Barron's New GRE with CD-ROM, 19th Edition (Barron's Gre)

The GRE Graduate Record Exam is changing substantially starting in August 2011, and Barron's is now ready with a thoroughly revised test prep manual that reflects the new exam's content. Although the GRE's Analytical Writing section remains essentially unchanged, new question types appear in both the GRE's Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections, and the model tests in Barron's brand-new 19th edition reflect these changes:

Verbal Reasoning-- The verbal section now includes two new sentence completion types: sentence equivalence questions, for which test takers must identify two correct answers to receive credit; and text completion questions, some involving passages of several sentences and requiring test takers to fill in up to three blanks. Reading comprehension questions may now have more than one correct answer. Some reading questions will involve selecting individual sentences with passages.

Quantitative Reasoning-- As in the past, this section contains standard multiple-choice questions, as well as quantitative comparison questions. There are two new question types: multiple-choice questions that have more than one correct answer choice, each of which has to be selected, and numeric entry questions, which are the only questions on the test for which no answer choices are provided.

Barron's new GRE manual offers intensive practice and review for all question types plus a diagnostic test and two full-length model GREs with answer keys and explanations for all questions answered. The authors also present a test overview and valuable chapters on test-taking tactics. The manual comes with an enclosed CD-ROM offering model tests that closely reflect the computer-based test-taking conditions that students must be familiar with. The CD-ROM contains two full-length model tests in addition to those in the book. These computer-adaptive tests come with answers, explanations, and automatic scoring.

System Requirements:

(Flash Player 10.2 is recommended)

Microsoft® Windows®:

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.33GHz, Athlon 64 2800+ or faster processor (or equivalent).

Platforms: Windows 7, Windows Vista®, Windows XP, Windows Server® 2008, Windows Server 2003.

Memory: 128 MB RAM

Graphics Memory: 128MB.

MAC OS X:

Processor: Intel Core™ Duo 1.33GHz or faster processor.

Platforms: Mac OS X 10.6, Mac OS X 10.5, Mac OS X 10.4 (Intel).

Memory: 256 MB RAM

Graphics Memory: 128MB.

Linux® and Solaris™:

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.33GHz, AMD Athlon 64 2800+ or faster processor (or equivalent).

Platforms: Red Hat® Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 or later, openSUSE® 11 or later, Ubuntu 9.10 or later. Solaris: Solaris™ 10.

Memory: 512 MB RAM

Graphics Memory: 128MB.

Customer Reviews:

No attention to detail (esp. with CD-ROM)

By mroyt - November 23, 2011

I got the "New GRE" test prep book, and was absolutely appalled at the inattention to detail in this book, and ESPECIALLY the included CD-ROM. I wasted over TWO HOURS of my time going through one of the timed practice exams on the CD-ROM. First of all, one of the reading questions was paired with an entirely incorrect reading passage. Another glaring problem that I noticed was that one of the math problems that referred to an included figure did not, in fact, include the figure. The other problem was with a data interpretation question with completely misleading and imprecise wording that made the question nonsensical. Clearly a lack of attention to detail.

Fine, I overlooked these issues and went through the exam. When I completed the test, I was dismayed to see how many questions I had gotten "wrong." I began looking at my "wrong" responses, and the very first two verbal questions I looked at were, actually, correct. One of them had been marked wrong, even though the... read more

I wouldn't buy this book

By itookthegre - September 8, 2011

First of all, the CD rom tests are basically unusable. I took the first test, and it reported that I got a very low score. Then Adobe froze and would not reopen the scoring screen. I opened their program files and read the text, and they had marked answers as incorrect in their software, then said in the explanation text that they were correct. All in all, it had marked over ten questions wrong which were actually correct. I'm no programmer, but it seems like an actual program (.exe) would have worked better than whatever kind of file/program they used (had to run in adobe).

Also, I just felt like the test I actually got and the one I took using Powerprep were a little bit different. The math practice questions in this book are not really difficult, but they seem more like they are trying to trick you. They were more like Mensa test puzzles, while the actual test question were more computationally based. Also, the math questions tend to expect you to make very exact... read more

The CD is dysfunctional.

By Brittany - July 26, 2011

I chose this book specifically because of the practice tests on the CD. I took the first practice test and it gave me a lower score than I expected. I looked at the answer explanations on the first section and lo and behold I had actually gotten quite a few questions right that the program had counted as wrong (The program explained why my answer was correct, but had counted it incorrect?). On one question the answer choices did not match the passage (passage about third reich, answer choices about male-female wage gap) and on another a necessary diagram was missing. The program kept freezing (NOT the fault of my brand new computer) and even the scroll bars didn't work. Most frustrating of all, however, is that I can not see answer explanations for any questions after the first section. I dedicated a few hours to taking this test and, as looking at the answer explanations revealed grading flaws on the first section but I can't see them for the remaining sections, I have NO CLUE... read more