Kaplan GRE Exam 2009 Premier Program (w/ CD-ROM) (Kaplan Gre Exam (Book & CD-Rom))

Well, since feedback came timely, I have to say that my book got shredded by my labrador retriever as soon as it got delivered. Lyla was in the garage due to re-modeling at the back of the house. Perhaps packages of this magnitude should be confirmed upon delivery, perhaps not.

Thank you!

Best wishes,
Kevin Liu

I got this CD book in the expectation that the book would be similar to the actual computerized GRE. I use it primarily for its practice tests. Unfortunately, the CD is a HUGE disappointment. It does not appear to adjust the questions based on performance like the actual test. It does not scale to your monitor, so if you have a widescreen monitor, it is hard to read.

However, what is much more disappointing is that the questions, particularly the quantitative questions, are of poor quality and often incorrect. For example:

The drawings are horrendous. Some questions assume that things are drawn to scale without stating it, while others say that an answer must be "not enough information" because the drawing does not say it is drawn to scale. On Q Test 4, one diagram was a closed shape according to the answer explanation, but it was clearly open in the drawing so a number of degrees could be fit inside. One of the chart questions on test 5 has two charts but both are labeled "sales" - one is supposed to be net profits.

If you are getting this to teach you how to take the GRE or for the paper tests, it may be a fine buy, but the software it horrendous and riddled with errors.

I got this GRE guide as well as "Cracking the GRE" by the Princeton Review... and preferred the latter.

Not that this isn't a good study book; you'd probably do fine on the GRE with either one. I found the PR book more easy to follow with print that's easy to read and even some tongue-in-cheek humor (studying doesn't have to be boring?). What it basically comes down to is that Kaplan is content based whereas PR is more techinique based, walking you through how to solve problems easily. The "Hit Parade" vocab lists in the PR was also super helpful--Kaplan has nothing near the number of need-to-know vocabulary words.

Bottom Line: at least check out the Princeton Review's "Cracking the GRE" before you buy this.

Bought the book and tried to jump into the Quick Start Guide by registering online and taking the Diagnostic Quiz. But alas, the online registration failed, error message: Invalid code. So I called the customer service number supplied, and as I write this, I've been on hold for one hour, eight minutes, and still counting. Either save your money and buy a cheaper book without the "premier" online and CD extras, or try someone else's version that might actually work.

My biggest worry about this product was that perhaps the practice tests would be contrived and undiagnostic of actual GRE performance. However, I took the actual GRE this morning and was pleasantly surprised to find that my scores were roughly the same as the scores that I had achieved on the practice tests provided with this guide--I'm impressed!

I would recommend this product as the foundation for any GRE test prep. Not all of the tips they provide are brilliant; you'll be able to pick and choose which ones you find helpful and which ones you find needlessly cumbersome. However, it provides a good overview of the typical GRE vocab and math problems and, if you're like me, you'll be grateful (and a little embarrassed) when they point out blatantly obvious tips that you hadn't previously thought of (e.g., creating a verbal bridge to join analogy terms).

Of course, I recommend using other products to supplement the material in this guide. The free GRE Powerprep math review is a good reinroduction to basic math concepts if you're rusty (I went through it prior to starting on this book). I also used Kaplan's "GRE Exam Vocabulary in a Box", as well as the vocabulary hit list from The Princeton Review's "Cracking the GRE". Using these products, I was able to obtain an extremely high verbal score and a decent quantitative score. If you want a perfect quantitative score, you may want to go a bit deeper than I did. However, the products that I've mentioned should be enough to get you a verbal score in the high 90s.