Colleges and Departments Books

This book is fine for providing practice questions but hopeless for teaching techniques on how to answer questions.

For example, this is the entire explanation it provides for how to multiply fractions:

10/9 x 3/4 x 8/15

first reduce (cancel) diagonally and vertically:

2/3 x 1/1 x 2/3

then multiply numerators together and denominators together:

2x1x2/3x1x3 = 4/9

Of course it provides no explanation how it got to 2/3 x 1/1 x 2/3, "how" to reduce diagonally and vertically, or even what that means.

A terrible book if you need to learn concepts rather than just practice them

BE WARNED THIS BOOK IS NOT COMPRHENSIVE IT DOES NOT CONTAIN EVERYTING YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR THE MATH. I went throught this book thinking im good with math, but when i opened the kaplan premier program (another study guide book I bought)to my surprise there was a whole new section of math that the workbook did not cover such as standard deviation,compound interest, simple interest, permutations, combinations,weight average,new average with deletion,orginal average to find what what has been deleted,sequence. Thse are just a few things not covered in the math workbook.

This one is just, excellent, may I say GRE maths for dummies!!!, having trouble with quantitative section...this is for you

I strongly feel that some of the reviews of this book posted here are too harsh. Judging from a few of the comments, it seems that some might expect this to prepare them for the GRE Math Subject Test - which is very different from this book's intention, which is to prepare one for the math section of the General Test. The level of difficulty of the problems is not too hard - if you're looking to score a 800, this may not be the book for you - but it's perfect for those of us struggling to get over the 650 mark. The practice problems, for the most part, realistically resemble what one might encounter on the acutal test, and there are only a few GRE-tested math subjects that don't appear in this book. In just over a week of studying primarily with this book, I went from practice tests in the mid-600's range to a 720 on the actual test, so it definitely seemed to be a good investment.

If you're looking for a book to prep you for the quantitative section of the GRE, this workbook by Kaplan is not a comprehensive prep book. I personally found Barron's to be the best guide in helping me with the Math section of the GRE. I bought this book thinking it would a good practice book, but I found it to be average and the practice questions are much easier than the questions I found on the actual GRE.

I bought this book while searching for a distance graduate degree in Biology. The book indicated that there was one University that offered such. However after contacting that University, I found that there was no such offering, nor had there ever been.

Though it seems that there are plenty of other schools to choose from in other subject areas.

This book appeared to review a random sample of programs. It did not even include two programs from leading Universitites that I already knew about. The book was worse than worthless.

Did the authors realize that over 80% of the Colleges they put in this book require some "on-campus" requirements? Suppose I live in New Jersey and attend a school in California,and I'm required to be on-campus 2 times a year for a week each time, HOW is that considered "Without leaving home" ? Some Schools in THIS VERY BOOK require students to attend weekend seminars 3 to 4 times a year!!! Can Somebody do us all a favor and recommend a book that has Distance Education with "100% NO ON-CAMPUS requirements" ? Please Change the TITLE of the Book. Going from Maine to Arizona DOES indeed require travel.

I was led to this book as a subscriber of the free Virtual University Gazette. The Gazette is published online each month by Vicky Phillips, and lists new distance learning programs as they come online each month. By combining this book and the free listings in the Gazette I got the most accurate idea of where to attend graduate school online. See the Gazette at http://www.geteducated.com. The book and the Gazette are a god-send. Unlike other guides this one only lists a) accredited degree programs; b) programs that truly can be completed from the comfort of your home.

I was going crazy with all the hype I'd read online about distance learning. Bought 3 books to determine where and how I could earn a master's in human services. Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools is the book I found the most useful and accurate. Returned Peterson's Guide and Bear's book. I especially liked the introductory chapters on how to design your own degree and accreditation. Phillips and Yager are real pros.

This book was not as helpful as I expected.

This guide to graduate business schools is barely more than a list of statistics for each school. If that's what you're looking for, nearly all these statistics can be found on the schools' websites.
Most of the data is prefaced by "In a recent year", so a lot of the time you don't even know what year Barron's is talking about. It offers the barest description of programs and doesn't analyze them at all. Why are certain programs better than others? It really doesn't say.
Unlike many undergraduate guides which give you an idea about the quality of life, quality of academics, and quality of social life, this book leaves you with nothing more than statistics, and no way to judge each school. That is, unless you know you want to attend a school where "in a recent year" most graduating students were placed into jobs immediately (which are nearly all the schools listed) and make your decision based on that.
Additionally, the book is filled with the teeniest tiniest business schools whose graduate enrollment, I'm not kidding, include 2 men and 2 women. These entries take up space which could be better dedicated to a more in depth look at schools that you're more likely to attend.
Overall, I don't think this book helped me narrow down my choices at all, because it's a whole lot of statistics and no real analysis of the schools or programs. However, if you're looking for an exhaustive list of every single MBA program in the U.S., this would be it.

