Preface

As a prospective graduate student concerned with professional advancement, you know the importance of using good tools and drawing on solid research. In this Eighteenth Edition of Barron’s GRE, we offer you both.

This revision contains the fruits of our close study of the major changes in the GRE General Tests made public by the Graduate Record Examinations Board. We have scrutinized hundreds of actual GRE questions, traced dozens of GRE reading passages to their sources, analyzed subsets of questions by order of difficulty and question type. We have gone through all the topics in the new analytical writing section, categorizing the actual issues you will encounter on your test and analyzing the argument passages, pinpointing their logical flaws. In the process, we have come up with the following features, which should make this Eighteenth Edition particularly helpful to you:

Typical GRE Questions Analyzed

The Eighteenth Edition takes you step by step through dozens of verbal and mathematical questions that simulate actual GRE questions, showing you how to solve them and how to avoid going wrong.

Testing Tactics

The Eighteenth Edition provides you with dozens of proven, highlighted testing tactics that will help you attack the different types of questions on the GRE.

High-Frequency Word List

The Eighteenth Edition continues to give you an up-to-date 333-word High-Frequency Word List—333 words from abate to zealot that have been shown by computer analysis to occur and recur on actual published GREs—plus Barron’s 3,500-word Master Word List, the college-level vocabulary list for over 40 years.

Comprehensive Mathematics Review

The Eighteenth Edition presents you with extensive mathematical review materials that provide a refresher course for students primarily involved in nonscientific disciplines.

GRE-Modeled Tests

The Eighteenth Edition offers you a full-length Diagnostic Test geared to the current GRE, a diagnostic test that will enable you to pinpoint your areas of weakness right away and concentrate your review on subjects in which you need the most work, plus two additional Model Tests, all with answers completely explained, that in format, difficulty, and content echo today’s GRE.

Computer GRE Update

The Eighteenth Edition introduces you to the computer-based GRE—and, along with the accompanying CD-ROM (optional), explains everything you need to know about the computer-adaptive GRE.

Analytical Writing Update

The Eighteenth Edition also provides you with an introduction to the GRE analytical writing section, familiarizing you with the range of topics covered and giving you helpful hints on how to write clear, cogent essays in no time at all.

This Eighteenth Edition once more upgrades what has long been a standard text. It reflects the contributions of numerous teachers, editors, and coaches, and the dedication of the staff at Barron’s. It also reflects the forensic and rhetorical skills of Lexy Green, Director of Debate at the College Preparatory School, to whom we owe special thanks. We, the authors, are indebted to all these individuals for their ongoing efforts to make this book America’s outstanding GRE study guide.

Timetable for a Typical Computer-Based Graduate Record Examination

Total Testing Time: 2 hours and 30 minutes

Section	Time Allowed	Description
	variable	Tutorial
1	30 minutes	Verbal Ability   6 sentence completion questions   7 analogy questions   8 reading comprehension questions   9 antonym questions
2	45 minutes	Quantitative Ability   14 quantitative comparison questions   10 discrete quantitative (standard multiple-choice) questions   4 data interpretation questions (tables/graphs)
		10-minute break
3	75 minutes    45 minutes    30 minutes	Analytical Writing: 1 essay giving one’s perspective on an issue   Analytical Writing: 1 essay analyzing an argument