Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Has anyone started studying yet?

I'm taking the PGRE on this test date and am wondering about others' study plans.

I'd be willing to for an online study group for anyone interested.

So far, I've been reading Feynman Lectures on Physics to brush up on concepts. I have four different editions of Halliday's and Resnick's Fundamentals of Physics that I'm about to break open. I bought Conquering the Physics GRE and the Purple Book, which is supposed to have a lot of problems that are harder than the test itself. I have Griffiths' E&M, Quantum, and Intro to Particles books, as well.

I'm just starting studying now, I'm in if you want!

Awesome. I'm not entirely sure how we would go about this. Do you have any ideas?

I can share with you links to the pdfs on dropbox or google drive if you couldn't find them/don't have them. I should be getting a couple in the mail today as well.

The easiest way that would take only a little bit of our time, would be to post what questions we're going through and subjects on here or through email or something. My internet is too slow for Skype to work well. I was looking at this (https://sites.google.com/a/uw.edu/physicsgre/home) for an actual plan. I think we would have enough time to go through it.

I'm starting to study too, so I'm in too Im thinkining of following the study plan from the last link posted but with some changes to concentrate on some topics I have forgotten (mainly thermodynamics, special rel and some miscellaneous stuff)

That sounds like a great idea. I need to brush up on my thermo, badly.

Started tonight, I'm going to get "Conquering the Physics GRE by Yoni Kahn.

ne one able to throw light on what to do if the april test is not offered in my country.. or may be i am super mistaken?..india

inertial wrote:ne one able to throw light on what to do if the april test is not offered in my country.. or may be i am super mistaken?..india

The website seems to show that no April subject tests are scheduled in India right now. It also says it's updated monthly so they might be scheduled in the future. Also, there are instructions online on how to request them to open a testing center for you. It would be a good idea to start that process right away if you want a test in April because it might be a long process to do.

The schedule does show that there were subject tests in India in October 2015 and that might mean there will be tests in October 2016 too. Since it's already too late to take the test for Fall 2016 applications, the next cycle is Fall 2017, and the October 2016 test date is still early enough to apply in winter 2016 to start school in Fall 2017. That might be an alternative if you cannot get ETS to open a testing center for you in April 2016.

Hi..thanks...i have raised the case with ets already, and may be they will respond post the winter break. It would be nice to see if their supplementary centres really happen..will post the outcome..

Hopefully, they will. Good luck, inertial!

Hello everyone
How was the test? I found it much easier than the October test. What do you think?

Don't know about the October test, but this April test felt much easier than the practice tests available.

Hi everyone!
I guess the exam was very easy. I didn't study for that but I could answer pretty good. I hope you all are doing very well.

I guess we'll have a very high cut-off for 990 for this test

No news about scores yet!

I have checked my clock by using cellphone. However, now, the time in NY is 6pm, 15,may. We need to wait more time because the reference frame is not each country but USA damn.....my country is now 08am 16,April but i need to wait more time about 12h hahaha how about yout test? I think that my raw score would be approximately 85. I hope i will be able to get above 900 but i am not sure

We'll be soon mashing the F5 button. I only wished I wasn't the only one in my city taking a GRE subject test in April, it felt lonely.

Anybody got the scores?

physicist91 wrote:I have checked my clock by using cellphone. However, now, the time in NY is 6pm, 15,may. We need to wait more time because the reference frame is not each country but USA damn.....my country is now 08am 16,April but i need to wait more time about 12h hahaha how about yout test? I think that my raw score would be approximately 85. I hope i will be able to get above 900 but i am not sure

I was not ready for exam. Just answered around 70 questions. I am shooting for 990 in september! Well hopefully!!

If the Raw score in the exam is 85, your score would be 950 i have checked it

physicist91 wrote:If the Raw score in the exam is 85, your score would be 950 i have checked it

How did you check that? You'd need to be pretty good at remembering test questions & your answers and such.... I really don't know how people do that.

Qwaps wrote:

physicist91 wrote:If the Raw score in the exam is 85, your score would be 950 i have checked it

How did you check that? You'd need to be pretty good at remembering test questions & your answers and such.... I really don't know how people do that.

just focusing on the problems which were not answered correctly or you did not know about the right answers precisely.

and.. i think that if one feel nervous, he or she would be able to remember a lot of questions. (I was too nervous when i took the exam )

well, plus, after the exam, i had checked every problem that i remembered to certify my raw score.

my expected raw score is 85, then, the scaled score would be 950 with 91%.

you have any plans to take the exam? or you already did take it????



well, i will give you some tips.

first of all, you have to solve every sample of PGRE as many as possible, and at the same time, you need to write down the problems which you do not know correctly and do make mistakes. it would be really helpful. In this case, you will be able to notice that some concepts are frequently asked. for example, in Optics, ETS loves to asking interference, such as thin film, lens, Bragg, and others. in Atomic physics. they often ask Hydrogen atom, the energy of electron in higher Z atoms such as Li++. well, i think that ETS likes to give us some problems about Oscilloscope, logic circuit in Lab method.


second, you have to study and solve a lot of problems in the textbook: General physics and modern physics. in have used Haliday and Beiser.
but! just concentrating on the concepts which you often have made mistakes. for instance, i did not have solved Biot Savart problem. in this case, i had solved the problems and concepts in the chapters which contain Biot Savart law, in General physics book. for Mechanics, EM, QM, SM, you may be able to refer: Marion (this text book best describes Lagrangian and Hamiltonian in the undergraduate level.), Grittiths (for both QM and EM), and Schroeder (this book is quite nice i love this book!! this book well describe the basic concepts such as Boltzmann statics, Quantum statics, and others but you need to refer general physics book at the same time in order to solve calculation problems.)

if you have more questions, please contact my personal mail.

anyway, i hope that you will be able to get a good score!!

Kind regards

Haha... Thanks for the tips, but I also took it in April 16 . I thought it was quite an easy exam (I never did the latest practice GRE exam - I only did the other 4), except nothing would have prepared me for question 100 . For reference sake, a 990 in the April 2016 PGRE was a 94% percentile.