Haven't really studied with the book but it looks like helpful to learn some advanced vocabulary. And I thought it would be a regular size book but it's smaller like a paper back novel so even better to carry in my bag. Thanks

I love this book. Somehow it made it really easy to learn and remember new vocab. There are 800 words in it and I learned all of them in about 3 weeks. I highly recommend this book for anyone taking the GRE who needs to learn more vocab.

I was only able to make it halfway through this book, and it helped me to improve my GRE Verbal score by 90 points. It makes it really easy to learn the words, and the word roots units in the end are highly useful. Even if you do not have time to go through this entire book, it is still a great buy.
In addition, I did not think it would be such a great help with the reading sections, until I realized that the GRE passages are crawling with the words taught in this book. Highly recommend!

Barron's Essential Words for the GRE is an excellent resource for vocabulary preparation for the Graduate Record Exam. There are exercises that enable the student to test their knowledge of the words studied in proper context as well as a post test to gauge one's readiness for the actual exam. The book is very practical and well written! I highly recommend it.

This book is great for studying vocab for the gre. It helps by giving you examples of how the word can be used in a sentence and matching the word with the definitions. It also points out the most frequently used words as well as the other words that could appear on the gre. It worth the money.

This book helped me a lot when I was preparing for the GRE. One of these words was a question for me on the test and a good number of the other words appeared as possible multiple choice answers. Learning all of the words in this book will definitely improve your score on the GRE, as the word selections and definitions seem to be very appropriate for the vocabulary level of the test.

I didn't really like the layout, however. The exercises were too brief and too easy, and I ended up making flash cards to learn the entire book anyway. As a few others have mentioned, the alphabetical order made the book more confusing than it had to be, as you had entire units of words that began with pre- or pro-, for example.

Overall though, a useful preparation aid.

This book is certainly helpful and well organized. I would strongly suggest that you also get the Princeton Review general GRE book and also learn all of the hit parade words. I systematically cross checked all the words from the PR with this book and while there is some overlap it is definitely worth having both. It is slightly frustrating that Barron's doesnt go into a lot of second meanings for words, which is something you should definitely know for the GRE. I spent 9 weeks with a ton of flashcards working through both word sets and got a 630 V. The verbal section is HARD so practice and be prepared to make plenty of flashcards. Kind of knowing a word is not sufficient. I never got through the latter 2/3rds of the root section, but I can definitely see how that could help give you a high score. I'd say 10 weeks with this book if you plan to realistically ingest and retain all the information.

I'll keep things short. The issue with this study guide is that words are taught in alphabetical order.
It is easy to lose focus even if the book is divided in chunks.

I was expecting variation in how words will appear in the book, instead of lexical ordering. It's the same as reading a dictionary, memorizing a set of words, testing yourself, and moving on. This can get boring real quick.

Anyways, I give it 4 stars because it does have the GRE words you need to learn and useful exercises. I just wish words would appear at random or be listed by frequency. They do provide a list of the most frequent words, but it'd be better if the lessons were designed around the frequency of words. A little mix & matching would help.

Anyways, this is my initial impression. I do plan to study along w/ the Kaplan GRE Vocab. in a box.

I like the quizes, the root words and the way it is organized pretty effectively so far.

A very helpful book for learning vocab! It is divided into manageable sections and is quite useful in learning more words!

This book organizes frequently appearing GRE words alphabetically, shares example sentences and related ideas to improve GRE takers' memory on each one of those words. Highly recommend it!

I'm still studying for the GRE, so I have yet to see if this book was actually helpful; but based on my experience going through the exercises, this book is for people who learn by memorization and have a limited vocabulary. I already knew 75% of the words. Words like "itinerary," "odyssey" and "dormant" are just a few examples of obvious words that someone looking to go to grad school should already know. That being the case, I'm not quite sure why the author chose to include them. Also, I found some of the definitions to be poorly worded, so I ended up having to use online dictionaries to better comprehend some word meanings.

The word roots section proved not so helpful as many of the exercises include words for which the definition can't be directly guessed or implied from the root's definition. The typos also created confusion and weren't helpful from a mnemonic (one word I learned from the book!) learning perspective.

All the same, I did appreciate the contextual sentences provided as they made the book fun and entertaining to work through. The secondary meanings / uses of some words were also provided which was rather insightful. There are also brief summaries of academic phrases, concepts, key figures, etc that could potentially be helpful in preparing for the GRE Verbal Section.

The words in this book are not too difficult,leveled between SAT and GRE. It worked for me as a good start, particularly as I found the words are useful ones, frequently appeared in not only GRE tests, but also in daily newspapers and pro-academic journals. It laid a good fundation before I turned to crack question types. Also, since it bridges over SAT and GRE vocab, I think it might be beneficial for the CAT test, which begins with easiest qeustion and adapts to your ability to answer them correctly. It may also keep your morale high from the very beginning, too.

very good book. My English vocabulary has improved. If you are an International student and you need to improve your vocabulary and use of GRE words, buy this book.

