Are the GRE practice books I'm buying sufficient ?
- Thread starter roni
- Start date
Yos Feit
Grad Student
- Joined
- 5/24/09
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- 13
Timing is important
The time conditions are critical because they reward elegant solutions to the problems and penalize brute force solutions. If you need more than 45 seconds on a problem, then you have not hit on the elegant solution, and you will not get an 800. For example, the Pythagorian theorem is always the brute force approach, and you could have saved time by recognizing the 3-4-5 triangle instead. You could solve for areas or you could recognize that if a linear dimension grows, the area increases as the square. The questions are purposely loaded with shortcuts, but you must be clever enough to see them. While you may know a general approach for solving two equations with two unknowns, there is alway a way to add or subtract the equations for a quicker answer. Do not waste time solving for unneed results. If the requirement is the value of 2*x*x, do not bother solving for x.
It helps to write study notecards with key facts to memorize.
- all the integer sided triangles up to an area of 200.
- decimal values of pi and the square roots of 2 and 3
- formula for the area of an equalateral triangle.
- simple combination and discrete probability formulae
- algebra identities like a^2 - b^2 = (a+b)(a-b)
I liked the Barrons book best because it described practical shortcuts and insights in some detail.
The English is more problematic, but fortunately, not a requirement for the MFE. Vocabulary lists are useless, because you need to understand idiomatic usage and not just the main definition. You need to read college level literature and use a dictionary to understand every unfamiliar word.
The time conditions are critical because they reward elegant solutions to the problems and penalize brute force solutions. If you need more than 45 seconds on a problem, then you have not hit on the elegant solution, and you will not get an 800. For example, the Pythagorian theorem is always the brute force approach, and you could have saved time by recognizing the 3-4-5 triangle instead. You could solve for areas or you could recognize that if a linear dimension grows, the area increases as the square. The questions are purposely loaded with shortcuts, but you must be clever enough to see them. While you may know a general approach for solving two equations with two unknowns, there is alway a way to add or subtract the equations for a quicker answer. Do not waste time solving for unneed results. If the requirement is the value of 2*x*x, do not bother solving for x.
It helps to write study notecards with key facts to memorize.
- all the integer sided triangles up to an area of 200.
- decimal values of pi and the square roots of 2 and 3
- formula for the area of an equalateral triangle.
- simple combination and discrete probability formulae
- algebra identities like a^2 - b^2 = (a+b)(a-b)
I liked the Barrons book best because it described practical shortcuts and insights in some detail.
The English is more problematic, but fortunately, not a requirement for the MFE. Vocabulary lists are useless, because you need to understand idiomatic usage and not just the main definition. You need to read college level literature and use a dictionary to understand every unfamiliar word.