Customer Reviews

Verbal Workout for the GMAT (The Princeton Review)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

Without doubt, Princeton Review has the developed the best approach to taking the GMAT Verbal section. This book is a microcosm of their expensive test-prep course. So if you wish to build up your verbal and critical reasoning skills this book will prove invaluable. I looked at other test-prep books, but PR was the only one that got me to understand what the critical reasoning questions were really asking. Thanks to PR my verbal score rose from the 65-percentile to the 93-percentile.

I bought both the Kaplan Verbal book along with this one to study together. One, to be able to compare the strategies from the 2 companies; second, to get a really good "workout" to improve my score on the verbal section. What I found was that while the strategies between the two are similar, the Kaplan book gave more questions to practice with than the PR book did. However, the PR book definitely gives a more comprehensive grammar lesson than Kaplan does, and it also gives examples of "ETS tendencies" which is very helpful. All in all, if you're looking for a good english lesson review, this is a great book. But if you're looking for a "workout", go with the Official Guide or the Kaplan book.

I was having difficulty getting the verbal parts down tight. This book lets me DRILL, which is the way I learn best. If you need to increase your verbal score on the GMAT, and you're still below the 85 percentile, this book can probably help you move your score up. It's sure helped me

This book really covers the types of questions to look out for and the answer choices to avoid. I find the book to be very adept at improving the average student's Verbal score.

However, this book is not a Verbal cure-all. Do not expect to study it thoroughly and suddenly start acing the Verbal section. The best it can do by itself is improve your score, whether marginally or substantially. But for me, it has been a substantial improvement.

There are some parts of the book that really yearn for more, such as the Reading Comprehension. There is a great mutual feeling among virtually all standardized test takers that RC is the most challenging section, and therefore should require the most thorough and in-depth review. Sadly, this is just not the case in Doug French's book. The RC review is approximately the same length as the other sections. It really needs to edited, updated and improved.

Otherwise, the remaining sections of the book prove to be very formidable. If you keep in mind that this book is not a cure-all, then you should find the book to be very appealing.

First, if you are unfamiliar with the GMAT, here's a quick overview of the test: The GMAT consists of three sections: one verbal section, one math section, and the essays. In the verbal section, you'll have 41 questions consisting of approximately equal parts of reading, grammar, and something GMAT calls `critical reasoning.' You will see three or four reading passages (like those on most standardized tests), some grammar questions (which require you to figure out what is the best way to put a sentence in English), and some critical reasoning questions, which are basically logic questions.

The GMAT, like the GRE and the TOEFL, is an "adaptive" test. This means that the test is designed to feed you questions that it has determined to be at your level. For example, your first question will be a medium difficulty question; if you answer that one correctly, you'll either receive another medium-difficulty or a hard question. As you continue to answer questions correctly, you'll get hard questions on the test. Conversely, if you start to miss questions, you'll get easier questions. This new format may not seem that important, but in fact, it is important to consider this when you are talking to other people about the test. Essentially, almost everybody who takes the test will say the same thing: "Whew! That was hard!" The test is hard because the software is giving you hard questions. So, when you read other reviews of GMAT books and questions, you need to keep in mind that people are commenting on the level of difficulty of the practice questions in different books compared to their GMAT, and your GMAT will likely be different. So, in a word, it's important to get a book with a wide range of questions of differing difficulty levels.

Here's what you'll see on the GMAT: On the math section, you'll see 37 questions. You only need to know algebra and geometry to answer these questions, but some of them are pretty tricky. There is no trigonometry or calculus on the GMAT. Some of the questions that you will have to answer are `data sufficiency' questions. These questions present you with some information, and you have to decide whether a math problem can be solved with this information.

Finally, the GMAT requires you to write two essays; one of them is a standard essay, and the other one requires you to analyze the reasoning of an argument (most schools pay more attention to your verbal and math scores than they do to your essay scores, though). All in all, the test will take you at least three and a half hours to finish, pretty long for most of us!!

Now, about this book. This is a good book to help you raise your score on the Verbal Section of the GMAT, but it could be better. This used to be the only GMAT book targeted specifically at raising your score on the Verbal Section, but Kaplan has recently come out with their version, which is about the same price, but has over a hundred more pages of material; between the two, I'd probably go with the Kaplan, but this one is good, too.

This book is clearly targeted at the large middle segment of test takers, i.e., the bulk of the bell curve. If you are at either extreme, i.e., scoring below the 30th percentile or above the 80th percentile, this book probably won't help you much since it does not explain the harder GMAT verbal questions; i.e., the ones you are missing. The book does, however, have a nice reference section with the most common grammar rules and idioms tested on the GMAT.

For this large middle range, however, this book is enough to show you what you will see on the test, and if you're the type who doesn't like to leave anything to chance, this book will make a strong addition to your GMAT preparation library.

If you are picking between PR's and Kaplan's workbooks, go for Kaplan. You can read my review on Kaplan's workbook (just click on my nickname and you'll see that review along with others), so I won't comment much on that book in this review.

Issues with PR's Verbal Wrorkbout:
1. Question quality - I have seen a lot of GMAT materials and sometimes questions are not very close to the authentic gmat questions. This time, they are quite far. The greatest difference comes in Critical Reasoning. Very often the logic is quite off and confusing. The explanations are helpful, but for a person who is very familiar with OG and PP, the difference will be obvious immediately.

2. Question Difficulty - PR is known for easy questions; this book is not entirely easy, but the hard questions are unreasonable; GMAT logic is very limited - it does not go more than 2 two speps. PR on the other hand makes questions either too easy or too complicated, and neither is good. Reading overall, is fairly easy.

3. Tricks the magic tricks. Yeah, right. PR is famous for its "magic tricks" that don't really work on the real test but work flawlessly in the practice books. Many of the questions are tailored to fit the special rules PR makes up. Some tricks are legitimate (such as GMAT never puts minorities or women in poor light); others are common sense (don't go for extreme answer choices), but a lot overemphasise tricks over understanding the grammar, logic, and reading methods.

4. This book has fewer questions than does Kaplan's Verbal Workbook.

5. It spends a lot more on blah, blah, blah, which really does not stay in the memory; could be more condensed.

6. Paper quality is poor; it is printed on the really cheap recycled paper and does not help studying.

Good things:
It has a bigger section on grammar than Kaplan, however, both books are not enough if you are an international student. The grammar covered in both books emphasizes mostly style (parallel constructions, etc) and does not go through the basics of subject verb agreement, adjective rules, modals, or subjunctive. If you are non-native English speaker, get a grammar book - many of the TOEFL books have fabulous grammar sections. I can recommend one, but it is out of print (1995 edition of Cliff's; the 2000 edition is not good, however). Good Luck on the GMAT!

I think this book is worth every penny that it costs. Considering how much you can get out of a quality MBA program, it pays to invest into getting into the best school you can.

This book is great for anyone who is like me. I did well on the math sections of the SATs and the GREs, but need improvement on my verbal section. This book focuses specifically on that. While it gives good tips for the average test-taker to score higher, it is not a miracle worker. It isn't a quick fix, and will not double your score.

Having said that, I still consider this book a must have. You will be thankful that you did!

Good luck on your GMATs!