mGRE - September 2018 Exam

[MMDE]

Who else is taking the exam tomorrow? Good luck to everyone that is!

[Aramark]

I am. Thank you for the well wishes, and good luck to you and everyone else taking the exam!

[DDswife]

I am not, but good luck. Come back and tell us how it went

[superballzach]

Just finished, the second half of the test was rough. Feel decent about the first half though.

[oleander314]

I thought it was a lot easier than the online practice tests. The second half had many questions I was unsure about, but I thought the first was all right! I felt as though I had a handle on half of the questions.

[MMDE]

I thought it was pretty difficult. Without going into detail, it was lot more obscure (in terms of topics and problems) than I expected, and didn't have many of the concepts which have appeared on every practice exam I've taken.

[Aramark]

I feel very shaky about it. Could've gone well but my studying was not optimized toward it at all and certain types of questions just kinda boned me.

[djysyed]

It's sad how the issue is just not knowing the topic and not that the problem was too hard. That said, some of the calculus problems were pretty tough.
On a side note, there were some questions i've seen before because I took it a couple years ago.

[MMDE]

It's sad how the issue is just not knowing the topic and not that the problem was too hard. That said, some of the calculus problems were pretty tough.
On a side note, there were some questions i've seen before because I took it a couple years ago.

I agree with this completely. I think the exam certainly didn't follow the 50-25-25 breakdown that is often cited. Oh well, time to spend the next month intensely studying for the October exam. I hope this doesn't kill my chance for a top 20 school.

[oopsie]

I think I did poorly... How well do people normally do the first time they take it? I probably guessed on at least a third of the questions.

[blahquaker]

second time for me. I managed my time much better, but that also means that I just abandoned some questions because I knew they would take me more than 3 minutes to properly derive. quick estimation and move on.

I don't know if it was harder than last time, but it was a completely different test that what I had prepared for - the types of questions (and number thereof) just felt completely different.

[FtYoU]

I took it today as well as in april. Here are my thoughts :

- Multiple questions were really computationally time consuming unless there was a trick ( which I didn't see )
- One question was the exact same as the test in april.
- Last few questions were downright not possible unless we had solid knowledge on the topic ( guessing is impossible here )
- Lot of convoluted questions, the problem was posed in a weird manner which render it unnecessary hard ( I mean it's done on purpose )

After taking all practices test available online, going through texbooks and online courses I feel like all subjects are not foreign but definitely didn't have time.
20 min before the end I was on the question 55 ( wild guessing appeared afterwards ).

On the other hand the test in april was much much easier in my opinion.

[yaskhn3]

Is there a way to access the April'18 or earlier question papers? I have my mGRE on Oct 27

[ponchan]

I took it today as well as in april. Here are my thoughts :

- Multiple questions were really computationally time consuming unless there was a trick ( which I didn't see )
- One question was the exact same as the test in april.
- Last few questions were downright not possible unless we had solid knowledge on the topic ( guessing is impossible here )
- Lot of convoluted questions, the problem was posed in a weird manner which render it unnecessary hard ( I mean it's done on purpose )

After taking all practices test available online, going through texbooks and online courses I feel like all subjects are not foreign but definitely didn't have time.
20 min before the end I was on the question 55 ( wild guessing appeared afterwards ).

On the other hand the test in april was much much easier in my opinion.

What would you have done differently to prepare for this one?

[djysyed]

Is there a way to access the April'18 or earlier question papers? I have my mGRE on Oct 27

Considering how many questions were repeated from previous GREs, I doubt they put up any tests after 2015.

[FtYoU]

I took it today as well as in april. Here are my thoughts :

- Multiple questions were really computationally time consuming unless there was a trick ( which I didn't see )
- One question was the exact same as the test in april.
- Last few questions were downright not possible unless we had solid knowledge on the topic ( guessing is impossible here )
- Lot of convoluted questions, the problem was posed in a weird manner which render it unnecessary hard ( I mean it's done on purpose )

After taking all practices test available online, going through texbooks and online courses I feel like all subjects are not foreign but definitely didn't have time.
20 min before the end I was on the question 55 ( wild guessing appeared afterwards ).

On the other hand the test in april was much much easier in my opinion.

What would you have done differently to prepare for this one?

I will be taking the test in October as well. I remember a few question for this tests that I am working out at home now. Some of them were easy, some I'm still struggling.

- First thing is to work out the remaining problems I remember and understand why I didn't manage them during the test.
- Most important thing I will do is probably abandon a question that I don't know how to tackle right away, I lost valuable time on some question to finish with no answer ….
- I will train with time constraint from now on.
- Manage stress better ? 2:50 min is a long time, but under the GRE math umbrella, it flies so fast.
- Maybe it's important to have some time anchor ( maybe looking at the clock and if after 30 min elapsed you didn't reach a specific number of questions you'll know to go faster or take more time ) I will certainly have 30 min anchor points to memorize if that makes sense.

Last test in October certainly put additional anxiety ( I need an excellent score because I'm not a native English speaker ).

[ponchan]

I am also planning on taking it in October. Did you feel like there were certain topics you didn't expect to be on it?

