Customer Reviews

Kaplan GRE Exam Verbal Workbook (Kaplan GRE Verbal Workbook)

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

 

 

I bought this book on the recommendation of the Kaplan GRE Exam 2010-2011 Premier with CD-ROM (Kaplan GRE Premier Program (W/CD)) (whose CD is incompatible with Windows 7, but that's another story). It was implied that the GRE Verbal Workbook would provide further practice, and I had exhausted the questions in the Premier book. Little did I know that this book would contain mostly recycled questions and all the same information offered by the book I already owned.

In fact, nearly half of the questions in the Verbal Workbook were pulled verbatim from the Premier book; others had slightly different wording or ordering. In any case, the few new questions contained in the Verbal Workbook were little help to me.

Closer to the test date, I decided to give up on Kaplan and used the GRE website's free practice software. It actually did me a lot of good, as I recognized several of the vocabulary words on the actual test. I saw none of Kaplan's words.

Kaplan does offer a "Higher Score Guarantee," which means you can write them a little essay and send in your receipt to get your money back. That's a great deal, if you keep track of your receipts for weeks. Why oh why did I have to lose my receipt???

If you own the Premier book and are looking for further practice, do not waste your money on this product.

I have been teaching test prep for almost 20 years, and am constantly seeking and evaluating material. Kaplan's math workbook for the GRE is great for many of the standardized tests, so when I was looking for more GRE material, it made sense to order the companion book. Unfortunately, the practice material is not only limited in quantity, but also much of it is just wrong, and not like GRE questions on the few released exams. I was very disappointed.

The practice tests and helpful hints throughout the book have really helped me a lot.

I purchased the Kaplan Premier 2009 book. Currently I am reviewing the verbal portion of the GRE. I picked up this Kaplan Verbal Workbook because I want a stellar score. I am finding that many, if not most of the questions in this verbal workbook are questions I have seen before in the premier quide.

Kaplan, I am grant you one star for your indolence. Hopefully when I take the full GRE practice tests, all of the questions will be fresh.

An additional criticism of the Kaplan Premier 2009 book is their predilection towards Windows. There are technologies that are OS independent, ie. HTML/Java/Flash. Your programming foundation excludes Mac and Linux users. I am able to use the CD, as I own a Windows box and use Parallels on my MacBook Pro.

Not sure if I will give the Quantitative review a look or not. I may have to physically review the quantitative book in a store to see if there were as lazy as I have noticed in this book.

This workbook does appear to be somewhat rushed out for public consumption. Although lengthy, the majority of the book has long explinations to answers, and has a glossary in the back which really is a filler. I would only recommend this book if you are wanting extra problems. However, after reading other reviews I would stress not even considering this book if you have already worked through other Kaplan Verbal workbooks--the problems are recycled.

One section that I found to be extremely frustrating was the explination withing the reading comprehension portion of the Verbal section. One question type was "Select a sentence" and as frequent as these question-types did appear, I was not certain if this book improved my knowledge in that area.

Although 300 pages long, you should be able to fly through the book in little more than a week. ;/ IE, not enough practice problems.

So I am curious as to why people are giving this so many stars. As other reviewers have stated, a lot of the answers are wrong. Not only that, sentences are phrased improperly and the explanations for why they choose these incorrect answers are simply way offbase. Kaplan needs to be sued for this crap they put out. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK unless you are looking to sabotage yourself.

Product is great! Has so many options of preparation for the GRE exam. Definitely would recommend.

The item is great! I love the book. It helped me a lot. The only thing is that the shipment took 2 weeks. I was hoping to get it sooner.