If you’re preparing for the GRE, you must have heard of The Official Guide to the GRE General Test. It is the most authoritative book for the GRE as it comes directly from the test-makers. It contains authentic exam questions from actual past GRE tests. You can get it from the ETS’s online store or buy it for much cheaper on Amazon.

Like any GRE prep book, the ETS official guide has a few weaknesses – although its benefits far outweigh its shortcomings. When it comes to practice questions, there is nothing better than what this book has to offer.

However, this book might not be the complete package if you are returning to studies after a long pause or have fundamental issues regarding Math and Verbal concepts. Regardless, this book is a must if you want to practice real GRE questions.

Let’s take a look at the book contents first.

What’s in the Official Guide to the GRE General Test?

The book has Nine Chapters, which are as follows:

Chapter One: About the GRE revised General Test

This chapter gives you a complete review of the structure of the GRE Quantitative Reasoning section, test-taking strategies, and scoring.

Chapter Two: GRE Analytical Writing

This chapter gives you an in-depth review of the two types of Analytical Writing (AWA) tasks that appear on the exam. It contains one sample essay for the Issue Essay and one sample essay for the Argumentative Essay.

Chapter Three: GRE Verbal Reasoning

This chapter gives an overview of the three types of GRE Verbal questions. It also provides high-level tips for solving these questions. This Chapter contains around 8 sample questions (with detailed explanations) that show the application of those strategies.

Chapter Four: GRE Verbal Reasoning Practice Questions

This Chapter contains 51 Verbal Practice questions, along with detailed explanations. These 51 questions are broken down by the level of difficulty; easy, medium, and hard.

Chapter Five: GRE Quantitative Reasoning

This chapter elaborates on the four types of Quantitative Reasoning questions. It also provides strategies to solve each question type and 23 examples (with explanations) to demonstrate the exam application of those tips. The test-makers will also show you how to use the GRE on-screen calculator effectively.

Chapter Six: GRE Quantitative Reasoning Practice Questions

This Chapter contains 50 Quantitative Practice questions, along with detailed explanations. These 50 questions are broken down by the level of difficulty; easy, medium, and hard.

Chapter Seven: GRE Math Review

This Chapter provides you with a complete review of all the math topics tested on the GRE. In other words, it tells you what content to expect on the GRE Math section. The concepts are broken into four areas; Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, and Data Analysis. Each area is accompanied by easy questions that will give you some practice in building the fundamental Math concepts. This Chapter contains nearly 70 practice questions. However, these questions do not have any detailed explanations, and their difficulty level is elementary.

Chapter Eight and Nine: GRE Practice Test 1 and 2

These chapters contain two full-length practice tests. However, these model tests do not mimic the exact structure of the GRE. They do not have an experimental section. Also, they contain five more questions per section than the actual GRE. So, while they do provide good practice, do not take them as a reflection of the real exam structure.

How Many Questions Does the Official Guide to the GRE General Test Contain?

The Official Guide to the GRE General Test contains over 350 questions: 200+ Math and 150+ Verbal questions.

Official Guide to the GRE General Test Review

Pros

Most Authentic Questions

This book comes directly from the creators of the GRE. Therefore, as expected, it perfectly mirrors the actual exam. The difficulty level and the breadth of topics tested are entirely reflective of what you’ll see on the exam day. It consists of nearly 150 Verbal and 200 Quantitative questions – sufficient practice to give you a thorough insight into the exam.

I would say that the questions on the verbal section are premium quality. Many other publishers, such as Manhattan and Magoosh, mimic the style of the GRE reading passages. However, no publisher can correctly copy the form of the questions that accompany these passages. ETS questions have options that are so close to one another that they all seem correct – this is something that you can only find in the official guide questions and nowhere else.

Questions Are Phrased the ETS Style

Most of the GRE questions are tricky because their wordings are not so straightforward. For example, instead of asking whether zero is an even or an odd number, ETS will ask something like: 

How many digits exist between the decimal point and the first even digit after the decimal point in 0.01374928? 

