Reddit reviews 5 Lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems: Strategy Guide, Includes Online Bonus Questions
We found 16 Reddit comments about 5 Lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems: Strategy Guide, Includes Online Bonus Questions. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Brand newVery useful!
Just took the test on Saturday and got 170V/168Q. Let me tell you a few things about prep:
1)DO NOT waste your time or money with Kaplan/Princeton/Barron's etc.. they are inadequate and full of distracting typos.
2)Do use Magoosh.com and/or the Manhattan course. They both come with top-notch instruction and lots of practice tests/questions. I actually used both. For even more practice questions (which you probably won't have time for at this point) check out the 5 lb book of questions.
3) Definitely memorize every word on the free Magoosh vocab flashcards. Knowing these words saved my verbal score.
4) For the love of all that is holy please use the official GRE book that is put out by ETS.
5) Do not ignore the essay. It requires a very specific type of writing. Even if you are a "good" writer you will be disappointed in your score unless you write the way they want you to. What you may not know is that every essay is graded by one computer reader and one human reader. For $13 you can actually have 2 essays graded by the exact algorithm the computer reader uses and you'll get an idea of where you stand.
5lb Manhattan book helped me immensely for the quantitative section. The ETS quantitative reasoning book is also a great resource.
Lastly, use Magoosh if you enjoy studying on the computer. The software Magoosh provides is well worth the money. The ETS website also has a bunch of mock-tests you can take too, so make sure you take those as well.
Good luck!
Hello,
I recently took the GRE, and after not getting the scores I wanted, continued my search for a better book to study. I have a few friends that studied using Kaplan, and got mediocre scores (not blaming it on Kaplan..fully anyways), and I used "Cracking the GRE". From what I've picked up from myself and others, these books teach you how to "game the developers", which isn't the correct way to go about it. Gaming the test isn't going to help you when you simply need to have a better understanding of the material.
I bought this book and have been going through it. Each chapter is a specific topic of questions, with about ~100 of each. For example: 1 chapter for Algebra, one for Inequalities, etc. It also has a practice section at the beginning to help you determine where you can further focus.
5lb Book of GRE Practice Problems
They have the answers and good explanations at the end of each chapter as well.
It's big and heavy, and a little intimidating, but you'll work through it. I know I am, slowly but surely.
Yes, I took it on July 5th. I used this book for practice tests mostly the week before the GRE. Every day I used this 5 lb. book of practice problems to go over math concepts I needed extra work on and these flashcards for vocab. It seems a little overkill in retrospect, but I was damn determined not to take it twice. All of these helped me enormously, probably about equally. By combining them I was able to raise my scores about 25 percentile points each between my diagnostic test to actual test day.
Best of luck! Just study hard and keep your cool and you'll do just fine.
Found this comment:
Just took the test on Saturday and got 170V/168Q. Let me tell you a few things about prep:
1)DO NOT waste your time or money with Kaplan/Princeton/Barron's etc.. they are inadequate and full of distracting typos.
2)Do use Magoosh.com and/or the Manhattan course. They both come with top-notch instruction and lots of practice tests/questions. I actually used both. For even more practice questions (which you probably won't have time for at this point) check out the 5 lb book of questions.
3) Definitely memorize every word on the free Magoosh vocab flashcards. Knowing these words saved my verbal score.
4) For the love of all that is holy please use the official GRE book that is put out by ETS.
5) Do not ignore the essay. It requires a very specific type of writing. Even if you are a "good" writer you will be disappointed in your score unless you write the way they want you to. What you may not know is that every essay is graded by one computer reader and one human reader. For $13 you can actually have 2 essays graded by the exact algorithm the computer reader uses and you'll get an idea of where you stand.
Yeah, I'm SO happy with the result! No lie I cried a little at the end when it spat out my score and I'm sure it was embarrassing for the lady who helped me check out afterward.
I can't recommend Official Guide to the GRE enough. It's really good at teaching you all the math you need, but I think this ETS math review pdf is the same as in the book? Anyways the good thing about the book is it has two full length, official practice tests that are a similar difficulty as the real test and loads of practice questions. I did every question in here and read the math review like three times.
ETS has two more free official practice tests, same thing as the ones that come with the CD in the book. I did both of these too and half of the Manhattan Prep free practice test to practice quant.