If you are certain that you have no interest in studying outside the U.S. or Canada, then this book provides a good amount of information on the business schools on which you will be focusing. It also provides a nice summary table of these schools as well as a short section dedicated to the GMAT exam. This is the perfect book if you need to narrow down or even just select the business schools in which you may be interested. It can be particularly useful in assuring you don't accidentally overlook a program for which you are well suited. The financial aid section is also pretty helpful. Beware that, if you are applying to a competitive business school, you will want to do additional research for your "Why I want to attend your business school" essay beyond what is covered in this book.

Barron's collectively assembles the information you are looking for in an easy-to-read format that makes the scary idea of going to business school a little less intimidating. The book breaks down each school, discussing the programs available, admissions info and general data regarding the campuses.

The Barron's Guide also has a helpful section on financial aid and what programs various schools excel in. The Barron academic profiles are comprehensive and are sure to help an prospective student in making a decision that is sure to be one of the biggest of their lives!

I am not reading this book, I am just solving the problems and the practice tests, preparing for the GRE and I find this book is really annoying, because instead of helping me improving my math skills, I found myself improving Peterson's ability of math skills!

The book has many errors and many of them are definitely not printing mistakes, they are mathematically flaws.

I have contacted Peterson's about the errors and they provided me with a page of correction within the site of Peterson's, the page couldn't be opened! It seems that there isn't such a page.

I don't recommend this book to anyone.

I am using this book to study for the GMAT because it was the cheapest one available. But as I'm going through the problems and answers, I am finding a mistake on almost every page - in the problems and the answers. This makes it a little bit difficult for someone who is not very great at math to study and understand the concepts.

After many years in the workforce, I decided to pursue a graduate degree. The most significant hurdle was the GMAT. Writing and language are strengths for me, but for the past 18 years, I've let computers take care of quantitative issues. So, in short order I had to become reacquainted with math concepts long forgotten, and learn how to take a CAT exam and score reasonably well. All of my research led me to one conclusion: it takes more than one study guide to adequately prepare for the GMAT. The course I followed, with an evaluation of each guide, is outlined in the following paragraphs.

For my math review, I selected Peterson's Math Review for GRE, GMAT, and MCAT, 2nd edition. There have been some comments about errors in previous editions, but I found this guide quite helpful, and an excellent refresher on math topics I have not seen in years, but need to know for the GMAT. 4 out of 5.

The GMAT Advantage with Professor Dave was selected because of its readability and the questions. The material is challenging, and the more difficult questions in each category provide a good idea of the difficult questions faced on the GMAT. The verbal chapters are very strong and have excellent examples. The math problems are also very good, but the text assumes that the reader already is familiar with most math topics. This is why I recommend Peterson's MAth Review to compliment this guide. Overall 4 out of 5, with a solid 5 for the verbal sections.

The Official Guide for GMAT is the best resource for practice questions. 1400 questions are in this guide, and the last 1/3 in each section represent some difficult concepts that will be tested. This book gets the reader prepared for the real questions that will be seen on the exam. In addition, the question writers provide excellent explanations for the solutions, and reveal some elegantly simple ways to solve math problems that at first appear to be very labor intensive. 4 out of 5. (Also, be sure to take the 2 free CAT tests available online from GMAC. These prepare the user well for the GMAT experience.)

Finally, I also used the Princeton Review Crash Course for GMAT. I used this as a final review and to gain some additional pointers and time savers. While brief, this book does provide excellent quick reference tips for all question types that will be seen on the test. The idiom list and formulas are worth the price alone. 4 out of 5.

I prepared over an 8 week period, with at least 1 hour of review per day, and more often it was 2 to 4 hours. Regular, consistent preparation, using different references that fit your style of learning will prepare you for this rigorous test. Prepare thoroughly with relentless repetition, and take the test. After 18 years out of school, I scored a 690.

