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58 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Only if you only need Verbal work, January 10, 2004
This review is from: Verbal Workout for the GMAT (The Princeton Review) (Paperback)
I'm a GMAT tutor with 15+ years of successful students behind me. Here's what I suggest for the GMAT:
1. Use the Kaplan CD (as cheesy as the presentation is, the tests are very good). I've heard complaints that the prep tests from Kaplan are too hard, and I have to disagree with the point being made by these students. The only way, on a computer-adaptive test, to increase your score is to test using HARDER, not easier problems. I may kick ass at medium level questions, but unless I want a medium level score, practicing at a lower level hurts rather than helps. The Princeton Review Verbal Workout does not come with a CD.
2. Ignore the Kaplan book. Use The Princeton Review books (either Cracking the GMAT or GMAT Workouts for Math and Verbal) for tricks and psychology. Try the Official Guide for extra problems and basic review issues (but use as much of the Princeton psychology as you can -- the Official Guide encourages you to do the problems straight, and that's a huge waste of time). The Princeton tests are buggy for sure (Hello! Princeton Review! Fix this!) but are still fairly accurate.
3. Take as many practice tests as you can. That means Kaplan, Princeton Review, PowerPrep. Arco, Barrons, Petersons, and Dummies are all awful. Don't bother with their instruction or their tests. On Princeton Review and PowerPrep, knock 30 points off your score, just to be safe.
4. Check out your local library. Many public libraries have crazy collections of old, out of print Official Guides, chock full o paper-and-pencil tests going back a good 20 years. By all means, use these -- they're a goldmine of practice questions.
Good luck!
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57 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Coverage of all the important topics, June 7, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Verbal Workout for the GMAT (The Princeton Review) (Paperback)
I am an engineer, hence strong in the quantitative section of the GMAT, weaker in the verbal section. Or so I thought until I purchased this book. The Verbal Workout book covers all three types of verbal questions (Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension). The author leads you by the hand and feeds you with very useful, very applicable information. No fluff and no screwing about, let's just get down to it. The author doesn't pretend to do all the work for the student. In fact, just reading this book will get you nowhere. But after applying yourself to the exercises and tackling some real questions (the GMAT Official Guide is a MUST have to get full advantage from this book) with the techniques provided, you will find an improvement in your scores. I did. The book is well laid out, well thought out and well edited; I haven't found any errors or contentious problems in it yet! This book is a star performer, and I have others to grade it against (Arco's Teach Yourself the GMAT CAT 2000 Edtn, Official Guide, 800score.com on-line guide, etc). Add it to your collection if you're serious about improving your verbal score.
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Targets verbal section perfectly, December 7, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Verbal Workout for the GMAT (The Princeton Review) (Paperback)
I feel so lucky to have found this book. I didn't need to work on my performance on the quant section of the GMAT, so I was specifically looking for a guide to help me increase my accuracy on the verbal section. This book was exactly what I needed; detailed explanations of how to solve verbal problems and targeted practice. I also appreciated the author's cynical approach to the test itself, which I think helped me to relax about the whole thing, which in turn helped me perform better on the test. I'm going to post anonymously, so I guess I can say that my score went up 70 points, and that's without having done any work on quant. This book is easily worth the price.
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