Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE - Study Aid Review

When preparing for the GRE, I purchased The Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE 2009 Edition and found it quite helpful.

The book contains several practice tests, and you will also have access to PR's online practice tests, which are very similar to the actual computer-adaptive test that you will take. While these practice exams are helpful, PR does not provide enough of them. I definitely recommend purchasing ETS's Practicing to Take the GRE, which contains actual past paper tests. This book is published by Educational Testing Service, who administers the GRE, so these tests are great preparation tools.

Besides the lack of practice questions in the Princeton Review book, I found it to be a very useful resource. Before studying at all, I received a 490 on both the quantitative and verbal sections. I studied for 2 months for about 10 hours a week. Personally, my main obstacle was learning new vocabulary, where as I really just needed some review when it came to the math section. I learned the first 4 vocabulary lists (out of 6), of about 75 words each in PR's "Hit Parade" section. To give you an idea of how helpful the book is, on the actual test (I only took it once), I scored a 730 Quantitative (78th percentile) and 610 Verbal (88th percentile). Again, the only resources I used to study were the PR book and ETS's book of practice exams.

The writing section was another issue for me. I was not worried about writing essays, and was under the impression that it would be rather simple. Out of the 8 weeks that I prepared for the GRE's, I spent only about 4 days preparing for this section. Big mistake. Although I consider myself a decent writer, I scored a 4 (less than 50th percentile) on the essay section. I underestimated the difficulty of giving the testers what they wanted, and did not spend enough time preparing.

Moral of the story: the key to doing well on the GRE is learning what ETS is looking for, and The Princeton Review does an excellent job revealing these "mysteries." Study your math, learn some vocab, and don't underestimate any section that you feel you are well-prepared for. "Cracking the GRE" was very helpful, and I will use products of The Princeton Review again in the future, if I ever have the chance.