Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Hey

Anyone here took the April 2010 test?

What do you think about the difficulty of the paper?

I answered 92 questions. Not too confident about a high score...

Hope to hear from the forum soon.

mojojojo

I took 'em. first time... got through about 90 questions, left 8-10 of those blank... so almost 20 unanswered... hit or miss... i already know of some careless errors that were misses.

Did you practice the published exams? Where would you rank the 2010 April test in terms of difficulty?

Any guess about what raw score would correspond to 990 this time?

Peace.

..

@vesperlynd

Did you also take the November test?

I was told by a friend that he got around 20 questions in he November '09 test that were exactly from the published tests.

I don't remember a single question that were anything like previous year questions in April...

While preparing, I focused a lot of my effort on trying to solve the questions using elimination, taking limits and checking dimensions. However, I was sort of disappointed to see that very few question could be solved by those methods this time.

Peace

I can't believe it's been a year since I took the test last April! (sorry for the interruption)

..

To me the questions this time were more like 'either-you-know-it-or-you-don't.'

I managed to finish 50 questions in the first hour and yet I finished 8 short of 100 when time was called.

For some reason I can't gauge the difficulty of this question. It was definitely not like 9677, which was tough but could be solved using elimination and taking limits. Neither was it like 0177 which had a quite a few straight forward questions.

ETS, apparently, fell out of love with positronium. Damn!

Peace

I took the test and also was dissapointed that I could not try to use dimension analysis and all that stuff, but well, I think I'll have to try it again in october, I think I will only have 50-55 correct answers, hope the raw score equivalent to the 990 being around 65 or 70 at least.

I probably answered 75 or 80 questions, which is better than I'd been doing in my practice rounds with the released tests. There's something about sitting in that room with my #2 pencils that helps me focus like nothing else! But yeah, I was disappointed that dimensional analysis and the other usual tricks didn't seem to help much. I remember trying it on one and only being able to get rid of one answer or so. It'll be interesting to see how the raw scores and percentiles correlate on this one.

@omemaedi

Dude...65 ~> 990...you must be dreaming...

I am pretty sure that whoever had a fantastic photographic memory did fantastic in this test.

Considering that every year the distribution gets more brutal and compensating for the fact that this was a weird[er] version compared to the published ones...my money is on 83 ~> 990, give or take 2 points.

Peace

I think the test was easier than all 4 practice tests. I expect that the raw score for 990 is about 85.

@tvc08

I wouldn't say it was easier. It was different. Many questions had choices that had the same units and same limits, just the coefficients different. Besides, I am speaking only for myself here, the first 50 questions were doable in 1 hour...the rest...I was gasping for air.

But still, I agree that 990 will be around 85 raw, considering the fact that candidates do get better every year.

I took the April test. i guess it was easy. i read all the questions but usually i am slow in answering. i managed to do 60 questions only, maybe 59 or 58. i tired to focus on these i answered, and tired to answer only the easiest, so not to make any mistake. what do you think about answering only 58 questions. i didn't tick any question blindly.

i remember that about 5 or 6 questions only were so easy so you tick immediately. and about 8 to 10 questions i would not have been able to do anyway.

can someone explain to me my case, please?

aliphy wrote:I took the April test. i guess it was easy. i read all the questions but usually i am slow in answering. i managed to do 60 questions only, maybe 59 or 58.

Interesting way of defining the difficulty of the question paper. I would have called it easy if I could answer around 90 questions with confidence. I actually did answer around 90 but many were guesses...so it wasn't as easy to me as was GR8677 or GR0177.

As most of the others have speculated, this time ~85 will correspond to 990. Assuming that is true, and assuming that you have not made any mistake - your raw score will be 60. That will correspond to around 800 ~> 80th percentile. How you interpret that result depends entirely on where you wish to apply.

You guys realize there are three different forms and that they vary in difficulty, right?

grae313 wrote:You guys realize there are three different forms and that they vary in difficulty, right?

You realize that they don't realize that, right?

HappyQuark wrote:

grae313 wrote:You guys realize there are three different forms and that they vary in difficulty, right?

You realize that they don't realize that, right?

hehe... yes

I am aware that the forms do vary, but do the forms vary so drastically that people can't really comment on the difficulty level or trend of a particular year?

Peace

If the amount of variation is similar or greater to the variation in difficulty from test date to test date then trying to reach a consensus about the the difficulty of the test in relation to other dates is not going to be meaningful without accounting for which forms people had. It's possible that the variation is negligible, but I just don't know.

It would be possible to get a sense of exactly how much the forms vary if we had more data on various people's raw score to scaled score conversions for a given test date, but most people don't post that.

The difference certainly is not as big as that between GR9677 and GR0177.

I have personally spoken to people who took the October exam in 2009. They all agreed that the model followed is that of GR0177, and that almost the same difficulty level is maintained. Did they all appear in the same form? Possible, but unlikely.

Peace

Has anyone heard the score by phone yet?

I got my score by phone last Saturday morning (May 8th 2010).

@cryingsun

Could you post your score and the corresponding percentile, only if you don't have a problem with sharing?

Peace

mojojojo wrote:@cryingsun

Could you post your score and the corresponding percentile, only if you don't have a problem with sharing?

Peace

Sure.
990 95%
May not be that helpful in score-percentile mapping

Good job cryingsun!

I answered 94 questions. I think I got like 8 to 10 incorrect. I end up getting 980 / 94%. I wish I did a little bit better to get full score.

I attempted 86 questions, missed 6, raw 79. Score is 930, 89% below.

Time for you guys to party.

Any idea when the results will appear online?

Peace

just got my score card.

890 85% raw score: 74

@jasonquan

Did you get it by mail?

yes, i am around NJ, so i guess it is a little quick

My score card came today.

Formula Score - 82
Score - 950
% Below - 92

i got my score:

Score: 670
% Below: 48
Correct: 046
Incorrect: 010
Omits: 043
Formula Score: 044

i dont understand what % below means, what omits means, and what formula score means as well. can anyone help me?
what do you think about my score? is it good? bad? very good? or very bad?

aliphy wrote:i got my score:

Score: 670
% Below: 48
Correct: 046
Incorrect: 010
Omits: 043
Formula Score: 044

i dont understand what % below means, what omits means, and what formula score means as well. can anyone help me?
what do you think about my score? is it good? bad? very good? or very bad?

% Below refers to the number of people who got a score below yours. In other words, 48% of people got a lower score than you. Omits refers to the number of problems that you didn't fill the bubble on. In other words, you left 43 of the 100 problems blank. The fact that your Incorrect + Correct + Omits = 99 makes me think that they must have not graded one of the problems.

Ok, I guess I'll put my score up too, not proud though.

Correct - 39
Incorrect - 27
Omits - 34
Raw Score - 32
Scaled Score - 590
% below - 29

Was hoping for better, but this will do for now, I plan on taking it again in the fall. Do you think this will get me in to some top 50 programs? I know there is a lot more involved but I guess more of the question is, will this definitely keep me out of programs ranging from top 30-50? Let me know your opinion! I should be able to bring this up, not to mention I have not had quantum yet and will be teaching myself quantum through the rest of the summer.