GRE book reviews for: Physics: A Student Companion by Lowry Kirkby

[Helmholtz]

GRE book reviews for: "Physics: A Student Companion" by Lowry Kirkby

Hey Everyone,

First off I know you don't put book titles in quotes, but it makes the formatting more comprehensible. You can skip my sob story and read the last paragraph for the main gist of this post.

My Background: I just registered late for the PGRE this April and I have done no studying yet. I'm going to try and do as much as possible before the test, but I'm taking an overload this semester in exclusively 400 level (upper division) math/physics/astronomy courses, so we'll see how that goes (point being time is limited and I will want to use only books worthwhile).

I have taken one practice GRE and got ~50% of the questions right, being cold without any review of materials I took 1-2 years ago (EM & classical mech mostly). It was kind of disheartening since I thought I knew a solid 80% of them. It is really apparent I will need to review all the topics, but I really hate notes. I do not keep notes over the years because they are always useless and I am personally infinitely better off skimming a textbook than looking at notes.


MAIN POINT: I saw a self promoted book by Lowry Kirkby and heard a few good reviews. It is pretty new so there isn't much out on the book, but if any of you have read it and have any input that would be great. If you had any other suggestion that'd be great too.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Lavabug]

I borrowed it from my library when I was 3-4 weeks away from the pgre. Honestly didn't find it very helpful for the exam, I thumbed through 80-90% of it basically nodding, nothing you don't already know if you're getting 50% cold nor does it have any special tricks that will enable you to gain speed. It's also missing some important PGRE subjects.

Studying from the exams is better, especially the most recent. Learn all the tricks that enable you to solve problems faster and you'll be better off.

This book is pretty decent for its purpose, but kind of expensive:
http://www.physicsgreprep.com/book.html
You can buy the chapters individually.