Please Help

[Kaitlin McKinley]

Hello everyone,

I'm taking my test in December and would love to hear from people who took the November test. Since my prep hasn't been going great, I really really need some help !

Other than Princeton Review, what other books have you guys been using ? Can anyone share some sample questions please ?

Thanks,
Kaitlin
kaitlin_mckinley@yahoo.com

[mansakus]

hi kaitlin

Just like you, I've been prepping for the GRE Subject Test in Mathematics for a few weeks now. I haven't been using any of the commercial books -- just the free sample test made available from ETS. I gathered all my undergraduate math textbooks and started reviewing theorems, definitions, concepts, and formulas but still there are questions in that sample test that I can't get right on the first time. This is so frustrating. Some of those questions are just twisted to make people fall into error traps. I don't think it's just the material, or our lives would be a lot easier. Just like any other test from ETS involving math, some questions are just made to look hard. Consider for example the item about the number of points the graphs of 2^x and x^12 intersect. If you look at the answer key of the sample test, only 17 % of the test takers got that item correct, the lowest such percentage in the entire pool of items for the sample test. So in terms of performance that was the toughest item of the test and yet it requires nothing more than a good high school pre-calculus background. But it's supposed to be a test for Math undergraduates. Isn't that ironic? My advice on this? You're not going to like the news I have for you: some items (or may be many items) you will not get correct no matter how hard you study. I for myself expect to get quite a few items wrong on the actual test. I'm willing to bet you would be hard-pressed to find a person who gets a perfect score on this test by just pure ability. It takes a little more than that (such as luck). So don't sweat it.

[Kaitlin McKinley]

Thanks Mansakus. What you pointed out is really ironic ! Anyways, Good luck.

Kaitlin
kaitlin_mckinley@yahoo.com

[Lizard381]

Yea, I just took the test in November, and I found that the questions on the test were more difficult than the ones on the practice test or in the princeton review book. Plus there were questions, like manaskus said, that I simply couldn't figure out how to do. I guess you might want to try asking math teachers for help on solving the ones that you can't do.

[Kaitlin McKinley]

Thats very frustrating. But thanks for your reply lizard381.

Kaitlin
kaitlin_mckinley@yahoo.com