Word Smart for the GRE

I highly recommend this book as an additional guide to the "cracking the GRE" book, for improving GRE vocabulary. The book has many words frequently used in the GRE. The strength of the book is that each word is put in a couple of sentences to make clear its exact meanings which I found very helpful especially for the secondary less intuitive meanings which they like to use on the GRE. There are also helpful tips throughout, such as which words are likely to get confused. Also, some words's roots are explained which more than being interesting uses as a very effective mnemonic. Would definitely recommend to non native speakers who need to learn as many words as possible...good luck!

I bought this book last year, but only took the exam this year. Anyway, I took a practice test before studying and got a 590 Verbal and a 640 Quantitative...then used this book combined with "Cracking the GRE with DVD, 2008 Edition (Graduate Test Prep)." Since the math is the same level as the SAT, verbal practice is the only real way to up your score. I personally made flash cards of all the words in the word bank and skimmed the back section on prefixes, stems, and suffixes. I'd say my strategy worked pretty well; my GRE score was 670 Verbal and 740 quantitative. You'll need about 2-3 months to really learn all the words in this book if you try to learn 10-20 words a day. It's worth it though. Combine that with practice tests you get from registering "Cracking the GRE" and you should be well-prepared. In fact, a few questions on my actual GRE were ones I'd seen in practice tests. Overall, I think this is an excellent way to improve your functional vocabulary, with definitions, secondary definitions, and usage in context.

This test prep book is designed to help build up one's vocabulary in preparation for the GRE. The math on the GRE is of the same level as the SATs, but, as the book explains, the creators of the GRE figure you should have been working on your vocabulary during your undergraduate years. The book offers several helpful tools for learning new words, and picks a list of words that are most often employed on the test. This is much better than studying a dictionary. It also provides sentences to give examples of how the words are used, etc. This is a great book, and has been very helpful for me.

I used this and the ultimate math refresher to prep for the GRE and scored in the 90th Percentile on the verbal section. I'd say that speaks volumes. Considering I'm the guy who just doesn't do well on standardized tests I'd say it worked pretty well.

To all students who are studying for the GRE Exam- this book is highly recommended. It definitely helped me on the GRE. Of all the practice and actual tests I took, there were only 2 or 3 "weird words" I counted that were NOT in this book. Buy it- it's a great investment!