Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the money! Really Disappoints!
Review: I have been preparing for the GRE with this book along with Kaplan, Arco, Barrons and Powerprep and I should say that the GRE Princeton Review is the WORST of all and really disappoints. Dont buy this book if you have any of the above - its just a waste of your money. Here are the "salient" features of this book:1. The edition says "2004" ,but the Analytical Section of the CD-ROM (BELIEVE IT OR NOT!) still has ONLY GAMES and LOGICAL REASONING... How anyone would dare to put out such a CD is beyond me!!..Maybe the authors were affected by the Y2K transition and are still stuck in 1999 ... 2. The CD-Rom software must have been written by high school students on cocaine. Everytime you take a test, the software PERMANENTLY ERASES IT OFF YOUR LIST OF AVAILABLE TESTS. Every other software I know lets me easily reset my tests so I can take them over and over again. Here's how you are supposed to reset tests on the Princeton Review (these steps are ACTUALLY printed in the book !!):
UNINSTALL THE ENTIRE PROGRAM.
Go to C:/Program Files/The Princeton Review/
Delete the folder "GRE Diagnostic"
INSTALL THE PROGRAM AGAIN!!!!!!!!! My God! ..the dark ages of computer science are upon us ... 3. The Quantitative Sections are not tough enough. The Math is too easy. For all of the above reasons (and more) I would strongly recommend against buying this book/CD-ROM. Save your money!
Rating:
Summary: Waste of Your Time
Review: I have been reviewing for the GRE for a few weeks now and after polishing off the Kaplan book, I decided to try the Princeton Review book - what a mistake! This books is not a great way to study and practice for the GRE. First of all, they are still using "Games and Logic" sections on their CD-Rom. I called the customer service to ensure that I hadn't received the wrong CD and the person on the phone assured me that I had the most current CD and that there was no way to evaluate the writing portion. You have to wonder why they don't give you the opportunity to at least practice it. Additionally, I was disturbed that I have to take all the practice tests on the CD before I can do the practice questions. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't I practice before I take the practice tests? Do yourself a favor and use one of the other books to study for the GRE. This book will only add to your frustration and confusion.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as bad as some of the reviews
Review: I think the reviewers want a book that teaches them verbal and math concepts. If you stayed awake in school you should already have the skills to take the GRE. What this book does is increase your chances of getting the answer right. If you are given unlimited time and access to a calculator or a computer, you can solve any question on the GRE. If you cannot solve a substantial proportion of questions even if time were not an issue, then you are in trouble. Go Back to School. A GRE book is not going to fill in the gaps. You are not ready for grad school. The catch of course is solving it in the time given. You have to look for short cuts. Look for alternate approaches when traditional ones break down or would take too long. That is what I used this book for. I learnt arithmetic, algebra, and geometry in high school. But if I sat and applied high school solving techniques to every quantitative GRE question, this would take too long. You have to look for patterns in the solution. "Ballparking", and "Plugging in" are two approaches that the book teaches and they work. Now if you plug in for every quantitative problem you will be trouble. Because most quantitative problems have an answer that will jump out at you. Plugging in all the time will just take too long. But if you are stumped at the first quick pass, plugging in can work wonders. Anyway, without giving away all the techniques in the book I can say that this book will improve your score on the quantitative test. On the verbal side, there is no substitute for a genuine vocabulary and understanding the text passages. You can use methods in this book that will reduce the number of valid choices to increase your chances of picking the right answer. But that's about it. Vocabulary and reading comprehension are key. The analytical writing exercises are also very good. At the very least they give you a template to start with. The only thing left is to think of relevant examples. Personally I did not mind reading the book. The style is a matter of personal taste. I wasn't reading this book for pleasure so the style did not bother me. Clarity and information is more relevant. The software is outdated and does contain the old logic games. But I only practiced on the verbal and quantitative sections. So that didn't bother me either. What did bother me a little was the fact that the practice tests run from the CD. Therefore each time I advanced to the next question there was a distinct delay of a couple of seconds as the CD spun out the data. I was a little anxious about this because I thought that perhaps this was simulating a similar delay that takes place in the real GRE test. But the real GRE test went smoothly. If this bothers you, maybe you can copy an ISO image of the CD to your hard drive and mount the image using daemon tools or similar software. I did not try this so I can't say for sure if that works. The practice tests seemed fairly similar to the real GRE. Maybe the questions on graphs in the practice tests were unnecessarily complicated by showing more than one graph. I am not sure how accurately you can relate the practice scores to real life scores. I consistently got >750 on my verbal practice tests but only a 690 on my real GRE. On the other hand I never got higher than 750 on my quantitative practice test but I got a 800 on the real GRE. Good luck.