Good luck.

Since I aced the Quantitative section of the GRE, I feel compelled to convey to the World my most sincere gratitude to the makers of this book. This book comprehensively covers most of the aspects of the Quantitative Section of the GRE and greatly helps tp develop that keen sense of grasping the fundamentals of the subject which enables efficacious learning. Less than 8 weeks for the GRe get this book practice it and SCORE HIGH ON THE QUANTITATIVE SECTION.

I recieved this book in a timely manner without any of the run around of other sellers.

I did not like this guide for several reasons.

I bought it after the admissions process was finished and it was confirmed that I was headed to grad school.

The chapters do not give any information that is not readily found in other, better books (such as "Getting What You Came For") or on the Internet. I read a LOT of graduate school guides before, during, and after applying to grad school and all of them offered something new, except for this one. Unless you are a grand newbie to the whole thing, it's certainly not worth it and it doesn't offer a fresh look or anything like that.

Second, I was surprised that the book was by an African American because it took a stereotypical view of the middle-class black American: a devoted Christian, with strong family ties, etc. Constantly through the book it was suggested that readers turn to God or their church in order to cope with problems in grad school. I am not religious and I know a lot of black Americans who also are not, especially most of the black American grad students I know, so this confused me. Also, the book seemed aimed at an older demographic, like people who were returning to graduate school after having earned their bachelor's earlier in life and perhaps had careers, family, and other concerns. It didn't appeal to this 22-year-old going straight from undergrad.

Finally, I was a bit astonished by the lack of a fresh perspective (that of a black American) on the problems of graduate school, especially since that is the premise of the book. This could just have easily been "The African American Student's Guide to Surviving Life" or something else generic. Most of the fixes, as I remember them, were just general stress-handling techniques and not tailored to the experiences of graduate students, and there were very few anecdotes about the experiences of black graduate students who felt isolated or mistreated because of their race. There was NO mention of black American grad students who may have intersecting oppressions, like the special issues of black women, black LGBT persons, black disabled persons, poor black persons, etc.

Basically, I don't recommend. The problem is that there really isn't a good book out on the market that addresses the issues of black people (or people of color, or minorities in general) in graduate school. I guess as our numbers rise we may encounter more as more are spurred to write them.

I found this book to be insightful, helpful, and downright funny. Isaac does a wonderful job of integrating needful information on what is needed to succeed in graduate school from entrance until ending - and her advice works. In her book, Isaac mentions that sometimes you are not admitted the first time you apply, but tenacity pays off. I was not admitted to my first school where I was seeking a PhD, but was admitted a year and a half letter after following Isaac's advising of steps on how to making one's application more competetive.

This book really encouraged me. It's an easy read, but worth every penny.

This is a very good reference for those who want to apply to a business school. Besides giving the school profiles, which is very good, its very best part is its categories ranking that includes Academics, Pressure, Social Life, Facilities, among others. Very interenting.

The Best 75 Business School's new edition for 1999 looks at the schools from many perspectives. For more than 15 academic qualities it ranks the top 10 schools. It also ranks the schools from other perspectives. Overall if you look through the different qualities that are important for you, you end up with a list of schools that might fit you best. It also has the regular, information on each school.

Seventy-five schools are covered, each with a two-page overview highlighting basic statistics, comments by students, and informal 'rankings' of the three best and worst things about a particular school. Schools are *not* ranked against each other. There is a bunch of supplemental material describing the application process and some sample 'good' essays. The information is a little dated, but the book does provide a basic starting point.

The overviews tend to follow a basic form and are generally favorable in their description of each school -- these are the 'top 75 business schools,' after all. After reading (and re-reading) the overviews, it became difficult to differentiate between specific schools. This is a problem. A fictional example might be in this form:

-------

Business University's business program established {many years ago} by {insane monk, prominent business person, benevolent megacorporation}. The students describe the curriculum as 'rigorous, but fair.' The school receives high marks for its {campus, location, diversity, team spirit, student friendliness}, but students feel {MIS, parking, career placement, professors in core classes} could use improvement.

Several students remarked 'the faculty is excellent and professors can walk and chew gum at the same time.' However, some disagree, 'not all of the professors are great gum chewers.'

The first year students take core classes in accounting, finance, marketing, and gum chewing. Second year students can select from {a lot of really cool} electives.

