Best GRE Prep Books

You are about to prep for the GRE test and don’t know where to start? With the GRE Prep Plus textbook from Kaplan, it will be an easy start. It’s a flagship prep guide from one of the biggest educational organizations that is considered one of the most comprehensive GRE prep books for now, hence, its popularity. And it’s not a marketing ploy to boost the sales. Backed by more than 80 years of expertise, they know everything about the test and can help give you an advantage.

In more than 700 pages, you will find literally everything you need to know about the exam and how to maximize your score. You’ll get a detailed step-by-step guide on all test sections, including analytical, reasoning, verbal, and quant skills. The math sections in this book are really strong, which is a real find for those undergraduates who didn’t take any math courses. In the Prep plus, they targeted all types of topics and questions you’ll have to deal with during the exam. Thus, the book offers as many as 1700 questions, all made up and revised by Kaplan’s leading experts, and supplemented by detailed answers with in-depth explanations to help you get into the concept that stands behind those problem-focused questions.

Each type of question comes accompanied by practice sets along with 5 full-length online tests to help you dip your toe in the water and get a test-day experience in the same computer-based format. Besides, one full-scale test is also included in the book for quick and easy reference. More than that, each online test is followed by a smart report evaluating your performance. This option will help you reveal your strengths and weaknesses, determine the areas that need more attention and training, and, as a result, hone your skills.

The gist of the whole test preparation process is not significantly improving your knowledge level (though you’ll definitely learn some new info) but rather getting the exam-like experience to be well-armed for the real test. And, probably, no resource will help you better than the actual test maker. This is where the GRE Super Pack from ETS will excel.

ETS delivers the only official GRE test prep guide in a bundle of three books. You’ll get a textbook called the Official Guide to GRE and two practice books titled the Official GRE Quantitative Reasoning Practice Questions and Official GRE Verbal Reasoning Practice Questions accordingly. The titles are self-explanatory and give you a clue as to what materials you are going to have. This way, the Educational Testing Service divides theory and practice to help you better organize your study process and easier focus on some specific areas and topics that you feel need more attention and diligence. Besides, such division makes it much easier for the test-takers to digest the information contained in the study guide and memorize some key points.

To have a closer look into each part's content, the Official Guide to GRE is the biggest of the three parts and provides general guidelines and useful details on the test format and each test section. The textbook is clearly organized, so, if you need to find some specific info, be sure, you’ll find it quickly and without a hassle. The two workbooks are smaller in volume and closely focused on practice questions, both quantitative and vocabulary. You’ll get over 600 real test practice questions to brush up on your knowledge, check your educational level and significantly raise it by boning up on those practice books.

There is a whole lot of GRE-related information floating around the Internet, from more or less valuable prep materials offered by GRE prep course providers to some dubious instructions and recommendations given by those who have already taken the test. It is easy to get confused and buy an abundance of materials that won’t help you achieve the desired result in the end. If you seek clear advice on the GRE test with expert recommendations and need a simple and comprehensible prep guide, we strongly recommend turning your eyes to the Magoosh prep book.

Magoosh is a reputed provider of online test preparation courses, perfectly covering GRE topics and questions. In the book (also available in the Kindle format), they managed to combine the best of their online program with valuable test-taking recommendations from their top experts. On 468 pages, they provide GRE overview from top to bottom with thorough discussions on each test section. Thus, in the first two chapters, the book will introduce you to GRE basics and then will proceed with in-depth analysis on test sections from quantitative reasoning to analytical writing to give you insight into the kind of questions you are going to face during the real exam.

Many GRE applicants often fail to duly prepare for the test since they can’t plan their studies in a proper way to embrace all knowledge areas and touch up on the necessary skills. The Magoosh prep book really shines in this aspect. It provides a detailed study schedule for the month and even gives you free access to many online resources to engage other helpful Magoosh products in the preparation process. Even more, you can also access other study plans for a quick prep or extensive GRE training with day-by-day schedules.

One more advantage of this book we can’t overlook is its considerably lower price as compared to other similar prep books that makes the Magoosh a fairly affordable GRE prep guide.

While many GRE applicants seek ways and methods to master GRE strategies and approaches, the basic skills should not be overlooked as well. And a good command of language is one of the must-have skills for acing the GRE test. GRE vocabulary goes far beyond words and phrases you use in your everyday speech. It’s much more challenging and aims to check your ability to express your thoughts in a more exquisite way and juggle words depending on their contextual meaning. Seek to strengthen your verbal skills and enlarge your word stock with GRE words? This is where the Barron’s Essential Word for the GRE will come into play.

Right off the bat, it is not the habitual complete GRE study guide many other companies offer. It is a specific workbook designed to help you learn more words and worked out by Philip Geer, an experienced language educator and GRE tutor who helped numerous students to enhance their writing skills and improve their verbal scores. The author knows everything about GRE vocabulary. So, he selected 800 college and graduate-level words that most frequently occur in GRE tests and provided their deep analysis and usage profiles.

Considering the fact that they are rather advanced words, the list of 800 words might seem overwhelming. Yet, first, you don’t have to bone up on them all and secondly, the whole list comes accurately organized to help you better memorize the meanings of the words. The author did a great job of breaking the total number of words into 10-word units, each followed by fine-grained definitions and fill-in-the-blank exercises. Not only does this approach make studying easier and stress-free but also it allows you to see how words function in different contexts.

In addition to word explanations and sample sentences, the book contains a comprehensive root section that analyzes the word roots and teaches you how to decipher the meaning of unknown words by breaking them into parts and defining their roots.

Are you well-versed on GRE and already know your weak points? Are you looking to fill in your knowledge gaps via extensive practice? If so, the Manhattan Book of GRE Practice Problems will get you covered.

Though the book has no theoretical wrap up on the general test, it provides tons of practice questions, quizzes, and drills on each exam section. It’s a heavy-weight practice tool in every sense as you’ll get a 1000-page volume that weighs about 5 lbs. Yet, for those who need to hone their skills and polish their knowledge to perfection, the book offers by far the largest collection of GRE-like questions and tasks.

Once you hold this giant in your hands, it might seem you will get lost on those endless pages. However, despite an impressively large volume, the book is thoughtfully systematized and conveniently structured, so, you will easily find the material you need to focus on. All in all, the Manhattan Prep Guide comprises about 1800 realistic practice problems. But don’t let this daunting number muddle you up. All that array of data is neatly organized into 33 chapters grouped by similar problems, such as sentence equivalence, reading comprehensions, ratios, etc. All questions mirror real GRE questions and are sorted by the difficulty level, test section, and skill. The book provides from 30 to 50 practical problems on each topic to help you feel the differences and nuances between various types of tasks. Via practice, you’ll build and strengthen your verbal and quant skills. Meanwhile, thorough analysis and answer explanations given after each question will help you learn how to apply those skills on the test day.

In addition to all sorts of practical study materials, the Manhattan prep book will give you a chance to check your verbal and math skills. By taking verbal and math diagnostic tests, you will see your potential GRE score as well as the weak areas that need more focus.