Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Hi,
would any one please kindly guide me how should i prepare for gre and the syllabus?
im new to this forum.
will physics gre exam be easier or tough like that of CSIR/GATE?
how much period is required to prepare for the gre exam?
please help me friends.

No one in this forum probably has any idea about the CSIR or Gate exams. Just browse through the forums, everything you want has been extensively discussed. The syllabus is clearly mentioned in the ets website.

As for preparation time, if you have a decent undergrad background in physics then something between 3 weeks to a month should be good enough.

Thank u .
how can i prepare for gre verbal?
many say that it's the toughest part in gre.
what about analytical writing?
how should i prepare for it?

Dude, this is a Physics GRE forum. I think you can find more accurate information about the General GRE somewhere else on the internet. Why not check out the ETS website itself? I think they themselves give you a lot of free information.

subhadheer wrote:How can i prepare for gre verbal?

Read a book!

~Reading Rainbow

I'll get a chicken dhania korma mild with parauntha bread for pickup.

Thanks.

Thank u very to everyone.
i want to take gre exam in november.
how much score is gettable to find admission in good universities?

subhadheer wrote:Thank u very to everyone.
i want to take gre exam in november.
how much score is gettable to find admission in good universities?

No score "gets" you admitted. Still, I always go by what the really famous Professor Too Short from Oakland told me me years ago,Ya gotta get in where ya fit in.

An admission professor from a top ten school told me 850 or 900 on the GRE is a "good" score. I think what he meant is it won't prevent you from getting in if the rest of your application is very appealing, but higher than 900 is preferable if you are aiming for a top school. Other people can correct me here but I think low 800s would be fine for schools outside of the top 10-20.

microacg wrote:An admission professor from a top ten school told me 850 or 900 on the GRE is a "good" score.

Yea but for Indians (and Chinese) the numbers are way higher.

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P-representation wrote:For an Indian, it's actually pretty simple to get a 990 or atleast a 950 + so I don't think it'll be much of a problem.

Absolutely. Indians are born with a magical node in their brain to get the correct answer on multiple choice physics tests, at least 92% of the time. Scientific FACT.

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The reason so many students from Indian and China end up with high 900s is that these are huge countries with massive numbers of students. There are also huge numbers of Chinese and Indian students who would fail miserably if they tried the physics GRE. But they're not the ones trying to get into top US schools.

Well Carl, that may explain why they get such high scores... but how do we explain why it is always the Indian students posting the most clueless threads on the forum? That's the question I've been trying to answer for years.

"How do I apply to grad school?"

"What is on the physics GRE?"

"My GPA is X. What schools can I get in to?"

etc...

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P-representation wrote:@CarlBrannen
I'd like to disagree on that point. Even though India has a very large student population, the number of people applying for a Ph.D in Physics is really small. I'd estimate the total number of people giving the Physics GRE in India to be around 500-1000 only. I guess this number might be smaller than the number of domestic applicants in the US.

So it might just come down to the fact that our problem solving skills are much better due to the intense training we receive in our high school.

My recollection is that there's something like 30,000 people take the test each year and I'm guessing that roughly half of them are US. Since India has about 3x the population of the US, this means that the Indians who take the test are around 45x rarer in India than US students who take the test are in the US. It's silly to imagine that those highly selected Indian students are a fair sample of their physics students, or of the population as a whole. In fact, I read that India produces twice the number of engineering degrees per year than the US. This is a little less than what you'd expect but not much. I'd bet they produce more physics degrees as well.

There's no reason for a student to take the test unless he has a good chance of getting into grad school. Students have a pretty good idea what score they're going to get before they take the test. Since the test is used to get into US schools there's no reason for Indian students to take it, unless they're considering US schools. (It's quite expensive and inconvenient.) But US grad schools pay US wages to grad students. It's a LOT of money. So the attraction of studying in the US has to be very great.

However, a foreign student requires a much higher physics GRE score to get into a US school than a US student does. I've got fellow (American) grad students who I bet scored in the bottom 25% but no foreign grad students are here (in my school) with under 50%, probably more. And the foreign grad students do better in classes (despite the language barrier) and they do much better at the qualifying exams.

Is this because foreigners are, in general, smarter or better at taking tests? Of course not. The bar to entry is far higher for foreign students than US students. I'm at a 3rd rate US physics grad school. The American students here are 3rd rate (uh, present company excepted). The foreign students here are 2nd rate. If you want to go to a US school where the American students are 1st rate you have to go to a 1st rate US school. And these require 1st rate scores from the physics GRE for American students as well as foreign.

The US understands the importance of attracting talent from all over the world. About half the foreign physics grad students who come to the US take US citizenship. This is a very high percentage. The result is that the science produced in the US is far out of proportion to its population. Of course the percentage of US students who stay in the US after graduation is close to 100%. This is related to the fact that it's so much easier to get into grad school as an American citizen.

I think Carl hit the nail on the head there. Even in Canada, where the education system is very similar to the US, it's only the students who want to go to the US that take the PGRE. And if they're moving to the US, they're aiming for the top schools (why go to a second tier US school when we can go to a second tier Canadian school without all the immigration troubles). And if they're aiming for the top schools, then it's only the students who believe they can score well on the PGRE that take the PGRE. So I would expect that PGRE scores of students other countries to be higher, no matter their education system, because of this selection effect.

