This book conforms to the old pattern of GRE i.e. Verbal, Logical and Quantitative. The new GRE pattern has done away with the Logical section and replaced with the Analytical Writing section. This book has 5 parts. The first part gives a brief overview of the GRE computer based test, answers to frequently asked questions and the test format.
It also gives certain test-taking tactics for the computer-based GRE. This is followed by a diagnostic test having detailed answer explanations. The next part deals with verbal ability and deals with antonyms, analogy questions, sentence completion questions, comprehension questions and vocabulary. There are excellent tactics given for each of these sections.
Each of the sections has 5 practice exercises with the answer keys( no detailed explanations, I feel they should have been there). By and far the toughest section on the GRE is the verbal section and this is because of it?s vast vocabulary. This is where this book scores over other books, It has a 3500 strong word list divided into 50 word lists having 70 words on a average.
If one manages to complete the word lists, that is an achievement in itself. This world list is very useful. Besides to make it easy to remember the meanings every word has a sentence using it. Each of the word lists has a practice question section at the end dealing with antonyms and synonyms. Also there is a High-frequency word list containing the most frequently words appearing on the actual GRE tests. The Reading Comprehension section of the GRE exam is also tough and this book deals with it pretty nicely.
The next part deals with Analytical Ability which has been discarded from the GRE exam. This part has two chapters devoted to Analytical reasoning and logical reasoning. Each of these chapters has testing tactics, practice exercises having detailed answer explanations. The 4th part of the book deals with quantitative ability.
There are 5 chapters devoted to general math strategies, discrete quantitative questions, quantitative questions, data interpretation questions and mathematics review. The testing tactics in this chapter are very useful as they help in saving time. Each chapter also has practice exercises and detailed answer explanations. The chapter on data interpretation is very good.
The chapter on mathematics review has concepts relating to arithmetic, algebra, geometry, counting and probability. The concepts are arranged in the form of key facts and are very useful e.g. there are facts relating to percents which help in saving time. The last part of the book has model tests. There are 5 model tests with detailed answer explanations. This part provides good practice and helps one in gearing oneself for the actual GRE exam. The model tests are based on the old pattern. All in all, an excellent book to start your GRE preparations with. Plus points Good price( Rs 190) Excellent vocabulary