GRE has this habit of making a question look harder than it is by convoluting the wordings. In this book, you will get ample practice on getting used to this wordplay by GRE. Here is an example of how ETS phrases GRE questions:

Classifies the Questions into Levels

Another good thing about this book is that it splits up the questions into Easy, Medium, and Hard Level of Difficulty. This provides additional insight to you, and you know what level of questions you got right or wrong. Also, if you are not very proficient yet, you can initially focus on the easy and medium questions and do the harder ones later when you feel confident in tackling them. Here is an example of how ETS classifies questions into different levels:

In-depth Chapters on AWA section

This book provides a dedicated chapter in the essay writing section. This Chapter contains official sample essays that are accompanied by actual ETS examiner commentary and scoring guide. This will give you a clear idea of what a perfect AWA essay should be like and how does ETS grades these essays. ETS’s grading criteria are elaborate and self-explanatory, and you can use the sample essay responses to perfect your essays. 6 sample responses accompany each essay, and examiner feedback, scored from 1 to 6. Simply follow the advice in this Chapter, and you will score 6 out of 6.

Cons

Explanations Can be Inaccessible

ETS has designed this book to show you what the actual exam is like. Their job is not to teach you how to solve the exam. This is why ETS does not write explanations accessible to the average test taker. Sometimes they are presumptive that the student already knows certain concepts.

The explanations in the verbal section are incredibly lacking. ETS will only discuss why a particular answer is correct, but it won’t go in-depth in justifying why another similar option is wrong. Hence, you might need a tutor or a proficient friend who can help you explain specific questions. Here is an example of such an issue:

A Disconnect Between the Math Review and the Questions

Again, this is an issue for someone who is dusting off old, unused math skills. The Math review and its examples are too basic and easy to understand. Even with a non-math background, you will fly through it with ease, thinking that GRE is so easy. But when you come to the practice questions and their explanations, you will most likely be unable to grasp the techniques used to explain the problems. Therefore, my suggestion would be to first build strong expertise in the concepts and tricks of the exam. You can use YouTube videos, Magoosh Videos, and Manhattan books to do that. Then use this book for practice problems.

No Vocabulary Lists

ETS official material does not provide any vocabulary lists for you to memorize. To prepare for vocab, you will have to consult third-party books such as Barron’s, Manhattan, and Magoosh, which give you lists of words that are the most likely to show up on the GRE. However, ETS does use a lot of vocabulary words in their questions throughout the official guide. You can create your list by extracting all of those words manually. This will take time, but it’s worth it.

Should You Buy the Official ETS Guide?

The ETS official guide is indispensable if you are serious about scoring in the 90th percentile on the GRE. Of course, ETS alone cannot guarantee you an excellent exam score. However, nothing can replace the ETS official preparation material. Therefore, I would highly recommend consulting the ETS books for getting solid practice on GRE questions. No other test prep provider can provide anything equal in value (in terms of practice) to what ETS provides through these guides. Still, you must use third-party resources to help you get adept with the concepts, technicalities, and short-cuts for the GRE.

How to Effectively Use the Official Guide to the GRE General Test?

You should first do Chapters 1, 3, 5, and 7 since they provide all the essential Math and Verbal test-taking tips and concepts. Make sure that you solve all the questions in these Chapters. You must thoroughly go through every sample question given in these chapters. After that, you can then answer all the practice questions in Chapters 4 and 6. 

Revision is key to effective GRE prep. Make sure that you review all of your mistakes – make an error log and keep track of the questions you got wrong. Then keep revising those questions from time to time so that you don’t make the same errors again. You can also consult other books and sources to improve the areas that you are tracking in your error log.

Using the error log, you should also track those questions that you got right, but that took you a long time to solve. You must look at the official ETS explanations for all the questions, whether you got them right or wrong. By doing so, you can learn any new methodologies and improve any inefficiencies in your existing methods.

After revising and addressing all of your issues, solve the two practice tests given in Chapters 8 and 9. I would strongly recommend that you time these two tests. Ideally, you should take both of these exams before you begin the computer-based GRE mock exams. Again, update your error log with any mistakes you made in these practice tests so that you can review them before your exam.

I would also suggest that you supplement this book with the two ETS official Quantitative and Verbal guides. The two guides contain freshly updated and more recent questions than the Official Guide to the GRE General Test. These three books are must-have because they give you a very good idea of the range of questions you are likely to encounter on exam day.

You can also buy these three official guides as a bundle for much cheaper on Amazon.

*Note: Most of the content in Chapters 1, 3, 5, and 7 is available for FREE on the ETS website. Also, some of the practice questions are available for free as well. However, the two practice tests and a lot of practice questions are only available in this GRE official guide.