Best Books?

[Mocha001]

Hi everyone.

I have been though so many books so far for the GRE.

I first thought that Barron's was pretty good.

But, 3500 words absolutely made me go crazy.

Now, I selected Barron's 800 essential words, Words for smart test takers to improve my score.

How about you guys?

[Bukharan]

I found Barron's 3500 words a great value for money! Definitely worth buying!

Barron's shorter vocabulary list is also good IF you have less time to study for GRE.

[coffeekid]

Mocha001,

I'm in the same boat as you. I am definitely going to go through the 800 list, but I'm reluctant to waste that much time on 3500.

Question: Does anyone have a success story or anything to definitively make a case for the 3500 list? Even if it is an anecdote about raising your score with it, I need SOMETHING to keep me motivated if I tackle that monstrosity.

[Mocha001]

Hi Coffeekid, I totally agree. I am sorry to say this, but there is no way I can memorize all 3500 words within 3 months. I have studied words for over 10 months, and I still could not score decent.

I want to score at least 550 on verbal. So now, I really need to focus on certain amount of words and memorize them very well. Not just go over and be familiar with then,.

I have heard that Barron's 800 words is good and so is Words for smart test takers. Words for smart test takers is really nice because it divides words into smaller sections.

Barron's 3500 is just alphabetical and way too much.

[JoeySsance]

Mocha001,

I'm in the same boat as you. I am definitely going to go through the 800 list, but I'm reluctant to waste that much time on 3500.

Question: Does anyone have a success story or anything to definitively make a case for the 3500 list? Even if it is an anecdote about raising your score with it, I need SOMETHING to keep me motivated if I tackle that monstrosity.

I haven't taken the GRE yet. I'll be taking it for the first time in about a week. I studied for a few months with the 3500 list. It is VERY tedious to plod through that long thing. The fact that it's in alphabetical order isn't the least bit helpful, either. I would say if you can set aside a good few months for review, like I've been doing, then you could feasible break up the 3500 list into smaller chunks (e.g. a few lists a week). I did that and got pretty far, perhaps through 60% of it but I didn't have the stamina to finish.

If you do work with the list, here are some ideas I found helpful: I marked up the words on the list with symbols. I put dots next to words that for me were easy (i.e. words I knew already and used in my normal vocabulary), the "almost equal to" sign next to medium-difficulty words (i.e. words I knew but that had alternate second meanings or new words that I was able to learn and retain quickly but that I wanted to keep practicing so I wouldn't forget them) and asterisks next to words I had never seen before and that were hard to remember. After that, I would put those three columns (easy, medium, and hard) into a spreadsheet and then I would make flashcards for just the medium and hard ones. I also tracked the percentages for each of the columns for each list and I was averaging 70% easy, 20% medium, 10% hard, which means that in the entire 3500 words list, there were only about 350 words I had never seen before and perhaps 1050 worth studying at all (medium + hard) while a whopping 2450 words were of no use to me (all the easy words). Obviously the list is great in that it has some "gems" in it but I found, personally, that it wasn't worth the trouble (in my case).

However, the "easy," "medium" and "hard" distinctions are entirely relative. I was actually working abroad over the summer and had been studying for the GRE with some colleagues (study groups are great for practice, by the way). We had a weekly study group where we would do a practice verbal section and a practice math section on our own and then review the answers, focusing on the ones people got wrong. Since I was the only native English speaker and I have a rather expansive vocabulary (since I love to read and I speak several languages, which helps big time) I was breezing through practice verbal sections but some of my non-native speaker friends were having difficulty with words I deemed "easy" for me. It just so happened that I was doing some research at a business school abroad, so I helped my colleagues out with understanding and trying to remember the vocab and they helped me majorly to review the math (economists can be awesome math teachers). I found it very beneficial to study with them and they learned some neat tricks from me for the verbal. It was a mutually beneficial situation. The main reason I'm sharing this anecdote though (aside from encouraging you to try working in study groups) is to point out how subjective the "difficulty" of words on the list can be.

I'd say, study the Barron's list if you can devote the time and energy to it, but if not, then maybe scan through some of the individual lists quickly, highlighting only completely unknown words and then just study those closely. You might want to also try the tracking strategy I used to see for yourself whether, in the long run, the 3500 word list will be useful to you or more trouble than it's worth. I hope someone finds this advice helpful!

P.S. I've recommended the book called Fiske Word Power in other threads: http://www.amazon.com/Fiske-WordPower-Edward/dp/1402206534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1289930608&sr=8-1 Check it out! In my opinion, it's better than both of the Barron's books (i.e. the 3500 word list and the 800 Essential words book) because unlike either of them, it doesn't present the words in alphabetical order but rather grouped in extremely helpful synonym groups under funny chapter headings. It contains 100 chapters with 10 words each, a plethora of great contextualizing sentences, lots of study quizzes, a final exam at the end and some neat thought experiments to test your command of the new vocab. It contains more GRE-likely words than any other book I've studied with (and I've been using several) so, personally, I've found it more worth my time than other books. Definitely consider it among your study resources; you'll be so glad you did! (I'm not a salesperson or anything; just a very satisfied user of that book) I hope you find it as helpful as I have!