For more practice questions I used the Manhattan GRE and Ready4GRE phone apps. They give you some free and you can pay if you want more. The Ready4 questions felt like good practice to me and the Manhattan ones were a little harder than the ones in the ETS book.
All my friends recommended signing up for Magoosh. I didn't because it is pricey, but sometimes people sell their accounts if they still have time on their subscriptions so check GRE facebook groups or /r/GRE. They have some free things: some video lessons and practice problems, and explanations of problems from the ETS practice tests/practice books. I heard the Princeton Review and Kaplan practice tests and questions are too easy compared to the real thing, but the Manhattan Prep 5lb Book of Practice Problems, official ETS extra quant book and extra verbal book, and Manhattan Prep study guide set are all supposed to be good.
This is my second time taking it. I def did not prep enough for the first one! This time I did a full practice test first for a baseline, wrote down topics I was bad at, read the math review, did the exercises from the book, and did all the practice problems from the book. Then I took another practice test, started doing questions from 3rd parties, and spaced out the rest of the practice tests.
For the writing I read a lot of sample essays that scored a 6 or 5 and made outlines for different essay prompts. I was too lazy to write even one full practice essay though so I might have bombed that part, ahaha. I spent about a month studying and $20 on the ETS official guide.
TBH I might be taking the GMAT now so maybe I'll join you guys. Good luck studying! :)
5 lb. Book of GRE practice problems + confidence
I just bought this used: https://www.amazon.com/Lb-Book-GRE-Practice-Problems/dp/1937707296 to help with the math portion because like you, I also didn't make the minimum but it was by like 1 point. It was my only section that wasn't good. It looks like ETS has a few math prep materials: https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/disabilities/math_review
Also public libraries are a golden mine for this type of stuff.
The 5 Lb. Book was my primary study resource for the GRE and it helped immensely.
I used a traditional GRE prep book with GRE flash cards which helped me jump 10% in quantitative and 20% in qualitative.
Hey.. Someone recommended you Manhattan GRE book right?
This one? Its on offer on amazon
It's better in the sense that you get a video answer and explanation for every question, but if you have more than 2 months to study, you'll probably run out of questions. You can find a huge book of questions for cheap as a supplement. If you search for it you can probably find an electronic version somewhere. I did all of Magoosh and all of the 5 lb. Book. In the end, I met the minimum score I wanted, so it was worth it because I was accepted into my first choice... but god damn, fuck the GRE. I hope your death is quicker and less painful than mine haha.
Hey it's a book by Manhattan Prep which has a LOT of practice questions.
https://www.amazon.com/Lb-Book-GRE-Practice-Problems/dp/1937707296/ref=nodl_
this is pretty popular as a compendium of old questions. you can pick it up at the library or buy it used on amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/lb-Book-GRE-Practice-Problems/dp/1937707296
Oh cool, thanks!!
5lb book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1937707296/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_yl7jtb0T1P1FK
I can't really think of anything else off of the top of my head - if I do think of or come by anything, I'll be sure to message you! Good luck!
I'd say don't take a class. You'll be paying a lot of money for a generalized approach intended to strengthen a bunch of peoples' GRE scores, instead of focusing on what you need help with. Suck at verbal and good at quant? A class isn't going to spend more time on verbal just because you suck at it.
I'd recommend hiring a good private tutor and/or joining Magoosh. Magoosh is $80 for six months and it's by far the best prep material I've found. It's all online and has videos teaching you different types of material. Those are like a Khan Academy for GRE prep. They also have questions and a quiz mode, so they throw questions at you and also give you an estimated score range based on how many you get right. The questions are much harder than the real GRE so they prep you really, really well.
I'd say also get the Manhattan Prep 5-lb Book of GRE Problems. They're really good, reasonably challenging, and harder than the real test. They don't teach you "tricks" as much as teach you the actual material you need. Avoid Kaplan and Princeton Review like the plague, since their questions often have a lot of typos and aren't good prep. Also for sure get the Official Guide to the GRE, since it's the only place to get official ETS questions. They resemble the ones on the actual test the most. If you're having trouble with a particular topic, Manhattan Prep also sells guides for individual subjects like word problems and geometry that are really good. ETS also sells books of Quantitative and Verbal questions for extra practice.
Good luck!