There is certainly a selection effect and this might partially explain the high scores of Indians (and some other international students). However, I would still stick to my original point that these tests are a cakewalk for any competent engineering or science student in India.

However, I would still stick to my original point that these tests are a cakewalk for any competent engineering or science student in India.

Most Indian students who come to the US went to the elite undergrad colleges in India. They are extremely competitive with <5% acceptance rates. Since they spent all their undergraduate life in the company of other excellent students it gives them a false impression that everyone in India is brilliant. Such mindset often persists after the student comes to the US giving them an unhealthy and false superiority complex vis-a-vis American students. Though I am an Indian myself, I find such attitude in other Indian students quite obnoxious.

Dear P-representation, have you ever talked to any 'competent' physics student from Jaypuria College?

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P-representation wrote:Just two words: "Pattern recognition".

I am pretty sure you would've been through the same system as I have and can hence relate very well to this term. As I have said above, Physicsgre is not a test of Physics. It's a test of pure examination skill, something atleast 100,000 Indian students have been extensively trained during our prep for JEE and other exams whether we manage to make it to the top colleges or not.

The issue is not about whether Indians are smarter than other people in understanding and applying Physics. It's about whether Indian students with about 2 years of incessant grind can afford to score badly on a "standardized" test which repeats most of it's questions year after year and more importantly asks the same kind of superficial questions from each topic. It doesn't take a genius to score a 990, which is perhaps why admissions committees give it such a low weightage.

Are you saying Americans aren't capable of pattern recognition? I don't know where you are coming from, but where I am from, people are hardly trained for JEE or anything like that. Of course it doesn't take a genius to 990. Who said anything about that? But gross generalisation that Indians do well on Physics GRE is flawed. Majority of Indians who take Physics GRE happen to be the top students. There is an inherent selection bias.

It's about whether Indian students with about 2 years of incessant grind can afford to score badly on a "standardized" test which repeats most of it's questions year after year and more importantly asks the same kind of superficial questions from each topic.

What are you talking about?

No one is questioning the fact that selection bias does play a major role. While top students all over the world would score well on the PGRE, I'm just saying that it might be easier for mediocre students from India to do pretty well on the test, maybe even much better than you'd expect considering their level of understanding. I don't see how this in any way comments on the intelligence and skill of students in other countries.

As for pattern recognition, when you're endured two years of a continuous grind giving hundreds of tests, it gives you an edge in cracking an exam whether you understand the underlying concepts or not. It might just be that we train harder for such pattern recognition than anyone else.

P-representation wrote: As for pattern recognition, when you're endured two years of a continuous grind giving hundreds of tests, it gives you an edge in cracking an exam whether you understand the underlying concepts or not. It might just be that we train harder for such pattern recognition than anyone else.

I still don't know what you are talking about. Not everyone spends two years giving hundreds of tests.

About a 100,000 students do in India.

100,000 isn't a lot when compared to at least 4 million students in India who enter college to study one of the STEM fields every year!

And the 100k figure you're quoting are mostly engineering aspirants.

It doesn't take a genius to score a 990, which is perhaps why admissions committees give it such a low weightage.

As compared to the GPA? How is that any better a measure than the Physics GRE? At least the GRE is standardised.

P-representation wrote:No one is questioning the fact that selection bias does play a major role. While top students all over the world would score well on the PGRE, I'm just saying that it might be easier for mediocre students from India to do pretty well on the test, maybe even much better than you'd expect considering their level of understanding. I don't see how this in any way comments on the intelligence and skill of students in other countries.

As for pattern recognition, when you're endured two years of a continuous grind giving hundreds of tests, it gives you an edge in cracking an exam whether you understand the underlying concepts or not. It might just be that we train harder for such pattern recognition than anyone else.

I'm not an Indian student, but I gotta say you are dead wrong! The correct answer is who gives you a ***! Stop beening racist

AEP wrote:

P-representation wrote:No one is questioning the fact that selection bias does play a major role. While top students all over the world would score well on the PGRE, I'm just saying that it might be easier for mediocre students from India to do pretty well on the test, maybe even much better than you'd expect considering their level of understanding. I don't see how this in any way comments on the intelligence and skill of students in other countries.

As for pattern recognition, when you're endured two years of a continuous grind giving hundreds of tests, it gives you an edge in cracking an exam whether you understand the underlying concepts or not. It might just be that we train harder for such pattern recognition than anyone else.

I'm not an Indian student, but I gotta say you are dead wrong! The correct answer is who gives you a ***! Stop beening racist

Whoa, calm down. There's no need to get so worked up.

Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to get worked up over it. There's a simple underlying logic: You work hard, you get results. Thats it. And when you train really hard at something, like practicing lifting weights in a gym for over 2 continuous years, you are bound to find lifting say a 100 kg weight much much easier than a newbie who put in like 2-3 weeks of practice. Of course, when you train so hard at it, you're naturally gonna have high expectations from yourself. I mean, when you train to tackle olympiad level problems in physics, why on earth would you be satisfied with anything less than the top score on a simple MCQ test?