Greetings, Has anyone here taken the GRE in Physics? If so, what would you gauge the difficulty at? It's either Physics or Psychology. Thanks! Dominic
I took the physics GRE in 1994 or thereabouts, and it was quite tough -- if I remember correctly, the year I took it, getting 45 correct out of 100 (and none wrong) would be 99th percentile -- it's a pretty tough test, and very broad in coverage. Mechanics, E&M, Quantum are the biggest groups, followed closely by Special Relativity, Thermo, Optics and Solid State, then they always throw in a bunch of questions related to more specialized fields -- Atomic and Nuclear, electronic circuits, advanced mathematics, computational physics, etc. FYI, I have a BS in physics, and got pretty good grades in college, and I got hammered on the GRE physics (did very well on the GRE general and LSAT, though). Also, the same year that 45\100 got you 99th percentile in physics, getting 100\100 in the mathematics test would only get you 94th percentile, because so many people actually did get them all right. Just food for thought -- the GRE subject tests vary quite widely in difficulty, breadth and depth. Last but not least, the old GRE engineering exam always had the rep of being the hardest exam, as it used to only be one exam -- it didn't matter if you were in chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical, etc., there was only one engineering test... I think its a lot different now. Richard