[FtYoU]

I am also planning on taking it in October. Did you feel like there were certain topics you didn't expect to be on it?

Yes.
- Normal subgroups ( last question ) I will be reading much more on this for sure.
- I didn't know what a certain word meant ( turned out to be a very easy geometric shape that I just didn't know the English name …. )

Anectode : I was pretty happy 3/4 questions were combinatorics/probability as I have a Machine learning / probability backgroud

[ponchan]

Are you saying that 3 out of 4 questions were on probability/combinatorics? Probability and combinatorics fall in the "other" category of the test, and there are usually no more that 7 or so.

[FtYoU]

Are you saying that 3 out of 4 questions were on probability/combinatorics? Probability and combinatorics fall in the "other" category of the test, and there are usually no more that 7 or so.

yes usually I see only one question on proba and maybe one on combinatorics, but this test contained more.

[ponchan]

yes, but are you saying the test contained 3 or four such questions, or that 75% of the questions on the test were prob/combinatorics?

[djysyed]

It was like 3 or 4 I think

[ponchan]

Oh ok. If 75% of the test conisted of an "other" topic, that would be insane and worthy of a protest.

[FtYoU]

Sorry for the confusion, yes I meant 3 or 4 questions were on proba/combi ( I was expecting 0 to 1 )

[Spatulaman]

Anyone get the sin(100x)/sin(x) one? Can’t even work this out at home

[blahquaker]

We're not supposed to discuss individual questions.

[djysyed]

Anyone get the sin(100x)/sin(x) one? Can’t even work this out at home

Did we all get the same exam? I don't remember this question. Either way, we're not supposed to discuss any specific questions.

[Spatulaman]

Anyone get the sin(100x)/sin(x) one? Can’t even work this out at home

Did we all get the same exam? I don't remember this question. Either way, we're not supposed to discuss any specific questions.

Interesting, I would’ve thought we all got same exam. You’d definitely recognize it based on above. I didn’t know they varied exams.

[FtYoU]

Anyone get the sin(100x)/sin(x) one? Can’t even work this out at home

Did we all get the same exam? I don't remember this question. Either way, we're not supposed to discuss any specific questions.

Interesting, I would’ve thought we all got same exam. You’d definitely recognize it based on above. I didn’t know they varied exams.

I definitely don't recognize this question.

[nicorobin22]

I definitely don't recognize this question.

I also don't recognize this question.
By the way, I also took the GRE math test on Sep 2018 and plan to take the October test as well. Anyone wanna form a small group to prepare for the October test?

[yaskhn3]

I definitely don't recognize this question.

I also don't recognize this question.
By the way, I also took the GRE math test on Sep 2018 and plan to take the October test as well. Anyone wanna form a small group to prepare for the October test?

I have already formed one such WhatsApp group. The group has about 10 members as of now. If anyone's interested, they can join by following this link

https://chat.whatsapp.com/3DKr5d9fDxUKuCQx7iwxh3

[BCLC]

What's the topology coverage of your exam? I mean, is there anything there past compactness and connectedness eg metrisation (I'm referring to Munkres Topology)? http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4552

[rlightec]

Anyone get the sin(100x)/sin(x) one? Can’t even work this out at home

I had this question when I took the exam 2 years ago. They like to use same questions. And yes, even the people who are taking the exam in the same room may not get the same exam.

[FtYoU]

What's the topology coverage of your exam? I mean, is there anything there past compactness and connectedness eg metrisation (I'm referring to Munkres Topology)? http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4552

My exam was quite poor in topology. I don't even remember having one question dealing with it.

[BCLC]

What's the topology coverage of your exam? I mean, is there anything there past compactness and connectedness eg metrisation (I'm referring to Munkres Topology)? http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4552

My exam was quite poor in topology. I don't even remember having one question dealing with it.

Thanks! But it did have basic topology that you take in elementary real analysis namely the ones involving supremum, infimum, open/closed (in standard/order topology in R of course), etc?

[djysyed]

What's the topology coverage of your exam? I mean, is there anything there past compactness and connectedness eg metrisation (I'm referring to Munkres Topology)? http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4552

My exam was quite poor in topology. I don't even remember having one question dealing with it.

Thanks! But it did have basic topology that you take in elementary real analysis namely the ones involving supremum, infimum, open/closed (in standard/order topology in R of course), etc?

Baby Rudin's chapter on Metric Space Topology honestly covers most of the topology questions that come up on the MGRE

Edit: Our whatsapp group chat is fairly active and we have about 17 people so far. People of all areas of interest (Stats, Algebra/Algebraic Geometry, Topology, Number Theory) are on there.

[FtYoU]

What's the topology coverage of your exam? I mean, is there anything there past compactness and connectedness eg metrisation (I'm referring to Munkres Topology)? http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4552

My exam was quite poor in topology. I don't even remember having one question dealing with it.

Thanks! But it did have basic topology that you take in elementary real analysis namely the ones involving supremum, infimum, open/closed (in standard/order topology in R of course), etc?

No it didn't have any of that. it was really heavy on calculus. I have the feeling the topology question got replaced by proba/combinatorics.

[BCLC]

Thanks!