Princeton Review: Cracking the GMAT CAT with Sample ... (ISBN 0375754067)

Good introduction, but not enough info for in-depth prep:
I have a business preparing people for the GMAT and I *never* use this book. Most of our students need much more than this book has to offer. Basically, Princeton Review does not give you all the information they have because they want you to take their course. As they say, people sign up for the course just to get the books! This book will show you what to expect on the GMAT, but it won't clear up any of the serious problems you may have. For example, if you are scoring pretty high in the math, like 80% or so, you will need to focus on more difficult questions and this book does not have enough of them. All of their sentence correction problems also neatly fall into their categories, but, alas, these are not the questions that most people have problems with, it is the tricky questions that people have a hard time with. The software is so-so. It's better than the Peterson's (almost everything is), but not as good as the Kaplan. The best, of course, is the official PowerPrep software. I have had many problems with students getting over 600 on the Princeton Review software, but getting 100 or 200 points less on the real test! In short, you should buy a good test prep book to use along with the official GMAT review. There is no one book that will give you everything you need.

This book works miracles!:
I used this book in conjunction with the "Official Guide for GMAT Review" by ETS. This book teaches great techniques for the GMAT. The "Official Guide" is really only good for the practice problems. Using both of them really helped. I scored a 760!

Good Overall but CD test questions repeated...:
The review provided by this book and CD are adequate, but notoutstanding. A lot of time is spent teaching test-taking tricks,which is time and paper that could have been better spent withadditional examples. I studied on and off from this book for about 4 days, and completed 2 test sub-sections and 2 other complete tests from the CD that comes with the book. On each of the complete tests, my score was exactly the same -- 730. I just sat for the actual GMAT exam this morning and scored a 660. I took the GMAT (paper version) a little over 5 years ago (and about 1 yr out of undergrad) and scored a 690 with little more than a day or two preparation. Did this prep material really do anything for me? You make the call.

An excellent book, perfectly complements the official guide:
This book offers some valuable tips and suggestions especially for cracking math. But overall it focuses more on the "Joe Blogg" tips and tricks approach, which may work for some people and not for others. I still believe knowing sincerely how to solve problems will get you far. But the PR book makes for an interesting read, gives you some excellent strategies (e.g., about the essay sections etc) and does the best job of introducing the concept of "difficulty level bins" -- which is how the CAT works. For those about to take the GMAT, some tips: 1. Definitely get yourself the 'Official Guide' (published by ETS) -- that is indespensable. You should aim to complete it from cover to cover - it gives you a really good idea of the test questions though the math is a liitle easier than what I saw on the test. It even has a comprehensive, complete list of essay topics. I worked with the 10th edition, the latest possible edition would be a good buy lest you should miss out on some novel nuances. 2. Practice tests -- my scores in Powerprep : 780,770; Kaplan : 670,650,690; Princeton : 750,720. So I'd venture to recommend this book to get a decent estimation of where you really stand, and therefore u must take the included tests seriously -- i.e., emulating the real testing conditions -- in order to get an accurate idea of your potential. Kaplan is really tough - I haven't seen too many folks scoring above 700 in thier tests - infact when i gave the first test straight after a 780 in powerprep and got a 650 I was pretty turned off - but later found out that it wasn't really a big deal. Get Kaplan for practice, but the PR and the official guide should be enough. 3. PREP MATERIAL: Well other than the Official guide, I used PR and Kaplan. I found the math tips in Kaplan (50 of them) quite impressive but the practice tests in PR give you a very good idea of difficulty levels of math/analytic because it lays out the test in "bins" (easy bin, medium bin, and the tough bin). I found this to be a very unique and useful feature. All in all, this is a handy book for its purpose and complements the ETS OG fabulously. Recommended, if you are looking for more than one book.

Almost all what you need:
This is an excelent material. Get this book, and buy another pack of practice tests from the web (plenty of them around) and you're all set. Just keep in mind that you need to have solid bases to benefit from this book and other practice tests; Nobody and nothing will teach you probability, algebra, grammar, etc... in a month. The author has a good sense of humor, which makes this book more readable and not so boring in such the painful task of studying for GMAT. Only drawback is that quantitative section problems in the real one are more difficult (better say, more time consuming) than the ones that come in ANY practice test. Always keep in mind that this is an ADAPTIVE test when studying, so, create your strategy for how much time to spend on the first 10-15 questions of each section.