By: Kaplan Publisher: Kaplan Publishing Average Rating: Binding: Cards Label: Kaplan Publishing Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 1004 Publication Date: July 03, 2007
Focus Your Time Elsewhere I purchased these cards in an attempt to build my vocabulary for the GRE. However, they proved to be pointless. I took the time and the effort to memorize all the words, as well as the synonyms for each word. When I took the GRE practice tests from Kaplan, the words showed up, I knew the answers, and I did well. When it came time to take the GRE however, only one word from the entire box showed up, and I ended up guessing on majority of the questions. Needless to say, I did not do well. While these cards did build my vocabulary, it did not help for the GRE. I had glanced over the root list that Kaplan gives in their GRE Premier Program book, but didn't study the list as much as I should have. I will say that it would be much wiser to study the root list that they give, and not concern yourself with knowing these words too much. Plus, their Premier Program book gives much of the same words, so all you have to do is make flashcards yourself. For some people, these cards seemed to have worked, so perhaps it was just me that didn't work for. But it should be noted that a common theme among all these reviews is to study the root list. Studying the root list will get you through a lot of questions, whereas memorizing 500 words and definitions, as well as all synonyms, didn't really seem to have a big impact on my performance. I leave the decision up to you.
Words are actually used in tests I used these flashcards to study vocab for the MAT. The words often have meanings other than what I thought they did - good to be corrected. The words did show up and made the difference in getting the analogy correct. Easy to carry.
Saves time I always make my own index cards, but this saves me time and money, actually. Plus, I would never have been able to choose 500 words myself!
So many words so little time While studying these cards I thought they were the best thing ever... Then I started taking practice tests and then I took the real thing, the GRE general exam and realized they were kind of useless. The box has so many words and they are presented in a great easy to study format. Unfortunately though, the GRE uses a lot of the same words over and over again which account for a very small portion of the words in this "exam in a box". In short I recommend buying the GRE Premier edition with CD-Rom. In the book it gives you a list of the 20 most popular words on the GRE, of which I saw about 3/4 of on the test.
In the end I did pretty well on my verbal and I studied the cards constantly so there just might be something to it.
Good Study Guide This is a good study guide for the GRE. The small cards can be used wherever you want to study. I haven't taken the GREs yet, so I don't know how many words will be used, but as of now, I've found them useful.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
