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For those taking subject in April

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 2:30 am
by cauchy
Rather than spend money on the practice books, I would highly recommend that you make a healthy review of your Discrete Math text. I took the test today, and most of the calculus was doable, but what I really would have liked was a bit more familiarity with discrete topics....of course it's been a couple years since I took the class...but this is where I would focus my studies.

Re: For those taking subject in April

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:10 am
by mrb
Do you (or does anyone else) know if everyone who took the test yesterday had the same test, or were there different tests?

For me, the calculus was a very serious issue... Not because it was conceptually difficult, but because there was so much lengthy (considering how little time you can afford to spend on each problem) calculation.

My main advice to future testers would be: be prepared for the possibility that the test will be pretty different from the practice tests in difficulty level. Personally, there were a couple things that I specifically decided not to review because the material on the practice tests made me feel sure they would not show up on the test... but they did. The biggest obstacle by far though was time pressure, and really I don't know how to prepare for that.

Re: For those taking subject in April

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:52 am
by joey
The time pressure may be a function of our misconceptions about the test. I was under the impression that I needed a raw score in the 50s to land in the top 20%, so every question seemed important. Now we see that even a 45 may put you in the 88th percentile, meaning you could conceivably skip almost a third of the test and still score very, very well--provided you answer the remaining questions correctly. I wish I had had this perspective yesterday: don't worry about all those unmarked bubbles on your answer sheet; just make sure the ones that are filled in are correct.

This strategy may also help with another testing bane: test anxiety. There's too much at stake on this one exam. The pressure can be debilitating. Roughly two-thirds of the way through the exam, I looked at all my unanswered questions and thought, "I'm bombing this test. What am I going to do?" My brain went into shock mode, and I could barely concentrate on the test. Diligent preparation may be useless in such a circumstance. My advice is to take the pressure off as much as possible. Be aware of roughly how many questions you can miss to earn your target score, and if possible, test early enough to retake as necessary. Aside from the obvious advantage giving a second chance, it may relieve the pressure on the first sitting. You could think to yourself, "This is just a practice test," and believe it, too. In that case, you'd have to prepare for the first test as if it was the real deal. Otherwise, you'd just get all the same pressures on the second sitting.

Re: For those taking subject in April

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 12:55 pm
by mrb
joey wrote: Be aware of roughly how many questions you can miss to earn your target score,
The problem is, we cannot know this information. Actually, I thought I did know it. I knew I wanted to get over a 90 percentile, and based on the practice test, I figured I needed over 54 correct to achieve that. Now that I know how much the scoring can vary, it is clear that this type of planning is useless. It's not like while taking the test we will be able to accurately correlate its difficulty level to how it will be scored.

While taking the practice tests (timed), I was able to get to the end of the exam with 45 min or an hour left to go back and attempt the 10 or so questions I had skipped, and ended up leaving only 2 to 5 blank. On the real test, I was still working on the last problem when it was announced that we had only 20 min left; I went back to look at the 17 or 18 I had skipped, and ended with still 13 blank.

Re: For those taking subject in April

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 2:04 pm
by origin415
When everyone gets their scores back, it would be nice for future test takers if we compiled a raw score conversion chart based on our actual data.

To me, it seemed like the hardest questions on the november test werent any harder than the hardest on the older tests, there were just more hard questions. I think if someone went through the practice tests and took all of the hardest from them and compiled them into one, that would be an accurate practice test for what the math gre seems to have become.

Actually I was lamenting before the test to some friends taking the physics gre that they only have to get a raw score of 85 (out of 100) to get a perfect score, while we have to get nearly every question right to say the same, meaning we have to know every topic that could be on it, no matter how obtuse. It would be nice to be able to focus on getting what you know right and not worrying about skipping a couple, which seems to be the case on these newer tests.

Re: For those taking subject in April

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 5:35 pm
by joey
mrb wrote:
joey wrote: Be aware of roughly how many questions you can miss to earn your target score,
The problem is, we cannot know this information. Actually, I thought I did know it. I knew I wanted to get over a 90 percentile, and based on the practice test, I figured I needed over 54 correct to achieve that. Now that I know how much the scoring can vary, it is clear that this type of planning is useless. It's not like while taking the test we will be able to accurately correlate its difficulty level to how it will be scored.
That's a fair criticism. I'd made a computation similar to yours, and looking at the 15 or so unanswered questions on my score sheet yesterday filled me with dread. That dread undoubtedly prevented me from answering more questions correctly. Perhaps the thing to be aware of is not exactly how many questions we can miss to score well, but rather the huge uncertainty associated with that random variable. If it's seen as "normal" for the highest scorers to sometimes leave almost a third of the test unanswered, the future tester may save herself from the devastating effects of test anxiety, producing a higher score.

Re: For those taking subject in April

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 11:39 pm
by diogenes
I would suggest "The Art and Craft of Problem Solving" by Zeitz.

Re: For those taking subject in April

Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:52 am
by mrb
diogenes wrote:I would suggest "The Art and Craft of Problem Solving" by Zeitz.
Really though? I'm sure that's a good book, but it looks like it's more geared to thinking through conceptually challenging problems, as opposed to churning out conceptually trivial stuff really quickly.