PGRE of last Saturday..

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Star
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PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by Star » Mon Nov 14, 2011 5:54 am

I studied for PGRE about 6months and I was completely ready for it.. The exam was last Saturday and when I saw the questions they were mostly like those sample tests published by ETS.. The exam was not hard but I had problem with time.. Time passed so soon and I had so many questions unsolved when the protector averred that only 30 minute is left.. So I just started reading the questions clumsily and concentrate to answer them.. In the end I even didn't understand how many questions remained unsolved..So now I am not very satisfied about the result.. I just hope that I answered correctly to those I answered.. Did anyone have the same problem like me?

Joe_Fraizer
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by Joe_Fraizer » Mon Nov 14, 2011 7:59 am

I think there was about 5 questions which were exactly the same as in the older tests. This test was the easiest of all the sample tests, I think I did far better than I expected. What do you other people who took it think?

sarthorks
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by sarthorks » Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:44 am

It definitely was the easiest of all five released sample papers. Thats why silly mistakes will cost more on this test than ever before.
What was the raw score cut-off for 990 in the April and October 2011 PGREs? This test should have an even higher one.

siroy.sam
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by siroy.sam » Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:00 am

I also gave the test last Saturday, 12 November. The test was at par with sample test GR0877 so far as difficulty level is concerned. In my case, I were at around 80 problems ,leaving 5/6 problems in between when the invigilator announced the last 30 minutes remaining time. So, I had to rush skipping problems that may take longer and ended up with around 85 overall with some educated guesses. Time management is the main issue in my case too. We will love to hear how other test takers feel about the Saturday test.

Star
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by Star » Mon Nov 14, 2011 12:19 pm

I think the easiness of the exam was like 0177 so the raw score of 990 should be about 85!

fadeevpapov
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by fadeevpapov » Mon Nov 14, 2011 3:22 pm

I agree with what other have said. It was on par with 0177 and will most like have a 990 cutoff around 85. So it will be better for those who tend to make less silly mistakes. Those who are more clumsy will suffer.

luftbahnfahrer
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by luftbahnfahrer » Tue Nov 15, 2011 6:09 am

I thought this exam was quite easy! It was about as easy as the easiest practice tests.

I answered all of the questions with 15 minutes to spare, looked over some questions that I wasn't 100% sure about the answer, then obsessively filled in all of the bubbles perfectly. I'm just nervous that I made too many silly mistakes!

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psocket
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by psocket » Tue Nov 15, 2011 4:03 pm

I am very much hoping that last Saturday's test was similar to the '01 or '08 tests. It seemed easy in some ways, but because I am terrible at the test it doesn't add much here. I am concerned, however, because last years tests appeared to be much easier than the practice tests. I recall from another post that 45 raw was a 620 (October 2010) and 58 a 750 (November 2010). Since I only answered 53 (and know that I screwed up a few already), I'm just crossing my fingers that I can eek out a 600+. A 40 raw on the '01 test was 670 and for '08 it was 650.

Anyone have any guesses about what the raw versus 600+ range might look like for this one?

bigD3002
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by bigD3002 » Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:16 am

I agree that the test was much easier than any of the practice test, even the newly released '08 which I was a bit surprised about. I answered about 85 questions, and I know I made at least a few mistakes. However, I will be very disappointed to make anything less than an 850 since I had the '01 and '08 exams known almost by heart going into the test. Good luck to all! I guess we get our scores around the first week of december?

Star
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by Star » Wed Nov 16, 2011 11:10 am

Does anyone know the correct answer of one question in the test which was about "the definition of proper time"? This question has made my mind busy, I want to know whether I have selected the correct one or not!:D

nabla
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by nabla » Wed Nov 16, 2011 11:32 am

Star wrote:Does anyone know the correct answer of one question in the test which was about "the definition of proper time"? This question has made my mind busy, I want to know whether I have selected the correct one or not!:D
I think the correct answer is "the time interval between the two events in a reference frame where the two events occur at the same point in space" or something like this.

Star
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by Star » Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:25 pm

nabla wrote:
Star wrote:Does anyone know the correct answer of one question in the test which was about "the definition of proper time"? This question has made my mind busy, I want to know whether I have selected the correct one or not!:D
I think the correct answer is "the time interval between the two events in a reference frame where the two events occur at the same point in space" or something like this.
But why? I remember from Relativity class that proper time is the time that a clocks measures when it is moving from event A to event B, so that's why I selected the choice which said two events should be distant. If the events be in the same point so there is no need for clock to move. So it is not necessarily proper time, it can be coordinate time too.

physicsworks
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by physicsworks » Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:42 pm


Star
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by Star » Wed Nov 16, 2011 2:20 pm

Thank you. Yeah, I had checked this site before. But still I am not sure about the correct answer of the test.

luftbahnfahrer
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by luftbahnfahrer » Thu Nov 17, 2011 5:23 pm

Proper time is the time between the two events in the reference frame where the two events occur in the same place.

