I found these cards to be helpful in beefing up my vocabulary for the GRE verbal section. Most of the reading I do is technical so I'm not generally exposed to a number of the words that appear on these study cards. I found that the words Kaplan chose appeared fairly frequently on the actual GRE test I took (well as frequently as one could hope for anyway).... and the definitions I had studied seemed to be sufficient.

I didn't look at the Barron cards so I can't compare. However, the only thing I wanted to point out is that if you want to carry these cards around to study in between appointments etc. it's sort of annoying not having the cards binded. If you don't keep a rubberband around the box or something like that, it's a mess.

Best of luck on the test!

This helps significantly!!!! This was the second time taking the test and it improved my scores!!!! I swear by these cards. Memorize them!!

I bought this box of vocab words after taking the GRE and not being happy with my scores. The verbal section is tricky because how well you do is highly dependent on your vocabulary level. Over the course of 2 months, I learned all 500 words in that box by walking around with a few of the flashcards at a time in my pocket and testing myself during free moments. By learning the words and doing countless practice exams and questions, I raised my verbal score from 540 from 710.

The cards themselves are fairly small and slightly flimsy, but I liked them that way because they were easy to carry around. The front of the card has the word, part of speech, and pronunciation; the back has a succinct definition, a sample sentence, and synonyms. The words I learned were very representative of the vocabulary on the GRE--I saw a dozen or so on the exam I just took.

Bottom line: Only buy these cards if you have the self-discipline to use them, but if you do use them, you will definitely raise your score.

It is a good product and it has helped me learn many tricky words easily

I purchased both these and the Baron's GRE cards, studied each religiously for about 3 weeks, and took my test. I much preferred the Barron's cards to these. The cards are flimsy and, while the words are hard, the ones that actually appeared on my test were the ones that both Kaplan and Barron covered. I also preferred the definitions and format of the Barron's cards. More of the synonyms/antonyms on the Barron's cards also appeared on the actual test and one part of the analogy did too.

These Kaplan cards are good to get if you have plenty of time, but the words were needlessly difficult and might serve more to make you paranoid.