ARCO Master the GRE 2009 (with CD)
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Average customer review:Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #137578 in Books
- Published on: 2008-05-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 640 pages
Customer Reviews
Mistakes abound
As someone noted already, there's a big mistake regarding the presence of a calculator on the interface. There is no calculator on the interface.
I bought this book yesterday and did the first practice math test. I found two errors in the answers. Since there are are 28 questions, that's a pretty high error rate and I was fortunate enough to figure out that I was actually correct and the answer was wrong. You might not be so lucky.
I then did two more practice tests. Each contained at least two glaring mistakes in the answers. Do yourself a favor. Don't buy this book.
The only advantage this book has over the Barron's guide is that it contains some sample math questions where the answer has to be written in. Barron's doesn't contain that type of question. (And Barron's has some errors too but they're not as ubiquitous.)
Horrible, should only be used if desperate for math practice
This book and its accompanying CD have serious flaws. Firstly, they contain typos and errors clearly noticeable when you're going through the tests--for instance, they will tell you the right answer is wrong. I'm no math genius, but I know when I've done my calculations correctly, particularly when the calculations the book provides for why my answer was wrong are themselves wrong. Secondly, the verbal section is way off base from the actual test. This book is one of five different test preparation materials I have, and the questions and answers in it are markedly different from the verbal section questions of any other source, including the ETS computerized practice tests. My verbal score, and only my verbal score, was significantly lower on these practice tests than they were on any other company's practice tests, and many times I did not understand or agree with the explanations given by the book/CD for why my reading comprehension answer was wrong or why their analogies answer was right. Thirdly, the computerized practice tests that can be installed from the CD just don't work. Installing them on Vista takes a little extra work, which is not too troublesome, but the program did not save my test results from the first computer practice test. When I tried to take the second practice test, I noticed immediately that the math section questions were exactly the same. I tried to back out of that test to take the third practice test (there are only three total), but it also had the exact same math questions. When I tried to troubleshoot and reinstall the program, it completely stopped working.
All in all, not worth the trouble. Skip the verbal section and use the math section only if extremely desperate for practice, and even then take it all with a grain of salt because their answers might be wrong.
This book sucks so bad . . .
In the quantitative reasoning section of the diagnostic test, Question 5 is poorly worded at best and probably better described as totally incorrect. Question 15 is wrong as noted by other reviewers. My dad is a tenured prof in Statistics / Math and he verified that both of these questions suck.
The typos mentioned by others are also screwed up in my book.
Boo Peterson's!