The admissions committee considers {GPA, GMAT, essays, recommendations, prior work experience, credit worthiness, and quality of penmanship} all equally. 'We want a student with strong {academics, leadership potential, likelihood of donating, well-roundedness} [...]

-------

Because the format has anonymous comments and does not provide any sense of the scale or number of people with a particular opinion about the school, the two-page summaries ultimately come across as wishy-washy.

The student surveys add some color, but they, too, have flaws. For example, Dartmouth appears at the top of almost all of the 'good' attributes for each school (e.g., 'great professors' 'strong marketing' 'strong teamwork'). I'm sure there are a lot of happy people there, but I couldn't help but wonder if proud students were sandbagging the surveys to pump up their school.

Finally, any book like this is only a snapshot of the school. What ultimately should guide your decision is whether the program and the environment meet your needs. You should definitely sit in on classes and visit campus. s and visit campus.

This is an excellent book for trying to understand the problems between Ireland and England. Also the problems between fellow Irishmen: Prostestants and Catholics.

On the face of it, Marcus Tanner's history of Ireland's religious conflicts looks impressive. Although Tanner is an English journalist, his book is published by a leading university press, it possesses 39 pages of notes to 431 of text, and its bibliography contains many primary sources as well as considerable research among eccelesiatical journals and centuries old books. Tanner's thesis, according to the cover is that "the roots of the Irish conflict are profoundly and inescapably religious," the consequences of England's failed attempt to turn Ireland into a Protestant country.

A closer look reveals some problems. Tanner has written a history of Ireland while ignoring most of the leading historians of the subject. Marianne Elliot goes unmentioned, as does everyone's favorite trio of anti-nationalist Marxists, Paul Bew, Henry Patterson and Peter Gibbon. Nicholas Canny gets only a couple of articles, as does Kevin Whelan. One of the leading concepts in Irish ecclesiastical history, "the denominational revolution" goes completely unnoticed, and so does Emmett Larkin. John Whyte's nuanced history of church-state relations in independent Ireland is nowhere to be found. Donal Kerr's recent book on the Catholic Church and the famine is ignored. The economic historiography of Ireland is also passed over, no mention is made whatsoever of Vaughan, Clark, Moody, O'Grada or Kinealy.

But then that is not surprising, since the economic history of Ireland is also passed over. There is no coherent account of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland or its consequences, outside of its effects on the Catholic church. The Irish potato famine gets only five pages, and mass emigration gets even less, much less than the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1868. In fact the "religious" origins of the struggles is not really coherently presented. In the first few chapters the "Old English" and the Celtic inhabitants are shown to be quite capable of quarrelling despite their common Catholicism. The Catholic hierarchy shows little sympathy to the 1798 rebellion or to Fenianism, and Tanner spends the relatively few pages on the current "Troubles" showing the Protestants and Catholics trying to encourage an ecumenical peace. (The emphasis is on the good will of the Protestant denominations; the role of the Unionist parties, by contrast, isn't even mentioned. On the other hand Tanner views Ireland's political parties as the Catholic Church's willing toadies.)

What we have then is a journalistic effort more eccentric than scholarly. Much of it consists of journalistic anecdotes, such as the appalling state of Irish butter in the 1500s, or illegitimacy among Irish priests, or Machiavellian Anglican bishops. As a history of Irish religion it is curiously old-fashioned. Compared to the sophisticated historiography of the Reformation of such scholars as Christopher Haigh, Ronald Hutton, Gerald Strauss, Eamon Duffy and David Parker, it seems quaint and shallow. Rather than the sophisticated research about what people actually thought, the depth of their Christian convictions, the chimera of popular "paganism", the social role played by Christian institutions and other matters what we get is a history that looks at the bishops and the preachers and assumes the diffusion of their efforts. The last few chapters are particulary unsatisfactory. Gerrymandering in Derry corporation gets only a paragraph, discrimination and the Special Powers Act in Northern Ireland gets even less, but we get several pages on the rather marginal topic of Catholic anti-semitism. The final two chapters exude a shallow complacent attitude of "modernization" sweeping away the dark shadows of Catholicism's influence.

