What books to read for 800 in quant on the standard test?

Forum for the GRE subject test in mathematics.
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blp
Posts: 17
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:24 am

What books to read for 800 in quant on the standard test?

Post by blp » Sun Oct 19, 2008 7:06 am

On this forum I assume that most are aiming for an 800, right? What do you think are the best preparation materials for a higher score? I noticed that many of the preparation books have tons of very easy questions, while the actual 800 level questions on the GRE usually require at least some thinking.

Any thoughts? I have about 2 weeks to prepare for the whole GRE, so what books should I buy? I know I will get a bad verbal score, but I hope it doesn't count too much as English is not my native language.

amateur
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2008 9:41 am

Post by amateur » Sun Oct 19, 2008 8:29 am

Dear friend,

Unfortunately for you (Fortunately for us), this forum explicitly deals with the GRE Subject Test on Mathematics and not the GRE General Test with Verbal, Analytical (Writing) and Math Sections. You may subscribe to some other forum for that.

Thanks.

blp
Posts: 17
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:24 am

Post by blp » Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:53 am

Well, I do know that, and I actually took the subject test yesterday, but I assume most of you are studying for the General test too and need to get an 800. Hence, my question.

kaiserguy
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2008 9:16 pm

Post by kaiserguy » Sun Oct 19, 2008 12:12 pm

Yeah, I took the subject test yesterday as well. I'm not worried about the general quant section. It's pretty basic for someone with a mathematical background.

blp
Posts: 17
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:24 am

Post by blp » Sun Oct 19, 2008 12:34 pm

Yeah, but the problem is that I actually know a guy who got a 740 on the quant while scoring 90%+ on subject test. So even though the questions are very trivial you can do mistakes (like I made a mistake with a sign in the first question on yesterdays subject test...).

I guess there should be at least some book that doesn't start by telling you what a fraction is, but concentrates on having loads of problems in 800 range in terms of difficulty.

amateur
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2008 9:41 am

Post by amateur » Sun Oct 19, 2008 12:50 pm

Well, blp you seem to be quite smart, intelligent, brilliant... I haven't seen anyone on this forum who got all 66 questions correct on the subject practice test from 80s. (GRE8767 I guess) How much did you score while practicing on GRE0568?

Could you please share with me the great secret of your terrific subject mathematics preparation. Did you consult any books...? Or was your college background enough? I would specially appreciate your suggestion for some sources on Abstract Algebra.

Thanks,
Amateur

blp
Posts: 17
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:24 am

Post by blp » Sun Oct 19, 2008 2:49 pm

I don't know if I'm that smart... That test was special, because there was really nothing to calculate on most of the exercises. That test was actually pretty ideal for me, because I'm already a 2nd year graduate student, though in Europe. I could answer about half of the questions directly without thinking about them at all. If you look at the questions, all the theoretical claims can be disproved or proved by taking pretty much the canonical example of the structure in question.

About my background, I have a M.Sc. in math, which is a 5 year degree, but I finished it in less than 3 years. My GPA is 5/5 in maths and 4.94/5 overall. I've already taken quite a lot of graduate math, e.g. commutative algebra, homological algebra, fields and galois theory, measure theory, functional analysis, algebraic geometry (schemes).

I studied for the GRE by buying the Princeton Review book two weeks ago. I had planned to study for about a month, but there were some personal things that got in the way.

My weakness is that I haven't done any practical calculations since the second year of my undergraduate, so I had forgot most of the formulas. Formulas for e.g. Fourier series and how they work I nowadays only remember by thinking about how it relates to the projection to a subset with an orthonormal basis and then look up formulas from a book. Similarly sums of trigonometric formulas I relate to Euler's identity. However, the GRE doesn't care about the fact that you know how to derive everything, you just need to know the formulas. :)

amateur
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2008 9:41 am

Post by amateur » Sun Oct 19, 2008 3:03 pm

Impressive, but looks like from another planet!

blp
Posts: 17
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:24 am

Post by blp » Sun Oct 19, 2008 3:26 pm

It's actually not that impressive... it's what most people would be doing in a Ph.D. program.

kaiserguy
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2008 9:16 pm

Post by kaiserguy » Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:38 pm

I've just done the two quant sample sections from the ets website. I'm probably not going to look at that stuff anymore and just focus on the analytical and qualitative parts. I got a few of them wrong but it was only becuause I didn't read the question correctly or made a very stupid mistake (I was listening to music while doing the questions). My advice is to just read the question fully and think a little carefully about your answer. It's pretty easy stuff.

prce
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Mar 24, 2008 3:02 pm

Post by prce » Wed Oct 22, 2008 5:54 am

I did the quant section on all the practice test available (princeton,big book,barron, computer adaptive from ets) and on EVERY single one of them i made exactly ONE mistake :)



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