Princeton Review’s “Cracking the GRE Mathematics Subject Test” is a strategy-focused GRE guide that provides preparation and test-taking strategies meant to pace-up your speed and improve accuracy.

You can think of this book as a crash course for GRE math subject test. It doesn’t bore you with unwanted details and at the same time doesn’t leave anything out either.

The book starts with a preface that talks about ETS and GRE subject test briefly. I was a little disappointed that the book doesn’t have a proper introduction regarding the GRE subject test such as the scoring system, time duration, dos, and don’ts, etc.

As for the contents, there are a total of 10 chapters in the book, and each chapter covers a math topic. For example, the first eight chapters correspond to topics ranging from Pre-calculus to graph theory. The last three chapters provide solutions to the chapter review questions and practice test.

Each chapter begins by explaining the core concepts and takes you through all the sub-topics relevant to the chapter. At the end of a chapter, you will find review questions with detailed answer explanations at the end of the book.

Two fundamental problems are apparent in the book. Firstly, some spelling errors and typos take away from the learning experience, and the book just seems low quality. Secondly, the practice questions are a tad easier than what you will find on the actual GRE Math subject test. As with many other books, this seems to be a common issue where the practice questions are a bit off from the real GRE.

However, I will say that if you are more concerned about learning the various GRE math concepts then this guide will be useful for you. I found the individual chapters to be detailed, and the explanations were easy to understand. Still, the previously mentioned typos and spelling mistakes do make a dent in the readability factor.

Moreover, the lessons start from scratch, so you wouldn’t have to search online or elsewhere about specific topics if you are a beginner.

Pros

Detailed and Beginner Friendly lessons

One thing that stands about this book is the level of detail that has gone into the lessons. Each topic and sub-topic are taught from scratch, and the examples used are easy to grasp. I am quite confident that anyone who has studied high-school level math at one point can easily teach themselves most if not all the topics in the book.

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Good Strategies and techniques

If you find yourself confused by a particular question at the test time or cannot come up with an answer altogether, then the strategies laid out in this book will surely come in handy. You will learn how to avoid common traps and select a response if you are entirely lost. These strategies are not meant to get you a perfect score, but instead, they are meant to step-in when all else fails hence increasing the chances of answering correctly.

Clear diagrams for three-dimensional coordinate problems

In Calculus II, under Analytic Geometry and other topics involving coordinates, you will find straightforward and easy to grasp three-dimensional diagrams that use various lines and shapes to give the illusion of 3D space. I found these diagrams to help drive the point home.

Cons

Typos and Errors

One of the biggest letdowns for me is the frequent misprinting and spelling errors throughout the book. You would think that a book from such a well-known publisher would be read and reread multiple times to minimize the mistakes, but disappointingly enough, it seems like no effort was put into proofreading. These errors disrupt your flow, and the misprinting even makes it difficult to understand some of the questions and answer explanations.

Practice questions don’t resemble GRE.

The second biggest problem I found with this book is the lack of authentic GRE practice questions. All the questions included in the book are elementary and don’t represent the actual GRE. If you want to get this book for the lessons, make sure you supplement it with ETS official practice questions and full-length practice tests.

Only one full-length Practice Test

Competing companies and even some lesser-known ones offer more full-length practice tests. However, this book only provides one practice test, which is nowhere near enough to provide good practice. All it’s suitable for is to get a sense of the GRE format, and that’s it.

Bottom Line

If you want to learn GRE math subject test concepts from the ground up and would also like to know the various test-taking strategies, then sure, get this book. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for practice. The questions are far from the actual problems you will encounter in GRE, and there is only one full-length practice test. You can use this book as a great learning resource. The lessons are detailed, and the diagrams do an excellent job of representing the concepts visually.