The idea that the Irish conflict is a religious one seems like common sense. Yet there are several major problems with it. For a start if England had not broke with the Church over Henry VIII's divorce, would the subsequent conquest of Ireland have been any nicer? There are other problems. Are the members of Sinn Fein or the Democratic Unionist Party more religious than their compatriots? Not really. Only one Catholic priest has died in the Troubles, one accidentally shot by the English army. Only one Protestant minister has been killed, and he was a leading Unionist politician. Sinn Fein has actually been more liberal on abortion than the Social Democratic and Labor Party. Northern Ireland's urban areas are both more violent and less religious than the rest of the province. In Richard Rose's loyalty survey only 8% of Protestants volunteered that they disliked the Irish Republic because of interference by the Catholic Church. It is not clear that denominational education are encouraging sectarian struggle (they don't in Canada). Tanner does not really discuss any of these matters. Ultimately, this is a book which sheds less light on Ireland than on the limits of journalism.

This history of Irish religion may have trouble finding an audience. Its rather exclusive focus on Irish ecclesiastical history in the past 500 years will not satisfy readers expecting a more general account of Cromwell, King Billy of Orange, the IRA and the rest of the Troubles. Moreover, it apparently is not scholarly enough to placate more learned specialists (see other review, below).

As an intermediate pupil of Irish history, however, I found this an enjoyable read. Tanner, a journalist rather than a professional historian, synopsizes some fairly dense material and keeps it lively. He is a master of the devastating thumbnail sketch. For example, the failure of the reformation in Ireland can be partly attributed to the low quality of the churchmen responsible for its implementation, such as the disagreeable, mediocre, corpulent English Archbishop of Dublin, Browne, and the slippery Irish Bishop of Cashel, Miler Magrath, who became rich from embezzlement and confiscation, and was "little better than a gangster who galloped about his diocese in armour, preceded by outriders and a man carrying a skull on a tall pole."

Writing about the evangelizing Protestants during the Famine who were accused of "souperism," or buying converts with food, Tanner cites one obtuse clergyman who defended himself by boasting that not one penny of his funds had been wasted on famine relief. He became exalted preaching to one group of "living skeletons" in Connemara, who in all probability would soon become first-hand witnesses to the glory of God that he described (Tanner puts this better, but I don't have the book in front of me).

The Catholic Church as well comes in for some well-deserved roasting, particularly those monumentally arrogant princes of the church who dominated the political life of the Republic until toppled by the sex scandals of the 1990s, exemplified by Archbishop Croke, an "oriental pasha" who made and unmade Parnell and other politicians.

Some of Tanner's choices are indeed eccentric (why does the chapter on the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869 precede the chapter on Daniel O'Connell and his agitating priests of the 1820s?), and a few errors creep in (the patrician, peripatetic William O'Connell at one point is assigned to New York, when of course "Gangplank Bill" was Cardinal of Boston).

As well, Tanner doesn't give enough credit to the churchmen, North and South, who played a crucial role in finally ending the Troubles (see last year's Secret History of the IRA), ironically when both Catholicism and Protestantism are dwindling in importance in a secular modern Ireland. (Archbishop Croke and de Valera would fulminate to see the girls of Dublin today in their miniskirts and platform shoes tottering about the discos of Temple Bar.)

I used it to study for the mathematics CLEP and there were many typos in the questions; the detailed answers showed a slightly different question than the problem. This was very frustrating.

I bought a number of CLEP books and thought this one was one of the better ones. It is extremely comprehensive and covers alot of ground.

My primary complaint about this book is that much of the information is out of date. For instance, schools' tuition costs are often significantly different than those directly stated on their websites. Some of the information about the culture is helpful, but could easily be discerned from reading information about schools online or perhaps in other books. A lot of the other information is intuitive or so cursory to be useless.

Better to look at information on the Business Week B-School website or other internet resources or just go to the bookstore and simply glance at the schools you're considering. Absolutely not worth owning.

Helpful book in the first process of deciding on a business school. Give a lot of good content in relation to academics, admissions, and cost. Also, the book helps to simply compare schools that you're interested in. I'd recommend it.

Are you a beginning graduate student who is a bit overwhelmed? This is a great book for you! This book contains great advice about how to balance a busy home and work life with the demands of graduate school, as well as practical tips about how to complete all the major components of graduate school programs. The author takes a very realistic approach, too. This is a useful tool!

This book provides generic advice about graduate school, from the decision to pursue an advanced degree to choosing your committee and writing your thesis. However, the book is only 130 pages... quite small for its hefty price tag. Most of the advice also seems obvious, such as getting to know professors on your committee, and the reminders that graduate school is difficult and life-changing hardly help one feel more at ease.