One month to go, what's the best way to spend it?

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uhurulol
Posts: 79
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:38 am

One month to go, what's the best way to spend it?

Post by uhurulol » Fri Sep 26, 2014 4:13 am

So I'm sure others are in the same boat, and I'm wondering at this point what the best thing to do to ensure a decent score on the PGRE is? Formulas to have memorized, important concepts to understand, etc. I have the "White Book" and I'm going through parts that I'm iffy on, and it seems to help. Comparing it to the practice GREs it seems to be a bit harder in comparison, so that's a plus in a way. Handling GRE type problems seems easier.

My school doesn't offer a lot of the courses that teach some of the material on the PGRE. Should I make sure to learn the basis of these subjects, or polish up my knowledge of E&M/Classical and the other bulkier subjects?

Thanks in advance, and good luck future test takers :shock:

Catria
Posts: 354
Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2012 4:14 pm

Re: One month to go, what's the best way to spend it?

Post by Catria » Fri Sep 26, 2014 9:11 am

uhurulol wrote:So I'm sure others are in the same boat, and I'm wondering at this point what the best thing to do to ensure a decent score on the PGRE is? Formulas to have memorized, important concepts to understand, etc. I have the "White Book" and I'm going through parts that I'm iffy on, and it seems to help. Comparing it to the practice GREs it seems to be a bit harder in comparison, so that's a plus in a way. Handling GRE type problems seems easier.

My school doesn't offer a lot of the courses that teach some of the material on the PGRE. Should I make sure to learn the basis of these subjects, or polish up my knowledge of E&M/Classical and the other bulkier subjects?

Thanks in advance, and good luck future test takers :shock:
If you take the PGRE with little knowledge of the advanced topics, you can still go up to the 60-70th percentile or so. And, as you said in the other post, you want to pursue an astronomy PhD, where even a 50th percentile won't kill you.

uhurulol
Posts: 79
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:38 am

Re: One month to go, what's the best way to spend it?

Post by uhurulol » Fri Sep 26, 2014 12:46 pm

That's good to hear. Other than E&M and Classical Mechanics, what would you say would be the best PGRE subjects to study in the coming month?

djh101
Posts: 97
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2014 4:08 pm

Re: One month to go, what's the best way to spend it?

Post by djh101 » Fri Sep 26, 2014 7:28 pm

One month? Mine is tomorrow! :)

For me, it was the collision and Newton's law problems, actually, that I would get stuck on, so I've been doing lots of problems out of Young & Freedman on momentum, energy, collisions, torque, etc. Sign conventions for optics also get me a lot, so I've been reviewing that. Fluid flow came up on the most recent practice test, so know a little bit about that. I actually have six pages of equations written out: statistical mechanics and thermo (I actually saved this from the class), E&M, Classical Mechanics, Optics, Relativity, and Atomic.

djh101
Posts: 97
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2014 4:08 pm

Re: One month to go, what's the best way to spend it?

Post by djh101 » Fri Sep 26, 2014 7:35 pm

In addition to the above, be sure to know a little bit about solid state and particle physics. Lepton number has to be conserved except in weak interactions, protons and neutrons are baryons, electrons are leptons; p-doped are doped with an element with less valence electrons, n-doped with more, resistivity of a conductor increases with temperature except with a semiconductor (which is the opposite), BCS theory says that electrons interact with cooper pairs.

wompwomp
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:00 pm

Re: One month to go, what's the best way to spend it?

Post by wompwomp » Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:44 pm

Tomorrow for me too! Will make or break my applications this year.

I had a disastrous application cycle last year - completely effed up my time management during the PGRE, and couldn't even get to 20+ questions. Terrible score, obviously.

There's a warning lesson to y'all. Do not, ever, get bogged down in a question. You might feel that you're SO CLOSE to the answer, but you have to realize that you can always come back to it. I'm setting a personal goal of 2.5 minutes for a question, tops, but it so hard to follow!

Good luck everyone!



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