Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Well, what'd you guys think? I thought it was a tad bit harder than the September exam, though still easier than the practice exams from the 90's. What do you reckon the raw score for a 990 is this time around? 80ish?

Certainly far easier than the practice tests from the 80s and 90s, though that appears to be a trend. Nothing popped out at me as an unusual question, but there were also some things I expected to see that weren't there - however, I didn't read the last 5 questions of the test since I ran out of time, so who knows.

I didn't take the Sept 2015 exam, so I can't compare, but Oct 2015 seemed about as difficult as the 2008 practice test, so I'd expect a scale similar to that one.

Now that we're through with 2015 test dates, I'm wondering if ETS will release an additional practice exam based on the years since 2008.

I think this test is much harder than the September one.

I omit four problems.

First is the [deleted].
Second is the [deleted].
Third one is the [deleted].
Fourth is one [deleted].

I am not sure about one [deleted].

I made some stupid mistakes:
First,for the [deleted].
Second, The [deleted].

I am not sure about these problem:
The [deleted], I think I choose B
The [deleted],I think I choose D, the [deleted].
For the[deleted]l, I think I choose the [deleted].


There are some tricky problems.

The [deleted].
The [deleted]. I think.

A couple of the trivia questions stumped me. They were pretty simple but on topics I hadn't seen come up in any of the practice exams.

None of the computational problems seemed impossible, but I was short enough on time that I skipped a few that looked like they might take me 5-8 minutes to do.

I also think the October test was much harder than the September one. I felt that a surprising number of questions were in my blind spot, and that I wasn't in a good position to guess (e.g. minus signs, reciprocals..). I also saw a lot of trivia that I didn't possibly think about studying. I left almost 20 blank...anyone else feel this bad about it?

I agree with you guys about the trivia -- there seemed to be ~10 or so trivia questions, a bit more than usual. I left at least half of those blank. There were some fun quantum questions, though!

Yes I did take it today too. I did attempt 83. I think 20 are guesses. My prevoius PGRE 2011 score was 730. This test is not difficult one little harder than 2008 practice test, April 2011 and November 2011. Test difficulty has reduced if we compare with 86,92,96 and 01 practice tests.

moon wrote:I also think the October test was much harder than the September one. I felt that a surprising number of questions were in my blind spot, and that I wasn't in a good position to guess (e.g. minus signs, reciprocals..). I also saw a lot of trivia that I didn't possibly think about studying. I left almost 20 blank...anyone else feel this bad about it?

I'm with you. Some of them I couldn't even guess on, and others I ran out of time on. I think I also left about 20-25 blank. Fortunately I did okay on the September one.

I thought it was pretty easy, just a bit harder than 2008 practice exam. Omitted 8 questions (mostly trivia, with some topics I had no clue about), missed a couple on account of dumb mistakes but probably did well. Hoping for a score in the 900s.

The question was a little tricky than the 2008 and 2001 practice tests. There were some numerical calculations which claimed substantial time. Attempted all, omitted 10 because I was not sure about the topic and I was trying to avoid negative marking. Confidently solved 90, so far I can remember, 4-5 of them are wrong. Expecting a good score. Good luck, everyone. Everybody did their best. A

nousernameavailable wrote:I thought it was pretty easy, just a bit harder than 2008 practice exam. Omitted 8 questions (mostly trivia, with some topics I had no clue about), missed a couple on account of dumb mistakes but probably did well. Hoping for a score in the 900s.

Same as you.

Somewhat tough, not insurmountable. Definitely screwed it up royally. Omitted 11-12, some I did know but ah limited time. I wouldn't have bothered studying optics if I knew they were gonna put all the hardest ones in.

Found it much easier than the one I took in September, partly due to the additional study, and partly due to the special topics being more doable. Last time I attempted around 87-88, and got around 10-12 wrong and ended up with 910 (86th %ile). This time I did all except one, though I'm fairly certain I screwed up more problems. Really hoping I can break the 90th percentile.

So, anyone knows when the results would be out? Just getting anxious..

spectral_flow wrote:So, anyone knows when the results would be out? Just getting anxious..

It should be 12:01am (EST) Monday, so in just under 6 hours. This is how it went for September and apparently other exams before that.

Just received my scores online; I made an 850 (78%) which is more or less what I was expecting from practice exams but its a relief to finally have the score in. On the exam I believe I answered 94 questions with something in the the ballpark of 20% incorrect. This seems to place its scoring somewhere near that of the released 2008 exam.

I got an 990(94%), it was higher than my expectations. I left 4 blanks, knew I did 2 wrong. On sample exams I miss 10% ~15% of the questions I answered due to silly mistakes.