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InquilineKea
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by InquilineKea » Tue Nov 29, 2011 10:24 pm

Oh crap - I made so many incredibly stupid mistakes.

Does 0177 still have the same percentiles as before though? The general trend is towards the test becoming easier and easier, so a 700 might be a good score in 2000, but not anymore in 2010, right?

Star
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by Star » Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:58 am

Yeah that is true.. Now mostly the average minimum score for accepting at universities is 700...

bfollinprm
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by bfollinprm » Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:10 pm

I dont think the average scores have increased at all; it's a standardized tests, so the average by definition stays the same. Maybe more people are taking the test, so maybe the average score of accepted students is increasing, but I doubt by very much.

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quizivex
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by quizivex » Wed Nov 30, 2011 11:43 pm

bfollinprm wrote:I dont think the average scores have increased at all; it's a standardized tests, so the average by definition stays the same.
Nah, only the average percentile by definition stays the same. The average test score has been increasing over the years. This is evident because the percentiles for a given scaled score have been gradually decreasing. For instance, 990 used to be 97% just a few years ago. Now it's 95%. The tests are normalized to a given level of performance (ETS says this is done by a mysterious process called "equating"). Therefore, it's perfectly normal for the scaled scores of an ETS test to increase over the years. This is apparently what happened with the math section of the general GRE (before the change in 2011). Scores kept improving until a perfect score was only 94% and the test was useless for measuring math ability for math-heavy fields.

The PGRE isn't necessarily getting "easier". Scores are probably increasing because physics students overall are either getting better, or at least better prepared over the years. The practice tests alone make it much easier to prepare for the test, so not surprisingly, it was much harder to do well on the test back before all the practice tests came out (see the percentiles for the 1986 test).

bfollinprm
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by bfollinprm » Thu Dec 01, 2011 12:32 am

I believe the distribution could be getting wider, but I doubt the score that correlates to the 50th %ile has changed much if at all. Otherwise the scores would be a useless assessment over time, and schools wouldn't accept older test scores. There's just no reason for the ETS to not center the test.

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InquilineKea
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by InquilineKea » Thu Dec 01, 2011 5:50 am

Very interesting points. The other thing is that the Internet has simply made it easier to prep for any test in general.

SAT scores haven't necessarily been rising, nor have SAT IIs (because a far greater percent of the population is taking them than before). But this probably isn't the case for the PGREs.

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grae313
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by grae313 » Fri Dec 02, 2011 3:08 pm

The oldest test is substantially different but all since the '92 test have the 50th percentile between 650 and 670 and the 75th percentile between 770 and 790. However, I think schools pay more attention to the percentile than the raw score.

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quizivex
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Re: PGRE of last Saturday..

Post by quizivex » Sat Dec 03, 2011 11:39 pm

Ok, I was a little off. I was paying most attention to the top scores, and the percentiles are definitely decreasing in that range.
For 900, 990:
2001 - 90%, 98%
2008 - ?, 97%
2009 - 87%, 96%
2011 - 86%, 95%

As you noted, the middle percentiles for the PGRE are roughly unchanged... but still, there are cases where percentiles for an ETS test uniformly increase or decrease. When the SAT's (and probably the GRE) were made, the tests were initially scaled to make the mean of each section 500 and the StDev 100. As more and more kids were entering colleges, the mean scores dropped into the 450 range which "looked bad"... so they "rescaled" the test in 1995 to make the mean 500 again.

The Math GRE subject test had the opposite problem... scores were improving too much (at least at the high end).
Wikipedia wrote:Prior to October 2001, a significant percentage of students were achieving perfect scores on the exam, which made it difficult for competitive programs to differentiate between students in the upper percentiles. So the test was reworked, made much more difficult, and renamed "The Mathematics Subject Test (Rescaled)." It is now considered by many to be the hardest of the GRE subject exams...
And as for the pre-2011 general GRE... it seems silly that the verbal test is so much harder than the quantitative. A 700V is very impressive while a 700Q is almost short-bus status. They didn't intend the test to be so skewed when they made it... the imbalance just developed over time as the test takers changed. In general, the test is not centered every year to make a given score match a given percentile. It is centered to a given level of performance... and if the students get better or worse over the years, so will the average scaled score.



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