nSF

As I said I took no practice tests so I'm taking at least one a week for the math section until I take the test again in a month or so. I can get a much better math score than that. You?

Let me say this right off the bat: take practice tests, take practice tests, take practice tests... I did not. I had three successful professionals tell me to take practice tests and I opted not to and to to just study straight from the books. The closest I got to practice tests was to working math tests in the book but not against a clock. The clock, it will get you. The quantitative section was all I truly cared about scoring high in since this is what many civil engineering masters programs main concern is. I studied math hard and understood all formulas and strategies the book provided. I was very confident with all the math problems I answered, and I think I got all of the ones I answered correct. However, a few problems inevitably took a little time to work out and I didn't manage the clock as well as I could have had I practiced against one. I therefore had to guess on the last couple problems of each section. Ugh. I barely studied for the verbal and writing sections; I probably spent a total of three to four two-hour study sessions with them. I'm somewhat bookish, I read a lot of novels and read the paper everyday and don't watch much tv. I relied on my own vocabulary and about 150 words from a Kaplan book and I'm fine with that score. I did see a lot of the words from the Kaplan book and none of the words on the test were that far out there. As a matter of fact I was surprised at the simplicity of a few of the answer options. For what it's worth, in my opinion the reading comprehension questions were more difficult in the sense that a lot of the answers seemed plausible. What gets me is all the time I put in on math and the fact that I know I could've done better had I done a few real practice tests. Lastly, two things, one somewhat trivial. The first is that the test time sounds grueling but it flies by when you're in there. It really does. You obviously go through a check-in process but that takes no time, then they show you to your computer and then you're off. To me, it really felt like it flew by. Part of this is seeing a clock tick away while you work the 20 problems in each section. It's not a test that feels of great duration, at least not to me. So don't worry about becoming fatigued, as long as you get decent sleep the night before. The somewhat trivial thing is that I had to urinate (haha) multiple times in the test. I drank too much coffee and OJ before test. This really hurt me during one of the verbal parts because I was literally convulsing and lost concentration on the latter half of one part. Hope this information helps a little. Time to regroup and pull this math score up in a couple months. Stay hungry, stay calm, take practice tests galore. Cheers, Sam

So this means, according to the old scoring format, if I get 87.5%, or 7/8 of my quantitative correct then I'm good. And since it's 40 problems I need to get 35 correct. Have any of you gone into the math section looking at it like this, that you can sacrifice a few problems? Further, what would be your strategy if you were me? I'm struggling a little bit with tough permutation word problems and with tricky quantitative comparisons:blue: With everything else I've become relatively comfortable. My concern is that I'm gonna get bombarded with these types. I still have a little over a month before I take the GRE and plenty of time to sharpen my skills in these areas but what would be your approach if you were me?