Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing....
Review: After reading all these incredible reviews of people boasting 99th percentile scores after studying this book (even after only a couple days of studying), I had high expectations for Princeton Review. However, After taking the exam today I realized that Cracking the GRE psychology is no miracle study guide and that the reviews posted here are overly optimistic and misleading. I studied this book throughly for over three months. I knew the material inside and out and felt very prepared going into the exam. Howevever, after taking the exam, I realized that this book does a very poor job of preparing you for the actual test. This book is entirely composed of definitions (and small facts here and there) which do little in helping you on the exam, as the psych GRE is more interested in seeing if you can actually apply these defintions rather than recite them. With the very general two sentence blurbs provided in this book, I don't see how any in-depth understanding of the material is possible. Although I feel like I did OKAY on the exam, I know that I could have done better had I focused on studying the Kaplan book. Because of the easy reading this book provides and its less intimidating size, it's easy to want to just focus on this book and do away with the others. However, you're missing out on very valuable material by taking the lazy way out. There were many questions on the test straight from Kaplan and I felt as if I had wasted valuable time by focusing my efforts on this book when I should have been studying Kaplan. If I decide to retake the exam I won't make the same mistake twice, I will be sure to read through Kaplan very thoroughly.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, not great....
Review: As other reviewers have stated, this is a good book for a broad, superficial review, however, the cognitive, experimental, and diagnostic sections are not sufficient prep for the GRE exam - they are too basic and brisk and do not reflect what is actually on the exam. I got a 730, but I did so by looking at the Kaplan book (despite its mistakes galore) but most importantly reviewing my old textbooks. It's a challenging exam, but with good preparation you can beat it. Good luck!
Rating: 
Summary: PROVEN TECHNIQUES FOR SCORING HIGH
Review: Cracking the GRE Literature offers in depth instruction on the skills covered by the GRE psychology exam. Written by The Princeton Review, the worlds leading authority on test preparation, this volume contains a thorough subject review checklist including ethology and comparative psychology, sensation and perception, physiology, developmental phychology, personality and more. Complete with a sample self test, this volume also includes valuable information on admissions to graduate psychology programs.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth Every Penny
Review: I am a psychology major at the University of Washington. When I first considered taking the psych GRE I was a little scared and I felt ill-prepared. I bought a whole bunch of books and this one was by far the best. When I first started taking practice tests I scored around 540. After going through the whole book and making flash cards of every term (even cramming all of them into my head in a few days) I scored 710. 710 is 90th percentile (85th persentile in Social psychology and 95th percentile in the experimental section). I think this book does an excellent job of perparing you for all question types and it familiarizes you with a lot of different concepts that a student may not have learned in class. I would recommend this book to anyone. I would also recommend that you take as many practice tests as possible, but avoid buying a huge book full of tests. I did and I never really used any of the tests.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth the time
Review: I bought three different books in order to review for this test--the Barron's Guide (which I returned), the Best Guide, and this book. This is the only book I would recommend.
I was not a psychology major in college, so when I started to prepare for this test, there was a great deal of information I didn't know. I had taken a some psych classes leading up to the test, but only a handful were relevant to this test. This book covered just about everything I needed to know (perhaps 10-15% of the test is not in the book), and I ended up scoring in the high 600s. The funny thing is that most of the questions I missed were in this book as well, I just didn't take the time to learn it well enough. Because developmental and social psych are so heavily weighted on the test, those are the only two areas I would recommend studying in greater detail than what is presented in this text. But if you want to score atleast 650, study this book and you'll be good to go.
Rating:
Summary: I PROMISE YOU THAT YOU WILL BE GLAD YOU BOUGHT IT!
Review: I CANNOT believe that there are claims below from people asserting that they bought this book, studied it, and STILL did not do well on the Psych GRE. This is an absolute must have for any undergrad considering applying for graduate study and it DOES work. I just finished my first year in a Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program and know that my Psych score (680) was one of the reasons why I was accepted. My advisor indicated that even though my other GRE scores left something to be desired (UGH...don't they all????), that he was impressed with my Psych subject test score. That score is due to studying this book!
I promise you that if you buy this, really hit it hard and know it inside and out, that you will most assuradly do well on the exam. ***One caution: The test in the back of the book is NOTHING like the real GRE subject test. Use it to assess how you are progressing through the book, but not as a gage of how you will fare on the actual test. Concentrate on the material itself.
Rating:
Summary: The best
Review: I looked at a number of books and read a lot of advice on the Internet. I thought this book was the best and it is the one I relied on most heavily. It has an added advantage of being the least intimidating size-wise and I thought the author's caution that many of the other books provide merely useless test questions was also accurate. The test that accompanies this book was comparable in every way to the actual test I took. I got a 720 though I have had only a couple of psychology courses. (I did teach high school psychology for ten years, however).
I am going to be teaching a GRE Psych review class and this is the book that I will recommend to students.
Rating: 
Summary: A good starting point
Review: I recommend this book to anyone studying for the psychology GRE, just keep in mind that it is not perfect and is not sufficient on its own to prepare one fully for this exam.
The Good: It organizes a huge amount of information clearly and effectively. It is incredibly concise, which makes it easy to study from.
The Bad: From my experience, the practice test was not very helpful. (I took it, then took the official practice test offered for free from ETS a week later. My percentile score was 37 points higher on the real exam.)
Of course I cannot judge how I would have done without this book or using some other study aid, but by memorizing much of the information in this book, reviewing a social psych text and an intro text, and taking the official practice exam, I was able to do very well on the pscyh GRE despite having taken only 6 psychology courses over 3 years.
One final note, look for current articles and info about the exam itself. It seemed to me that that it was less fact and name intensive than I had expected. Do some research and know what to expect.
Rating:
Summary: Use this book, but use it in conjunction with Kaplan
Review: I spent a solid three months studying for the exam, and I used this book as well as the Kaplan one. They are completely different! If you're a rock star psych student fresh out of college, perhaps this book alone will suffice. But if you need to actually learn some or much of the material, you should use both books (don't rely solely on this one)! This one gives a very surface-like (NOT in-depth) summary of information. It helps you direct your attention towards those areas that are tested most frequently. It provides a really great last-minute review, for AFTER you've studied. I also used it FIRST, to kind of help me focus my studying. The Kaplan book, on the other hand, actually teaches you the material, if you don't know it or don't remember it. I took only two undergraduate psychology classes, and I'm several years out of college, and I feel like I learned almost everything I needed to know from the Kaplan book. The reviews that say Kaplan has lots of typos and errors are right. Some of the mistakes are appalling. But there aren't a lot of better options out there, and it is really helpful despite the errors. If it means anything to you, I scored a 690 (86th percentile). I also took four practice tests under real conditions: the ETS one, the two in the Kaplan book, and the one in the Princeton Review book. I think practice tests are KEY. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: The best resource I've found
Review: I used this book as my primary study resource and ended up getting an 800 on the test! I should qualify that by admitting that I was a psych major, but I really felt that this book covered essentially everything I needed to know. I consulted other psych GRE preparation books but found that they often had many errors or included a great deal of information extraneous to the test (esp. REA's The Best Test Preparation for GRE Psychology--stay away from that one!). I basically memorized Princeton's Review's book and I believe it really made a difference! Just don't forget to get your hands on as many old psych. GRE's as you can find!
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