Bewildered Over GRE Practice Tests
Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:52 pm
Hi... 5 days before the October test and I've looked through most of the practice (old exam) material...
I'm completely stunned.
The first test I went through was 9677 and I felt comfortable with the content and felt I could get most of it correct minus a bunch of silly mistakes and other errors. Seeing that you needed a raw score of only 56 for a 900 and 67 for a 990, I felt pretty confident I'd do fine.
Then I looked at test 1077... I was blown away. Those problems seemed even more difficult, with far more of those classic ETS evasive booby trap answers and a ton of questions based on random memorized facts. Since this test is the one most students say resembles the actual exam in recent years, I really started worrying... Furthermore, seeing that WE NEEDED A RAW SCORE OF 73 for a 900 and 85 for a 990 on that version of the test, I'm starting to panic.
I am totally befuddled over how they score these tests. On test 9677, I'd finish a problem that seemed mundane and routine, and yet the data in the back would say that like only 32% of the students got it right and I was thinking "wow I'm gonna slam dunk this test", and then on 1077 I'd finish a problem that was arduous and confusing, half the time get it wrong, and then find in the back that like 70% of the examinees got that one correct. I just don't understand.
Here's just a few examples of what I'm talking about...
1) In 9677, there was a question (45) asking which of the following 5 circuits is a high pass filter...
In 1077, there was a nearly identical analogous question (39), except it gave us FOUR CIRCUITS AND ASKED US WHICH TWO are high pass filters...
In both cases, 45% of the examinees got it correct. How could that be?
2) One practice test asked us to find the minimum diamter lens needed to resolve an image, but because the answer choices differed by orders of magnitude, it didn't matter whether we used Lamda/D or 1.22Lamda/D or 2.44Lamda/D...
There was a nearly identical question on 1077 (13) but in this case the answer choices were so close together that we had to remember the exact rayleigh criterion formula 1.22Lamda/D otherwise we would not get the correct answer.
3) Finally, there was an error analysis question, (16), that not only required us to do a tedious computation of average error or standard deviation (I don't know which they wanted), the answer did not seem to come from any of the methods I learned in my statistics class... someone told me the solution was based on some specific property of "Poisson processes", but to me, requiring us to know that is as unreasonable as asking a "Who did that experiment and on what day of the week?" question on the GRE.
On the other tests, when I got an answer wrong, my mistake became clear after I reviewed the problem more carefully, but on 1077, I'm still clueless over how I'm supposed to do some of the ones I got wrong.
Has anyone else noticed drastic differences among the practice tests. I haven't "taken" the practice tests in a timed setting, but for those of you who have, have your scaled scores been consistent or unpredictable? For those of you who took the real test, did you feel the practice tests prepared you adequately, and did your real score agree with your practice test scores?
Sorry for the length, I was trying to get my point across clearly with supporting facts.
Regards
I'm completely stunned.
The first test I went through was 9677 and I felt comfortable with the content and felt I could get most of it correct minus a bunch of silly mistakes and other errors. Seeing that you needed a raw score of only 56 for a 900 and 67 for a 990, I felt pretty confident I'd do fine.
Then I looked at test 1077... I was blown away. Those problems seemed even more difficult, with far more of those classic ETS evasive booby trap answers and a ton of questions based on random memorized facts. Since this test is the one most students say resembles the actual exam in recent years, I really started worrying... Furthermore, seeing that WE NEEDED A RAW SCORE OF 73 for a 900 and 85 for a 990 on that version of the test, I'm starting to panic.
I am totally befuddled over how they score these tests. On test 9677, I'd finish a problem that seemed mundane and routine, and yet the data in the back would say that like only 32% of the students got it right and I was thinking "wow I'm gonna slam dunk this test", and then on 1077 I'd finish a problem that was arduous and confusing, half the time get it wrong, and then find in the back that like 70% of the examinees got that one correct. I just don't understand.
Here's just a few examples of what I'm talking about...
1) In 9677, there was a question (45) asking which of the following 5 circuits is a high pass filter...
In 1077, there was a nearly identical analogous question (39), except it gave us FOUR CIRCUITS AND ASKED US WHICH TWO are high pass filters...
In both cases, 45% of the examinees got it correct. How could that be?
2) One practice test asked us to find the minimum diamter lens needed to resolve an image, but because the answer choices differed by orders of magnitude, it didn't matter whether we used Lamda/D or 1.22Lamda/D or 2.44Lamda/D...
There was a nearly identical question on 1077 (13) but in this case the answer choices were so close together that we had to remember the exact rayleigh criterion formula 1.22Lamda/D otherwise we would not get the correct answer.
3) Finally, there was an error analysis question, (16), that not only required us to do a tedious computation of average error or standard deviation (I don't know which they wanted), the answer did not seem to come from any of the methods I learned in my statistics class... someone told me the solution was based on some specific property of "Poisson processes", but to me, requiring us to know that is as unreasonable as asking a "Who did that experiment and on what day of the week?" question on the GRE.
On the other tests, when I got an answer wrong, my mistake became clear after I reviewed the problem more carefully, but on 1077, I'm still clueless over how I'm supposed to do some of the ones I got wrong.
Has anyone else noticed drastic differences among the practice tests. I haven't "taken" the practice tests in a timed setting, but for those of you who have, have your scaled scores been consistent or unpredictable? For those of you who took the real test, did you feel the practice tests prepared you adequately, and did your real score agree with your practice test scores?
Sorry for the length, I was trying to get my point across clearly with supporting facts.
Regards