Probably helpful if you're not a good test-taker
Written: Nov 14 '07
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Some decent tips and tricks; easy to read.
Cons: A good bit of bad advice when it comes to the math portion.
The Bottom Line: Buy the book if you need help, but don't take the class.
|
|
|
| wvhokie55's Full Review: Princeton Review GRE Course |
I took the Princeton Review GRE course during the summer of 2005 as part of a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Texas A&M. The REU paid for the class, which was nice, though I have no idea how much it would have cost otherwise. As part of the class, you get a book and access to the PR website, which has a free online test you can take.
Our class met once a week for two or three hours at a time over the course of about 9 weeks. Usually there was a lecture portion followed by some practice questions. Every couple weeks we would take a practice test. The idea was that you would see improvement between the beginning of the course and the end.
I'll start with the math section of the test...
So what exactly does the Princeton Review teach you that is so helpful? For starters, strategies like (and I kid you not): "Eliminate the wrong answers so that the right answer is the only one left." PR calls that "process of elimination"; I call it "common sense."
Their most favored problem solving technique for the math portion is to plug answers into the the question to see which one fits. This wouldn't be such a bad idea if a) it didn't take so long, and b) most questions you encounter can't be easily solved this way. You can flip through the book and answer a lot of the math questions in a couple seconds without writing anything down, but they insist that you work through each possible solution before choosing an answer. I don't care for this approach.
My problem with their techniques is that they don't give much advice on how to work problems quickly. Most of the math problems on the GRE are just long division and multiplication, something that I have trouble doing very quickly without the aid of a calculator.
For the verbal section, they do a better job. Apparently, this is the section that most people have trouble with because it's basically a vocabulary test. The strategies they present seem to work pretty well, but that's coming from someone who can take the verbal test without really trying and score in the 95th percentile.
I have some issues with their advice on the writing section. They basically have a rubric they want you to follow where certain paragraphs begin with certain wording. This isn't such a bad thing, but it seems like you're going to immediately tell the grader that you took a PR class to prepare for the test, which could be to your disadvantage.
In conclusion, I would warn against paying the money for the full-blown class...it's just not that helpful. The book (which costs a lot less) contains the same information, some of which is actually useful. I think that the PR courses are probably very helpful for people who don't score well at all, but really don't help much at all once you get above a 600 or so. I, for one, am not impressed.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
wvhokie55
|
|
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.