hour calling number after number, the customer service "professional" suggested I just mail the book back! Now that's professional customer service at it's best.Get the Princeton Review book. It has a CD that runs on MAC.

As someone who hasn't taken a math class in more than 10 years, I was EXTREMELY nervous about the entire GRE Quantitative section, not to mention the Logic Games in the Analytical section. But Kaplan's GRE book and CD break all the problems and answer choices down for you and make it seem almost like a game (and I always thought the GRE was being sarcastic by calling the little devils "logic games"!). The math appendix at the back of the book is particularly helpful, telling you exactly which concepts you need to know by dividing them into 3 categories: a) enough to barely get by; b) to do well on the Quantitative section; and c) to really kick ... on the Quantitative section. I haven't taken my actual GRE yet, but I know I will walk into the test center with confidence--which is pretty much half the battle in any of these standardized tests!