Useful for studying. Works best when used alongwith a Phone/PDA software
The flash cards help a lot since they are quite effective in learning. However, they are somewhat of a pain to carry. Also consider using GRE Tough Words (...) which works on almost all cellphones and does the same in a much more convenient form factor and can be used whenever you have a few spare minutes.
Highly applicable words
This set of 750 vocabulary cards is the best of its kind. The words are high-frequency GRE words. You can also order additional sets (with more advanced words) through the phone number (888) 547-8125 from River City Publishing, which is not affiliated with PowersPrep.com
Word list not very recent
These cards are designed pretty well. Definiations are well written and easy to follow. Every word has a sample sentence along with the definition, which is very helpful.
However, the word list is out of date. I did not see any of the words on the GRE Verbal.
Definitely worth the money!
At first I was suspicious of these cards because they weren't developed by one of the major test prep companies like Kaplan or Princeton Review. However, my fears were quickly allayed. These flash cards complemented the "Top GRE Word Lists" put out by Kaplan and others in that they contained most of the same words as well as others that have shown up on past GREs.
Each flash card has a word, its definition, its pronunciation, and a sentence using the word. Definitions are concise, but contain enough information about each word in order to answer the GRE questions.
One reservation I have about these cards is the pronunciation key. For some reason, the Easy-Prep Development Team decided to create their own pronunciation key instead of using the one found in dictionaries. This lead to some very laughable pronunciations (e.g., the suggested pronunciation for promenade is "pro mi NAWD", for salutary is "sal yuh TARE ee"). I guess the card developers are from Texas. Another problem was that many of the sentences seemed unnatural and did not, in my opinion, use the target word in the correct context.
Despite these issues, I highly recommend these cards. There are three other sets that can be ordered from the publisher. I studied the the words in sets 1 through 3 and scored 740 on the GRE Verbal. Almost all of the vocabulary questions contained words from these cards.
Card Set Vocabulary
The set is great but in order to use this card set to the maximum benefit, first learn the 200-300 most frequent words used in the GRE. A list of these words can be found in books published by Kaplan, Barron's, or Princeton Review. Learning these words first will provide a good base to get started and they do appear often. Most of these words are found in Set 1 and 2. However, the definitions on these card sets can be a bit wordy and trying to memorize the definitions verbatim can sometimes be tedious. For a excellent GRE vocabulary, make sure you already know the most frequent SAT vocabulary and buy Set 2! Good luck!
