axiomofchoice wrote:I have not seen a Bachelor level physics course in 2 years when I took the PGRE as well. Nor did I ever learn some of the topics (optics, solid state stuff, etc.) on the PGRE in any of my courses.
This means nothing, what is the statistical significance of one persons result? Either people are in general more well-prepared or less well-prepared, statistical background noise will unfortunately not change this and there will always be some who break the trend, upwards and downwards.
axiomofchoice wrote:Do you think that everyone of the domestic students, and the international students from the countries that you keep pointing out, are excellently prepared for the PGRE by his/her studies, while only you and those from your countries are not?
This is a straw man. I made a statistical observation and you follow up by "...everyone of the domestic students..." and "while only you and .." Needless to say, you are missing the point. If some student were to do his undergrad and preparation in the US and writes immediately after his bachelors, he will, for the reasons I gave, probably score ON AVERAGE about 1.1 or 1.2 times a higher raw score than if he had had his education and preparation in certain countries outside the US, and hade written after he had done his masters in something advanced, say string theory for example.
If he had done it in Hong Kong or Japan, sure, maybe his score would be even higher! But this means nothing for those countries who have absolutely no experience with the gre and where you are basically a lone wolf trying to do what is considered OBVIOUS in other countries.
axiomofchoice wrote:I have seen lots of excellent PGRE scores from Europeans on the profile threads, as well as plenty of not-so-excellent PGRE scores from domestic students. Your theory does not seem to hold up.
There is a really, really tall girl at my school. This nonsense of men being on average taller is just such hocus-pocus and people are just saying that because they are haters who scored humbly on the PGRE.
Having said that, there MAY in fact be certain european countries that score extremely well on the gre. Unfortunately, Portugal is not the same country as Poland. Therefore, no matter how prepared the average pole is for the gre, and how well-informed the students are of how they should write it and when - this will be of little consolation to, for example, the average portuguese physicist who was told of its existence after having learnt Riemannian geometry.
I hope you catch my drift
axiomofchoice wrote:I can believe you when you say your PGRE scores does not reflect your intellectual abilities, but to blame your score on your educational background and you being an international student is too much of a stretch for me.
If I prepare you really well for physics and not so much for multiple-choice, strategy-focused speed-runs in thin oil films then this does not mean you are allowed to score 500. It may mean that you will score 800 whereas at a normal US school you would score 850, and at an ambitious ivy league school where everybody in the class is writing it, and spreading information and groupworking, you might get 900 or more. Not everybody has these advantages, not even in the US, it just annoys me that regardless of where I study in my home country I would be exposed to way less of these kinds of things than at any average US school.
I am not blaming my score on anything, I was commenting on the statement made above that was made - that internationals are always better prepared. That statement was wrong and I did and still do object vehemently. As for my own personal performance, that might just be statistical noise.
axiomofchoice wrote:p.s. If someone introduces you to me as a renowned string theorist, and you can't explain to me why a thin oil film on glass do funny things, I'd cry BS.
Sure I can do all that stuff. I often see statements made on this forum which, if read by someone who was unfamiliar with the PGRE, would interpret it as being a non-relative test. Somehow meaning that
if you don't have a good score, you can't do it. This is of course wrong, and displays ignorance on how the grading of the GRE is a scaled score and not a raw score.
We all have to remember that you can be pretty good at solving problems based on simple oil films, constructive interference and based on simple number-equals-number formulae. But if somebody who studied hardcore for many months with the best materials, tricks etc. can do it really fast because he solved an identical problem in this one obscure PDF he found - well then your score will be lower. Of course I can do anything in the bachelor curriculum - its just that my expertise was solving long problems - which I did better than almost anybody else - and that my expertise has long since moved on to real physics much closer to the research frontier. There are thick books in algebraic geometry and topology that need to be swallowed and I cant devote too much time to these childish "can you tell me which of the following five electric fields has a vanishing curl and is therefore a candidate for a field created by a fixed set of motionless charges - come on guys DO IT QUICKLY AND GET IT RIGHT -ITS (C)!!!"-type questions which do not further my grasp of research.