Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Does anyone have any opinion on whether it would be a bad idea to sign up to take the general GRE in either a week or a month, when there will be little time to prepare, and if it goes badly just re-take it knowing what it will be like?
The math looks really easy, but I don't know how to prepare for the Verbal/Writing sections in any short (even 6 months) amount of time and would like to devote myself to the PGRE. Good idea? Bad idea? Thoughts?
Thanks!

Spend a little time going over vocab words... maybe. It's not a big deal and general GRE scores aren't weighted that highly. Personally, I looked at a couple practice tests and went through the demo test (which you can download and is pretty similar to the real thing) to get an idea of how the test feels, but I didn't really study.

Yeah, it's worth spending a few hours doing the practice tests, so you understand the test format and can perhaps highlight a few areas to review. I'd say ~80% of your score improvement will come out of the first 10 hours of studying.

Don't kill yourself studying for it (save it for the PGRE), but considering the time/money cost I wouldn't take it too lightly either.

well it totally depends on you.. if you are confident and able to score well on the ETS test.. then well and good..but don't totally ignore it. one of my friends got 990 in PGRE, superb physics background.. but scored in 1100 and he didn't get any acceptance..

it surely does carry some weight, although lesser than PGRE.

When you register they send you the two practice exams on a CD to take with a computer. I took those the night before the exam, didn't do any studying beyond that. I don't really think you need to study for the general. There are waaaaaay too many vocab words for studying to make a difference unless you really really go at it for a long time, and the math section is super easy. Just get the general GRE out of the way.

I would advice you to spend some time on prep for the General test too - of course you should concentrate big time on the PhysGre but still, you shouldn't completely neglect this one too, as having to re-take the test could be an unnecessary waste of time, effort and money.

depending on how you feel about vocabulary, reading compreh, and writing essays - big "?" here is if English is your first language here - I would advise you to at least look at prep tests and one of the prep books by Princeton Review, ETS, Kaplan etc and the likes for some extra exercises and advice ... especially those lists of most frequently used words, which I found very helpful and it was almost scary how many of those words came up on the test I took . My advice is spent at least 7-10 days going over those and just getting familiar with the overall structure and dynamics of the test, especially if you are an international student and are not very familiar with GRE-like tests.

as for the math part, it's extremely easy concept-wise, at least the vast majority of it, however, my advice is to spend some time on prep for that one too as you might find it a bit tricky when it comes to solving those problems under pressure with time running out. You may well know how to solve all problems in general but on the GRE you need to do that quickly and efficiently too and doing some extra prep may well give you some useful ideas of how to do that too.

This being said, PhysGre is the test to spend most of your effort on.

GL

geodole wrote: The math looks really easy, but I don't know how to prepare for the Verbal/Writing sections in any short (even 6 months) amount of time...

I think it would help if you have a system in place to attack the different verbal questions-- it will help you define what you know and dont know, and avoid time pressure scenarios on the real exam. For example, all reading comprehension questions can be classified into one of 4-5 categories, which will help you identify the kind of answer that would be correct. I strongly suggest that you read Barron's book-- from what I remember, it develps a very good system to attack the verbal questions.

to add to what excel said.. you can practice big book.. i got many similar analogies from that..

acmilan wrote:GL

Green Lantern???