Edited November 16, 2010 by JoeySsance

[neuropsych76]

I used Barron's 3500 list to study. Basically, it had 50 lists and I tried to study one everyday or every other day. At the end of each list was a quiz. Using this method worked well for me and I definitely learned a lot of words. I received a 580 on the verbal. I know its not great but its not bad. Most of the words on my GRE were in Barron's list.

[Mocha001]

I got Fiske Word power today. This is amazing. It is so much easier than any other books to increase advanced vocabularies.

[JoeySsance]

I got Fiske Word power today. This is amazing. It is so much easier than any other books to increase advanced vocabularies.

Awesome!! I'm so glad you like it. I'm sure you'll find it extremely helpful in raising your Verbal score! Just work through it diligently between now and your next test date. It's actually enjoyable, too, which is rare for vocab prep resources! Good luck!

[Mocha001]

Thank you! I actually decided to focus on two vocabulary books only. Since I have only two more months to prepare,

I should focus on improving 100 points. Before, I had never took the test before and I was concerned about getting really high score.

But now, I really do not need to score 600 or over.

I should be ok to score 550 -600 range.

And I try to score high on AWA.

[JoeySsance]

Thank you! I actually decided to focus on two vocabulary books only. Since I have only two more months to prepare,

I should focus on improving 100 points. Before, I had never took the test before and I was concerned about getting really high score.

But now, I really do not need to score 600 or over.

I should be ok to score 550 -600 range.

And I try to score high on AWA.

You're welcome and best of luck to you!

[dant.gwyrdd]

I used (and liked) Word Smart for the GRE (2nd ed.) from Princeton Review, but I hadn't used anything else so I can't really compare. I ended up getting 620 on the GRE, I'm a non-native speaker, but I've also had two years of Latin in high school, and about four years of French, which I think was very helpful considering the origin of a lot of the GRE words. (Plus, I've been studying English for ages, including the academic level of study.)

Edited November 17, 2010 by dant.gwyrdd

[vertige]

I think taking the time to study 3500 words, unless your vocabulary is pretty awful to begin with, is way too much. It might cause burnout, stress, and polarization of thinking/focus, causing other parts of the test to suffer. I studied Princeton Review's 500 flashcards obsessively for 4 days. I still haven't seen the words Sinecure, Apposite, or probably 70% of the other words used, whether in academic, literary or media contexts, but by god, I know what they mean. I also scanned some SAT books and made an extra list - yea, I know. But for real, some of the same words are used. In all I had maybe 700 words memorized (and some of them were ones I thought I knew, but for which I fine-tuned my definitions to ETS' and Princeton Review's liking). I took a score that at one time was below 600 Verbal / 530 Quantitative, and knocked out a 710 Verbal / 670 Quantitative. It is honestly about getting those synonyms and antonyms perfect, which really just requires insane studying of the top 500-800 most likely words. If you get a good number of those synonym/antonym questions right, you already have a great score, and the test will adjust, forcing you to trudge through the difficult reading passages. And they're not easy! I had a passage on Virgina Woolf - whom I love - and it was literally like something I'd see in a 3rd year Ph.D. quals exam! It was great/interesting, but so much harder/appropriate/apposite (yes, I used it!!) than I expected. Also, I got a 5.0 on the AWA, for which I didn't give a crap - I got a 4.5 the first time, writing on Derrida and basically screwing with the grader's head, and the second time, I minded my manners and wrote a cute, logical, erudite essay on the importance of voter education, and my score barely went up. Really, just write a good SoP and writing sample, and the AWA can't possibly hold a candle to it.

Anyway, anything beyond the most common few hundred words is only going to get you a max of 10 or 20 points more than you would have gotten otherwise. I also found that the more that I focused on the vocab, the harder it was to think clearly and flexibly about the reading passages. By the time you get to 700+, you're literally within 6 or 8 questions of hitting 800, so chance tends to play an incredibly unfair role in your final score, regardless of how much you prepare.

And math was hilarious. I hated it, but I forced myself to study for about 3 hours solid: I re-learned how to do long division (apparently I forgot after about 6th grade). I also learned the shortcuts for square roots (those little super script numbers that kind of make you want to look for a footnote somewhere), and realized that if I had just done that in junior high my life would have been a bit less stressful. I then reviewed angles and some basic trig. On the actual exam, the math problems are often easily solved, you just have to know what to look for to take the shortcuts - the math isn't hard, it just goes fast. Of course, I only got a 670 on the math, which is in the 64%ile, but I was only interested in getting it high enough so as not to seem suspicious, and it went up 140 points from the 530 I got on the first exam (where I barely read the questions). I also had this deep-seated fear of scoring higher on the math than the verbal .... like, a future Comp. Lit. Ph.D. with an 800 Math and 710 Verbal? I like to think I'm not overly-susceptible to questioning my life choices, but there was certainly some self-sabotage there. It was like a sort of calcu-phobia (like a straight man who would never even think about a same sex experience because of the fear that he might like it). What would it be like to "come out" as a math geek at 26? Ew.

Hope this helps someone?