Best GRE Book?

[jjj01]

From these 4 GRE prep books (Kaplan, Cracking the GRE, Barrons, Official Guide to GRE,)

which one do you think is the "best" book?

[Physwimic]

I had the Kaplan book and my girlfriend had the Barrons book. I am of the strong opinion that the Kaplan book was better. I also think the Barrons list of a million GRE words is excessive and not very useful. However, Kaplan has a list of something like 250 which I found immensely useful. I think about 6 of them showed up in my test, so I think my 20 hours of studying them was probably well worth it. Just my advice.

Oh, and I found the writing section in Kaplan useful. They seemed to have some very useful advice on formating essays which I think worked out very well for me, but am not really sure how crucial it is to doing well on the GRE (ie, you probably don't HAVE to format your essays the way they tell you to, but I think it helped me avoid some other pitfalls).

Edited April 11, 2012 by Physwimic

[sareth]

I only studied for the math and writing, but I had the Kaplan book and it served me well. I agree with Physwimic - the Kaplan writing section was excellent. I also liked the format of the math review at the back of the book; it was well organized and made it easy to glance through and find the concepts I needed to review (for example, I hadn't thought about similar triangles for years!).

[secondarydefinitions]

Between the official guide/powerprep CD, manhattan gre's workbooks/6 practice CAT's, and all of Nova's books, you should have all you could ever need to prepare. ETS is official material, and Nova/MGRE are the closest you can otherwise come to getting very good practice for the real test.

[unforth]

I looked through all the ones at the book store and went with the official one. I was pretty satisfied with it.

[lastopsuburb]

When I took it i got Barrons and Kaplan. Barron's is definitely better and more thorough in the quantitative section. But Kaplan did well in the verbal section, which was helpful in some regards.

[chrismagoosh]

I wrote book reviews for each one (and some others not included, e.g., Manhattan, McGrawHill):

http://magoosh.com/gre/2011/new-gre-book-reviews/

Hope that helps

[Deenadragon]

The Official Guide to the GRE is far better than any of those books! Also check out the Cliffs Notes GRE book with CD-ROM. Both books combined will get you into the grad school of your choice! Good luck everyone!

[ImjBee]

Found this online https://sellfy.com/p/Yrpo/

 

Extensive Collection of Books,Videos,Notes,and practice tests to prepare anyone for the GRE! Must have for anyone planning to take the GRE and wants to be well prepared & well informed. Studying has never been so easy!

[history_geek]

I have the Kaplan book and flashcard combo. I'm finding it extremely helpful for a nice refresher on everything from high school that I seem to have forgotten when I came to college. Any ways, I would suggest Kaplan. It explains everything clearly and they have a massive online system that explains things even further. Overall, I'm very pleased thus far.