Physics GRE Discussion Forums

There was a question on electrodynamics that looked easy yet so difficult, the question went something lik this:

[[Deleted by Moderator 11/8/07]]

Does anyone know the answer?

The current carriying two wires in the same direction attract each other [[Deleted by Moderator 11/8/07]]

You signed a statement promising not to discuss the content of the test. Please honor that.

grae...I can sympathize with your feeling that we shouldn't go against that...but think about it...

The reason they have that clause is so that you can't take the materials and distribute everything publically so that people have entire tests to look at...or you can't make a book out of old exams by just taking the test every year.

I don't think there's anything horribly immoral about discussing a test that you took with other people that took it...happens after every test in college. We're not trying to bring down ETS...just curious about some of the questions.

As for the question...it seemed to me like some of the bottom ones could be right...but I definitely knew that A was right so I chose that one.

ETS does have that clause both to prevent people from making money from ETS' work and to prevent students gaining an unfair advantage by exposure to more questions... but regardless you signed the statement. Imagine if a significant number of people came here and they were all a little curious about just 1 question, you'd still have published a sizable portion of the test, and even with this one thread ETS would be well within their rights to try and get this forum shut down.

So stick to advice, general physics concepts, and questions from the four published tests. There's nothing wrong with asking what happens when two wires are parallel and have currents in the same direction; you don't need to ask the actual test question.

Thanks, will. My thoughts exactly.

Non-disclosure aside, the ETS cannot and should not control the ability of the people to discuss the test. That being said, I suggest a private forum where the tests can be discussed. They can say you cannot public disclose information about the test, but they cannot limit your ability to discuss it in private.

you guys are right. We should discuss it in private...does anyone know how to edit posts? Can't seem to find the way to do it...thanks

yea. I strongly encourage you all to delete posts that have real questions on them. This could give everyone who takes the test after us an unfair advantage over us and our peers. It's known that ETS does reuse questions. This led to a conflict at my high school over AP exams and a teacher ended up being sued by ETS. Also, it had been suspected for years that certain foreign countries had compiled lists of general and subject GRE questions for their students to memorize and that led to a 'remarkable' number of high scores for those people. Any question that gets out on the internet can really bring down the fairness and usefulness of the test.

To edit a post, just look at the text to the left of your post... you should see your user name, the date you joined, the # of posts, and under that is a button called "edit."

No wonder foreigners are getting perfect scores.

No wonder foreigners are getting perfect scores.

Because they study harder?

Honestly I don't think you can make a valid assessment of the correlation between GRE scores and nationality purely on a couple people discussing a test question on a message board.

No wonder all American grad-school applicants are racists.

Bet you didn't know that they added the writing assessment portion of the general GRE to curb cheating on the English section of the test. People from other countries were acing the English section but could barely speak the language. Study harder, you say....

Something that really caught me by surprise and made me laugh like crazy was a post I saw a long time ago... I don't know if it was here or somewhere else... Someone was posting some really impressive statistics...

"
GPA: 4.0
General GRE:
--Math: 800
--Verbal: 760
--Analytical: 800
Physics GRE: 990

I is international student
"

I just posted this for laughs and do not intend to direct it towards anyone or offend anyone, but it is a true story!

I apologize for starting this thread.

I'll not discuss in public any GRE Physics questions in the future, If I need to ask any questions, I'll make it as generic as possible.

Regarding foreigners scoring high in general GRE test, my opinion is the studying method of many international students, are different from the Americans. They usually stress on factual memorising and rote learning, this is the tradiiton, I believe, especially countries from the East.

I think the American way of studying is to look for understanding and on-the-spot thinking, in other words, think on your feet.

However, looking at the number of questions on GRE Physcis, and the time constraint, I find if I want to do well, I definitely need to memorise some basic formulae of Physics.

However, I truely support the American way of education and learning, that is, understaning anf application of knowledge and concepts, and solve problems on the spot. In fact my country has started revamping the educational system, to emphasize more thinking skills than memorising, in which I'm part of the workforce too.

BTW, I'm also international.

Http://gre-new-words.blogspot.com

all the links in the page are very helpful !!

I know this is slightly off topic, but after I took the physics GRE in November 2006 (like, over the course of an hour or so after leaving the testing facility), I somehow recalled 93 out of 100 questions that were on the test (I guess the stress of the exam burned the questions into my head). Unfortunately, I never bothered to retake the test, so I don't know if the questions reappeared on subsequent tests or not...

So, if I could remember that many questions, then a group of kids could easily memorize all 100 questions, and possibly the answer ETS offered for all the problems, too.