Very useful information - GRE Math Subject Test

Forum for the GRE subject test in mathematics.
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mathgre
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Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2008 8:05 pm

Very useful information - GRE Math Subject Test

Post by mathgre » Sat Apr 19, 2008 8:21 pm

Please do answer the following questions as to assist our future forum visitors:

Q1) How much time did you *have to prepare? ANSWER can be in months, or hours per day.

Q2) What was your score? ANSWER can be in a range (i.e. 75-80%)

Q3) How many study aides did you use? ANSWER can be in the number# of books purchased, or college texts used.

Q4) What would be the MOST valuable advise you can offer anyone who plans to take the GRE Mathematics Subject Test? ANSWER can be lengthy, we would appreciate as much as you feel comfortable sharing.

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Thank you for reading my post. This website has served us all very well, but I noticed the above questions were scattered about in the past posts/archives. Your answers can help our visitors plan accordingly, and also your responses to questions #1 through 4 may boost the confidence of other test-takers. Too often we don't allow ourselves enough time to prepare, and fall short of aquiring the necessary materials. Please enjoy this website, as it has helped me. I am not the owner/admin of this website. I just really appreciate good online forums.

mobius70
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2008 1:11 am

GRE Math

Post by mobius70 » Tue May 13, 2008 9:56 am

I know my experience would be very different from what is expected here. Especially for those who are looking at Math GRE for a Phd ahead. But anyways i will put it.

1) I am non-Math major. I am Btech in Civil Engineering from IIT Kanpur, India. I am working with GS. Along with the job, it took me around 5 months. I read topology/abstract algebra for on my own. This part of maths in not covered in engineering generally.

2) Scaled 730; Percentile 73.

3) I used Mary Boas ( that would ring bell for people with Physics background). In addition to this I used Princeton review.

benjiemoe
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2006 2:29 pm

Post by benjiemoe » Wed May 14, 2008 10:45 am

1) I didn't major in mathematics as an undergrad, and was not sufficiently familiar with some of the material on the exam. I retook the exam in april of my first year in graduate school, and improved significantly.

2) As Undergrad: ~ 50th-75th percentile
As Grad: ~ 75+

(If you really want to know the scores, send me a message).

3) From most valuable to least valuable, I recommend the following resources:

Real practice GRE tests:

I could find 3 real tests somewhere or another. By far the most important (and most representative) was the one available for free online. The other two were given before the test was rescaled, and I feel the problems are not nearly as similar to the current test. Nonetheless, all three tests are very useful. One nice thing about these is that ETS includes real data about how students scored on each question, i.e. what percentage of students answered each problem successfully.

Cracking the GRE (Princeton Review):

This book has a very good review of the material overall, although it is notably lacking in some of the more special topics. The GRE however is 50% calculus and this book is excellent for reviewing that. The practice test comes with complete solutions and is very well done. This book is most useful for someone who wants to score at least average, but not sufficient for one who wants to score very high.

All the Mathematics You Missed (But need to know for graduate school), by Thomas Garrity:

This book fills in where princeton review lacks. It has a brief review of a HUGE number of topics and includes references for those who want to go further. A warning however, this book contains many topics that are not at all on the GRE and I advise the reader to carefully examine the syllabus. (This book is also very useful in graduate school for quick reminders).

REA book:

Review is not very useful, but there are six practice tests with complete solutions. The tests are too hard, but it's always helpful to work problems. Also the book has a bunch of errors

Advanced Mathematics Test by Morris Bramson (ARCO):

This book is out of print, but really fun. It contains a whole bunch of problems and solutions that were clearly intended for an older test format (some of the problems have 10 possible choices). These problems are really good for reviewing some of the basic stuff and contain the exact tricks the actual test is likely to have. (really hard to find. try buying a used copy somewhere or taking it out of a library).

4) Despite the rave reviews I've given of the books above, there is no substitute for taking the classes that cover the necessary undergraduate material. This is for a number of reasons: Firstly, you need to know the stuff; the gre tests only a fraction of what you need to know for grad school and certainly you should be able to write proofs in a subject like topology, which is of course absent from the test. Another reason is that taking shortcuts with studying will usually lead to disappointment. There were a whole bunch of subjects I didn't know well when taking the exam at first, and thought it sufficient to simply know what the review books cover, but failed to answer many of the questions on the actual test. So take the classes, and review your textbooks until you are thoroughly convinced you know stuff. Then use the review books simply to brush up and test your proficiency.

Finally, the test is 170 minutes long and there are 66 questions. This means that you need to work pretty fast to finish all the questions (and finish you should). This means you should focus when studying on solving problems quickly, and learning to move on if a particular problem is taking too long (I distinctly recall wasting a HUGE amount of time on a couple of problems). If you know your stuff well at least 50% of the problems require simply knowing simple things (e.g. rank+nullity theorem) and can be answered in a matter of seconds. The rest of the time can be used to solve the more tricky problems and review your answers.

optosid
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jun 24, 2008 8:55 am

Post by optosid » Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:16 am

Q1) How much time did you *have to prepare? ANSWER can be in months, or hours per day.
I took the sub test in 2003. I was a third year college student studying EE at the moment. I was good at calculus, real analysis, and matrix and awkward at topics such as topology and algebra. I spent about 6 weeks to study those weakness before the exam.

Q2) What was your score? ANSWER can be in a range (i.e. 75-80%)
80%-85%

Q3) How many study aides did you use? ANSWER can be in the number# of books purchased, or college texts used.
I spent most of my time in algebra, complex analysis, and topology. The only things I had at a moment are an math encyclopedia and six exams in REA.

Q4) What would be the MOST valuable advise you can offer anyone who plans to take the GRE Mathematics Subject Test? ANSWER can be lengthy, we would appreciate as much as you feel comfortable sharing.

According to the exam I took, calculus is definitely most important topic. During the exam, I solved most of the calculus exams, which gave me a good baseline.


I will perhaps need to retake this darn exam again, after five year. Since I plan to apply MFE in some renowned institute.

kavehmo
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:00 am

Re:

Post by kavehmo » Fri Jul 06, 2012 4:42 am

benjiemoe wrote:
REA book:
what is the complete name of this book?

Ell
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2012 3:46 am

Re: Re:

Post by Ell » Fri Jul 06, 2012 6:07 am

kavehmo wrote:
benjiemoe wrote:
REA book:
what is the complete name of this book?

http://www.amazon.com/GRE-Mathematics-R ... 0878916377



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