Barron's New GRE: Graduate Record Examination (Barron's GRE)

I recently took the new GRE and was pleased with the early range of my scores (actual results mailed in November). I used this book, along with the official ETS GRE book, and some much older GRE books from Kaplan and an old Cracking the GRE from years ago. These extra books were used primarily for back up explanations in the Quantitative areas. This was helpful a few times when I thought I had mastered a section, but wanted to test myself in the practice sections elsewhere. The only area of the Barron's book that required me to really look into the other books for explanation was the coordinate geometry section. I was actually able to get a better understanding of that in the ETS GRE book.For the analytical writing, I found that using the ETS website, they actually have the pool of topics for the Issue and Argument essays. I just practiced developing outlines for those sections and finally got good at it. The Barron's book does explain how to break down and analyze a topic, but the Issue essay basically puts you on your own. Those are pretty tough. The ETS GRE book was helpful in this section because it provides examples of a 6.0 essay, 5.5 essay, 5.0 essay, and on and on.For the verbal, I did not study the verbal much at all, so I cannot comment. You will need to get fast at scanning key sentences on the reading sections and you'll be good to go. Barron's does go into detail in what to look for and I did find myself getting better at the reading comprehension over time. These large test companies are having to go in sort of blindly in this early going because they do not have the vocabulary pool of years and years of the same test to go through and thousands of math examples to review. I thought Barron's does a solid job at preparing me for the test and I went in very confident.Like other reviewers have said, you will want to go in with different study sources. One book will not cover an area in the same way. I also enjoyed mastering an area such as geometry, then going to an entirely different book and testing myself in their geometry section and seeing how I did. An old copy of Cracking the GRE from 2005 I picked up has four diagnostics on CD-Rom and I just exited the verbal sections and took the quantitative sections. My scores on those tests were in the range of my acual test.Thank you for reading and best of luck on your test. Relax, prepare, perform.

Just got the 19th edition today and realized that it is almost the same as the 18th edition (which I have already owned and studied off of). I carefully looked through most of the math sections and found that all the math questions and answers are essentially the same. The only difference is that Barron took out some multiple choice answers and replaced it with fill-in-the-blank boxes (since the new GRE will be doing this on the math section). For data interpretation sections, some of the old graphs from the 18th edition were used, but a few new graphs/tables were included along with some new questions.There are more changes in the verbal sections. There are new example questions in the sentence completion section, but a few old examples from the 18th edition were reused. There are new tactics in addition to the old tactics. The biggest difference was the lack of the vocabulary section. There are NO lists of vocabulary for you to study from.Because the math sections are essentially the same, I am thinking of returning this book and getting a different prep book with different math problems for me to work on. For those of you who already have the 18th edition, you can always look back and redo math problems from the 18th edition if you need to. Vocabulary is still important so there is no point getting the 19th edition if there are no word lists. Yes, the verbal sections are a bit different for sure but I prefer to get a whole different book.I studied off 3 books and have found Barron's math section to be the best because the problems are more challenging. If you don't have Barron's 18th edition, then I suggest you get this book along with other New GRE books as supplement!

So far the content in this book is great and it gives excellent test taking advice. Everything seems clearly defined and I'm glad I purchased this great test prep material. However...I decided to get the kindle/ebook version of this book. Its convenient (and portable) to have, but the book's native format doesn't translate over to the kindle well at all. Images are pixelated (including diagrams in the quantitative section, charts and graphs). Any text found on figures will be very small on an ereader's screen. Many of the multiple choice question answers (including some words in the verbal section) including all fractions throughout the book are also images, but these are larger and easier to read.On actual GRE tests, lines of text in the reading passages are numbered in the margin so questions can refer to specific places in a passage. In the ebook the numbers are present so you can follow along, but the text will not be in nice straight columns. Indentations appear in odd places making it slightly awkward to read.Overall, the book/content itself is good. However, I would recommend getting a hard copy.

I'll be honest here - this book is extremely dull. Yes, it's a prep book for a totally vapid standardized exam, but Princeton Review's GRE prep book was way better, easier to read, and included more information about the test itself and suggested strategies, rather than recommending that you make every single calculation. Princeton Review's book was intuitive. Princeton Review's book didn't make me want to go eat cookies instead whenever I sat down to study.I did pretty well on the exam, no thanks to Barron's. Try Barron's if you want to relearn concepts for what they are. But try Princeton Review's book if you want to know the facts about the GRE and tips on how to do well on it.

Passed the exam, got into US university, graduated, got a job, got a higher paying job, now writing the review. The book helped with all the sample exams at the end, got a good score, but was it the book or me. Guess we'll never know :(

This book is very good if you want to study for the GRE exam. There is no CD coming with the book. There is no word list for verbal section, however, the tips are useful. Writing section is not very detailed. I liked the quantitative section the most. It explains the basic stuff very clearly and to the point. If you want to fresh your quantitative memory, this section is very useful for you.The quality of paper is also good. The book is not heavy at all, which is good because you can have it around easily. I recommend this book, at least it is very cheap and useful.

I just took the test last week, and found the free online tests through ETS and this book to be very useful in teaching me what kind of questions would be on the GRE. The new version is definitely different, and more difficult, than the old one. I particularly like the explanations of the questions that go through each possible choice following the practice sections. If you have no memory of high school maths, like me, you might also need to buy a book to remind you of the basics of geometry, statistics and algebra. The explanations in this book will sometimes assume such basic knowledge.

Excellent

The book it self was fine but it arrived without the CD Rom which is one of the main reasons why i wanted the book. When I called Amazon they wanted to dispute my claim and instead of sending me out the CD they want to see if it actually comes with a CD and make me wait 48 hours to give me feedback and a decision. It is written ALL over the book that it comes with a CD-Rom!!! it's very poor customer service indeed.