Cracking the GRE 2013 Edition

by The Princeton Review

If you need to know it, it’s in this book.

Cracking the GRE, 2013 Edition has everything you need to know to master Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, and the Essay sections of the GRE, and includes:

   • Access to 4 full-length practice tests
   • Practice questions with detailed explanations for every question
   • Key strategies for solving Text Completions, Sentence Equivalence, Numeric Entry, Quantitative Comparisons, and more
   • Thorough review of all GRE topics, including everything on the revised GRE that debuted in fall 2011
   • Online video tutorials offering in-depth exploration of key strategies and concepts

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, School, Academic

478 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

The Princeton Review is an education services company providing tutoring, test preparation and admission resources for students. It was founded in 1981. and since that time has worked with over 400 million students.

Reviews

[afloatingpoint · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has helped me a lot in preparing for the exam! Now I'm crossing fingers for my GRE test tomorrow! Go me!!!

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you only get one GRE prep book, this is the one to get. Other books will tell you how to solve the kinds of problems you are likely to find on the test itself, but this book shows you how to figure out the correct answers to questions you'll face. As the authors make special note of, "The GRE assesses how well you take the GRE." Hey, it's great if you can solve every math question the Educational Testing Service throws at you, but doing so can take more time than you have to spare. It's much more efficient to tackle those hard problems by eliminating all but one of the answers to figure out the correct choice. This strategy goes beyond your basic process of elimination, but the Princeton Review gives you all of the strategies you'll want to have at your disposal, gives you numerous "Here's how to crack it" examples, and even helps pump you up to do your best when test day comes.

The Princeton Review strategy was particularly helpful to me. I aced the GRE back in 1991, but that was a long time ago. I had forgotten more than I'd like to admit about the Math section, the Verbal section had changed quite a bit (no more antonyms - boo), and the challenging yet super fun Analytical section had been eliminated and replaced with an Analytical Writing section. Heck, even the test experience itself had changed drastically. Not giving myself as much time as I should have, I had to do some cramming. I started with a Barron's book, and it was quite helpful - but not nearly as helpful as this one. These guys have done their best to get inside the minds of the test creators. Other books teach you how to solve problems, but this book shows you how to take the test. Did I still encounter a few problems on the real test that weren't in this book? Of course. Were my scores as high as they were over twenty years ago? No, to be honest, but I was still happy with them, especially considering I had been out of school for eighteen years.

Obviously, Cracking the GRE, 2013 Edition covers the new revised version of the GRE, so you're good to go until ETS shakes things up yet again. You're still going to need to work to prepare for test day, though. If all of these strategies were obvious, there would be no reason for any GRE prep book. The book is probably most helpful in terms of the Math section, but there's no shortage of tips and tricks for any of the test sections. I know I would have been less prepared than I was for the actual test if I had not worked my way through this book.

[Mazen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only had 2 weeks to study for my GRE and this book was helpful but requires you to start even sooner, say a month especially for the vocabulary part.

English part: really helpful and I used some of the techniques during the actual test but you can't really use it for every question though.

Math part: contains a lot of info and you should know all of them (I mean it's grade 1 math, I'm exaggerating of course) however, THIS BOOK IS NOT ENOUGH. It's really important to do a lot of previous GRE exams to see how ETS puts questions because there are some concepts that you should freshen up so you wouldn't be caught off guard during the actual test. I was caught off guard a couple of times during the actual test and although the concepts were easy I was just not ready for them.

Essay part: gives you the general outline of how your essays should be and since I don't know my grade yet so I can't really say if that was helpful or not.

In conclusion, the techniques in this book are really great and should be known but the info in the book should be expanded further to encompass everything that might pop up in the GRE.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the best tool that I used in preparing for the revised GRE. The conversational language made it easy to read, comprehend, and digest. The Hit Parade list of vocab was pretty accurate; I definitely saw a lot of these words on my test. The approach to the quantitative reasoning section by the authors was also something that I appreciated, especially since it's been the better part of a decade since I have seen some of the question types that the test uses. The authors not only presented the question types in a way that I could understand, but they also provided a pretty comprehensive math review before diving into the GRE questions themselves. Most of all, I really liked the explanations to the answers to the sample questions; nothing on the ETS site supplies an important studying/learning tool like that. Despite having a handful of careless typos throughout the book, I would definitely recommend this to someone studying for the GRE.

[Rozalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent approach and guidance to the exam. Thorough tips, guidelines and exercises, plus two tests to work out. The vocabulary section is divided into 4 separate lists, unfortunately in alphabetical order (not too helpful, try writing them down in flash cards) followed by a small multiple-choice quiz each time. (there are two more word lists after that and that's the majority of vocabulary you 'll need for a decent score in verbal)

The math section provides a refreshing warm-up. As a grad student in humanities I considered upgrading my math skills by watching khan academy's video tutorials - that along with this book, helped me immensely.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great source of information about the GRE test! Talking specifically on the 2013 test & the changes that GRE has underwent- perfect way to prep for the standardized test of you graduate career! Love the tools it provides you with in understanding the test & getting the best score you can. Specifically it provides some "tips & tricks" to the tests i.e. question traps, ways to find the answers faster (even if you don't know it 100%) and so on. I would definitely recommend getting this if you are planning on taking the GRE.

[Samantha Puc · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I've been slowly but surely chipping away at the practice problems and tips in this book for over a year. I'm putting my grad school plans on hold for the moment, because I'm trying to become at least somewhat more financially stable before I commit to more school and student loans, so I'm putting the book down. But I will say that, given the fact that I've never used a prep book for any exam, I was impressed with this one. It was clear-cut and gave some solid tips, as well as practice problems that were helpful and informative.

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good tips on how to take the GRE as it is not really a test of how smart you are. It was helpful and I passed it along to a friend who is about to take it. I really think it helped me get a higher score than I would have without the tips.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very easy to navigate and use in preparation for the test. Every three or four study sessions, I reevaluated what parts of this book I actually had to read and which practice sets to work on. The test taking practices they endorse is excellent and not excessive.

[Morgan Witter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great study guide. So glad it's over!

[Jeni Enjaian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent resource for those studying for the GRE. I haven't taken the test yet but I know this book helped me tremendously.

[Khalid Al Khalili · Rating 4 out of 5]

Presents interesting strategies, not as comprehensive as Barron's GRE, but information presented in this book is easier to understand and remember for the exam. I recommend using both books together.

[helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful and fun to read. The writing style and examples are easy to understand and well-organized too.

[Valters Bondars · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10