Preparing for the Physics GRE: Majors vs. Non-Majors

[maverick280857]

Hi

Just curious...how (tough/different) is the Physics GRE for people who don't have physics majors, but are introduced to most of the stuff at a basic level? Would like to hear from both physics majors and non-physics majors who have taken Physics GRE (subject test).

Cheers

 

[Brad Barker]

Hi

Just curious...how (tough/different) is the Physics GRE for people who don't have physics majors, but are introduced to most of the stuff at a basic level? Would like to hear from both physics majors and non-physics majors who have taken Physics GRE (subject test).

Cheers

hell, it's hard for physics majors!

take the practice exam that's on the ETS website--it's pretty representative of the exam.

i put in two months of hard work for the test, and it really paid off.

non-phys majors might have the disadvantage of not having textbooks in EM, modern physics, classical mechanics, and quantum mechanics, so you'd have to look for those books in the library or something in order to understand many of the problems.

 

[arunma]

Looks like Brad beat me to it. The physics GRE is hard enough for us, I can't imagine a non-physics major taking it. Maybe, if you're in a related field such as chemistry, you've taken the first two years of physics, as well as classical mechanics and E&M, and you've got some quantum mechanics from another department, then you could do just as well as a physics major.

But if you're not in physics, why would you want to? Are you trying to go to graduate school in physics?

 

[maverick280857]

Arunma, are you from India?

 

[arunma]

Arunma, are you from India?

No, I'm from Minnesota. But I am Indian (hence the Indian name). Why do you ask?

 

[maverick280857]

No, I'm from Minnesota. But I am Indian (hence the Indian name). Why do you ask?

Because all this time I never noticed that the first four letters of your login-id actually form a name .

 

[maverick280857]

We have a reasonably difficult entrance test to get into the university I'm studying in. Our coursework in the first year also builds on what we do for this test. The sample gre test has several accessible questions, but of course there are some things we haven't been exposed to and will not be--in an engineering curriculum. My question really was--how much does the undergraduate preparation help there?