Rating:
Summary: Not as bad as some of the reviews
Review: I think the reviewers want a book that teaches them verbal and math concepts. If you stayed awake in school you should already have the skills to take the GRE. What this book does is increase your chances of getting the answer right. If you are given unlimited time and access to a calculator or a computer, you can solve any question on the GRE. If you cannot solve a substantial proportion of questions even if time were not an issue, then you are in trouble. Go Back to School. A GRE book is not going to fill in the gaps. You are not ready for grad school. The catch of course is solving it in the time given. You have to look for short cuts. Look for alternate approaches when traditional ones break down or would take too long. That is what I used this book for. I learnt arithmetic, algebra, and geometry in high school. But if I sat and applied high school solving techniques to every quantitative GRE question, this would take too long. You have to look for patterns in the solution. "Ballparking", and "Plugging in" are two approaches that the book teaches and they work. Now if you plug in for every quantitative problem you will be trouble. Because most quantitative problems have an answer that will jump out at you. Plugging in all the time will just take too long. But if you are stumped at the first quick pass, plugging in can work wonders. Anyway, without giving away all the techniques in the book I can say that this book will improve your score on the quantitative test. On the verbal side, there is no substitute for a genuine vocabulary and understanding the text passages. You can use methods in this book that will reduce the number of valid choices to increase your chances of picking the right answer. But that's about it. Vocabulary and reading comprehension are key. The analytical writing exercises are also very good. At the very least they give you a template to start with. The only thing left is to think of relevant examples. Personally I did not mind reading the book. The style is a matter of personal taste. I wasn't reading this book for pleasure so the style did not bother me. Clarity and information is more relevant. The software is outdated and does contain the old logic games. But I only practiced on the verbal and quantitative sections. So that didn't bother me either. What did bother me a little was the fact that the practice tests run from the CD. Therefore each time I advanced to the next question there was a distinct delay of a couple of seconds as the CD spun out the data. I was a little anxious about this because I thought that perhaps this was simulating a similar delay that takes place in the real GRE test. But the real GRE test went smoothly. If this bothers you, maybe you can copy an ISO image of the CD to your hard drive and mount the image using daemon tools or similar software. I did not try this so I can't say for sure if that works. The practice tests seemed fairly similar to the real GRE. Maybe the questions on graphs in the practice tests were unnecessarily complicated by showing more than one graph. I am not sure how accurately you can relate the practice scores to real life scores. I consistently got >750 on my verbal practice tests but only a 690 on my real GRE. On the other hand I never got higher than 750 on my quantitative practice test but I got a 800 on the real GRE. Good luck.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor explanations for sample test questions
Review: Normally, I'm a Princeton Review book fan. But this book is disappointing. The descriptions for each section are overly basic, and don't get into the specifics of the actual test. Phrases such as: "Remember, the GRE is not a test of intelligence." and "Work backwards." constitute the bulk of the book's content. The biggest disappointment came when I took (and tried to review) the tests on the CD. Some of the questions on the CD-Rom are the same as the sample questions in the book -- not a good way to test anyone's improvement or ability to do well on the test, or to try out any new techniques. Couldn't the authors have written just a few more GRE questions to use as new examples? Still determined, I decided to read through the explanation for the answers on the CD. Those were less than helpful. Here are a couple of examples: "Work backwards." "Use POE." "This is the correct answer. 'Panegyrize' means 'to praise'. Of the answers, this word comes closest." How are any of these bits of "advice" supposed to help me improve? Sorry, Princeton Review. THis time you really tried to cut costs too much. Next time you decide to publish another book, put a little bit of time, effort, and money into it.
Rating:
Summary: Poor explanations for sample test questions
Review: The casual tone of the book, with its rhetorical "huh's?" that punctuate truly too many statements, is annoying. A strategy in the quantitative section is to 'plug in' instead of 'breaking down' the equation. They do not thoroughly explain how to solve the problem because they do not sufficiently explain the logic and formulas used. For example, they have a problem where the answer is radical fifty, but the choices are further reduced to 12 radical 2, five radical 2, etc... Instead of showing how one reduces a square-root, they instead tell you to plug in an approximate figure of radical 2: 1 point something or other. This strategy encourages memorizing useless, abstract information, when it would be easier to remember the logical principle. I found that the information the GRE provides on their own website and their PowerPrep CD-Rom was more useful.
Rating:
Summary: strategies for the stupid
Review: The casual tone of the book, with its rhetorical "huh's?" that punctuate truly too many statements, is annoying. A strategy in the quantitative section is to 'plug in' instead of 'breaking down' the equation. They do not thoroughly explain how to solve the problem because they do not sufficiently explain the logic and formulas used. For example, they have a problem where the answer is radical fifty, but the choices are further reduced to 12 radical 2, five radical 2, etc... Instead of showing how one reduces a square-root, they instead tell you to plug in an approximate figure of radical 2: 1 point something or other. This strategy encourages memorizing useless, abstract information, when it would be easier to remember the logical principle. I found that the information the GRE provides on their own website and their PowerPrep CD-Rom was more useful.
Rating:
Summary: Cracking the GRE 2004: 4 Practice Tests on CD-Rom
Review: The Kaplan one is much better. The CD-Rom has the old format of the test for one and then once you sit one test you can't sit it again. Then each answer doesn't have an explanation. A waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: Cracking the GRE 2004: 4 Practice Tests on CD-Rom
Review: The Kaplan one is much better. The CD-Rom has the old format of the test for one and then once you sit one test you can't sit it again. Then each answer doesn't have an explanation. A waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of Your Time
Review: These guys should be ashamed of themselves! I bought this book today at a local store. In the few hours that I spent working on practice questions from the CD-ROM, I ran into many blatant errors. Luckily, some of them were math formulas that I could easily prove incorrect to myself. What a frigging waste of time. I recommend that book buyers out there purchase nothing from this publisher. Truly an embarrassment for Princeton Review.
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