We are using this book to reinforce the vocabury of students taking the GRE. It is extremely helpful.

This is a great book to learn vocab, however, order it as early as possible so you have enough time to get through it.

I'm having a real fun and easy time learning words with this book. Though I initially bought it as a tool to help me with the GRE, I found that it's great overall to learn many words that some may not have heard before.

The structure of the lessons are simple and well laid out, and, if done with enough time instead of crunching at the last minute, will most certainly aid anyone in mastering new words, whether for the GRE or otherwise.

The book contains a great reference for root words, too.

In all, highly recommended.

This book is useful for learning all these

But there is a big problem - 800 words is superfluous and surfeit. Oh, I mean way too much. So, I put this book aside and now using Cracking the GRE, 2009 Edition (Graduate School Test Preparation) and Barron's GRE Flash Cards - both contain reasonable amount of words - 300, not 800, and definitions are simpler and shorter.
But this book is still useful to teach you learning techniques that surely help. And this section about common word roots is very useful too.

Although I have not yet taken the GRE exam, I recommend this book for the following reasons:

1. It contains 800 high-frequency GRE words, divided into units of 10 words each. The words are well explained and each unit summarize the 10 words by sample questions, which are answered at the end of the book.

2. In addition to explaining the words of the unit, it sometimes explain other strange words.

3. In addition to the 800 high-frequency words, it contains 300 high-frequency word roots, which learn you an additional 1500 words. For me, I prefer those 800 words + 300 roots over memorizing the GRE word list of more than 3000 words!


NOTE: If you buy the book, you will see at the beginning "300 Absolutely Essential GRE Words", but they are not defined! Do not waste your time looking in dictionaries, because those 300 words are partial set of the 800 high-frequency words, so it is just a list that will help you focus on those words.

I bought this book cause all rewiews were excellent. The level of words, examples and so forth are good, BUT, there`s one problem, all words are given in alphabetical order, which makes them very hard to memorize. The main thing is that you need to know what words mean, and it`s very confusing, all sounds the same. Smth like aba, abe, abu etc.

This is a great supplement to GRE exam study books. While not focusing on how to answer specific exam questions, it does build the critical vocabulary you need for the test. It gives you both definitions and context for the words, as well as numerous drills to help you practice them. I think that combination helped me understand these words a lot more effectively than just studying a list that the comprehensive exam guides tack on the end.

It really helped me with a lot of words. I still haven't taken the test, but my ability in practice tests has already improved a lot.

So, did this book give me a plethora of vocabulary to learn? It sure did. Did I see any of my new words on the GRE? I sure did see one. Yes. One. I learned all 300 absolutely essential words, plus a good chunk of the rest of the 500, plus some tasty prefix morsels. And ONE word came in handy.

But hey. I know what amalgamate means. Booyah.

If you like to learn vocab, then sure, get this book.
If you like to learn GRE vocab, I'm not sure this is the book for you. I knew all the words on the GRE.

I'm an international student and this book helps me a lot. I remember all the word and understand how to use it. Even you don't take the test, it is good to know these words for graduate level. Thanks Barron.

HEY I PURCHASED IT OVER ONE MONTH AGO AND IT WAS ESTIMATED TO BE DELIVERED THE 1TH OF FEBRUARY. NOW, CAN I PLS HAVE WHOT I BOUGHT AN IT'S MINE?

The book is excellent,i learn't nearly 300 new words in a week or so,it would nice if they had more than 800 words but I guess there are other books for it

I was having so much trouble learning vocabulary before the GRE but this helped so much. I learned the words quickly thanks to how this book was set up and the next time I took the GRE I rocked the vocab section. This book is a must.

I was surprisingly disappointed by Barron's Essential Words for the GRE. While I thought the variety of words and definitions were excellent, I felt that the exercises were lacking. Many of the sentence completion exercises were unclear or too obvious (sometimes using a different form of the word in the same sentence, thus cluing me into what the answer should be, even if I don't remember the word itself), or only able to be determined through the use of elimination in a word list. There were also a lot of obvious errors in the answer key, which is especially frustrating when scoring myself. I think that Barron's can produce something much better than this, if not by developing better sentence completion sections, at least by having a correct answer key. I give it three out of five stars, because the words and definitions are helpful, as are the word roots, but the helpfulness of the exercises and the trustworthiness of the answer key are sorely lacking.

This book is very well organized, this book will help you to learn and memorize numerous words in short period.
Each unit contains 10 words with explanation and examples, after that, there are some exercises that helps to memorize the words. In just 1 week, I memorized about 600 words. I really recommend this book.