Essential Words for the GRE (Barron's Essential Words for the GRE)
ISBN:9780764135644 read summary

I really liked this book. It is very well organized and the practice excercises after each unit really helps you to memorize the words. I just gave my gre and i got much better results than last time. Its a must for people who are weak in vocab! :)

This book was extremely helpful for preparing me for the verbal section on the GRE. The best way to do well on that section is to have a big vocabulary. The words in this book are pulled from many actual GRE tests, and I definitely saw a few of them on the test. I scored in the 95th percentile on the verbal section, and this book helped me achieve that. It has a whole section on roots that is quite beneficial, as well as a fairly comprehensive list of words (make sure you use other books in conjunction with this one. Learn words everywhere you can.) It also has effective methods of helping the reader to really memorize the words. As I said, it's best to use other books along with this one. Essential Words for the GRE is just what the title states- it's a great way to familiarize yourself with a lot of words. But you will need other books to learn about specific test questions. I used the Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE and GRE for Dummies, both of which were really helpful for all three sections.
This book is a must if you want to build your vocabulary.

With this book and Princeton Review "Cracking the GRE" you wont have problem getting a good grade.

I learned quite a few really good words with this book (e.g. labile). The words in this book aren't so easy or basic that you're not going to learn anything new, but they're also not so esoteric and random that you'll never see them again. I'm very pleased with this book's content.

That said, I find it really annoying that most words are given without their pronunciations. Perhaps because the GRE doesn't require you to speak the words Barron's doesn't think the pronunciations matter?

I'm currently studying for the GRE and this book provides a lot of good words in an easy-to-digest format. The little quizzes at the end of each section are really helpful. My main complaint is that there are no pronunciations for the words. For most words this isn't an issue, but it's a pain to have to look up a word in a dictionary to figure out how to say it. But overall, this is a good book for building vocab in a relatively short period of time.