Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Hello,

Those who have written GRE tests recently (or in the past), if you have any tips for time management, can you please share it? Physics is not a big problem for me these days, but time management. While working on sample tests, I finished tests just on time, so I had no time no recheck the answers. I would like to finish the test about half an hour earlier so that I have time to go through the questions in which I had doubt. Also, any other tips for the test are most welcomed.

Thanks for reading this!

On your first go of the test, go through the problems that require the least amount of calculations. There are a lot of these and they include: conceptual, anything that can be ticked off using dimensional analysis etc.

I would also recommend skipping (on the first go) problems that require a lot of reading. You know the type I am talking about, just too many details. **Come back to those after you finish the above.**

I tended to skip ( on the first go) problems that required reading twice. If I read a problem and asked "wait what?" I skip and come back.


Doing this worked for me, I had time to go through the test three times. On the other hand, I don't have my scores yet...

Maybe this strategy is not good enough to get the highest scores (900+) but you can also check answer as you go along. For example, I would rather answer 80 questions correctly (and had time to check the ones I needed to double check) instead of attempting all 100 and not being able to check them.

I disagree with the other replies. If you skip every question that isn't conceptual on the first run through, then you will waste time reading questions twice. My strategy (which usually allowed me to finish the first run with ~30 minutes and ~12 blanks) was to only ignore questions on the first run which were apparently designed to be "longer" questions: the ones that require a paragraph of reading and a unique situation to set up. I would attempt every other question. If after about 30 seconds I wasn't getting anywhere I would move on. If I finished the calculation and it was clearly wrong, I would move on and come back to it later.

You don't want to miss easy points at the end of the test because you spent too much time double-checking questions at the beginning.

I just want to add that before I adopted this test strategy I averaged at about (760) 69% on the practice tests. Using this strategy, I received a 990 (94%) on the actual exam.