How Can I Score 900 or Above on the Physics GRE with Limited Study Time?

[Simfish]

Okay, so, if you want to get a score that's 900 or above, do you have to go beyond the basic books like Halliday, Tipler's "Modern Physics", Schroeder's "Thermal Physics", HyperPhysics, Griffiths QM, Griffiths EM, and a brief chapter on positronium? What about a score of 950 or above?

Also, is "Introduction to Elementary Particles" (Griffiths) overkill? What about "Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics" (Reif), Atomic Physics (Foot), and Hecht Optics? What about the last few chapters of Griffiths QM (do they care about QM scattering?) And the last couple of Griffiths EM?

If you only have half a year left, is it also advisable to just do the quickest and easiest problems in the textbooks? (just skip all problems that have derivations or multiple steps?)

 

[matonski]

The way I studied was to do practically all the odd 3-star problems in Halliday as well as most of the odd problems in Modern Physics by Beiser. Furthermore, after taking each of the 4 practice tests, I went through each problem and tried to think of quick ways of doing them, like testing limits, dimensional analysis, etc. I took it first without studying and got a 760. Then I studied for about 3 months using the above method and got an 890.

 

[phyzguy]

The way I studied was to download all of the old GRE exams I could find. Then I worked through the problems on an exam, and any I didn't know how to do I reviewed that topic until I understood problems of that type. When I was satisfied that I understood all of the problems, then I did another old GRE exam, which highlighted some more shortcomings. I kept doing this until I had taken all of the old exams I could find. I ended up scoring pretty well.

 

[G01]

I studied by downloading all the released old exams.

I used two of the exams as references for the type of material covered. I then studied that materials until I knew it all cold.

Later I used the other two exams as practice tests and took them under test conditions.