Mr. Samir Chaudhary, Quantitative Expert
Samir Chaudhary: Samir Chaudhary is a Quantitative Aptitude Expert. He did his Computer Engineering from NIT Jaipur (2010 Batch). He has expertise (quantitative) in various entrance and competitive exams - SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, SAT Subjects, IB Physics & Maths. He brings a total of 4.3 years of experience. He has scored 720 Q-51 and V 39.
Is scoring high in the GRE Quant section possible without having good clarity on mathematical concepts?
Ans. For that I would say ‘No’, because GRE is a paper of logical reasoning and aptitude. It is based on mathematics but it is not like someone has to be an expert in mathematics. The test doesn’t check the knowledge of mathematics rather it checks how good a student is at reasoning. A student basically should have basics mathematical concepts that are taught in the 10th and 11th Standard. People usually find it difficult because anybody who takes GRE exam generally take it after their graduation or after few years of working. By then, students have already forgotten about mathematical concepts. And this is the main reason why students find the GRE quantitative section difficult.
How long students should prepare for GRE Quant section?
Ans. Let’s say a GRE candidate has completed his/her graduation and a couple of years of work experience which totals up to 8 years of gap after finishing their 10th Class. In such case, nobody remembers anything. Ideally, students should prepare for nearly 4 months for a couple of GRE classroom classes and self-study, if he/she is preparing for the exam along with regular work. But if someone is completely focused on preparing for GRE and wants to score around 320-325, a couple of months would be good enough.
How GRE candidates can score 170 in GRE Quant?
Ans. Students should be clear about the basics of mathematics and when I say clear it should be ‘crystal clear’. If someone is not clear about the basics, though he/she might solve the problem, but may get trapped in small tricky parts and end up selecting the wrong answer. Another strategy is, since we have limited number of questions which are like official GRE exam quant questions. Each question should not be practiced to get a solution, rather students should understand the logic behind it. The more clear one is with the algorithms, the more clarity on how things happens, the faster one can solve the question. Each question should be treated in a way where one is clear about the logic of solving a problem. Moreover, if a student gets stuck with a particular problem then in that case many students look for the solution. Rather than doing that, one should spend 10 - 15 minutes in a particular question and try to think in different possible directions to attack the question. Sometimes, it is possible to solve a question by not even solving it. There are strategies such as ‘elimination’, sometimes one can answer by trying out the answer options given. When one knows different ways to approach a question, it increases his/her skills and how to approach a problem and an ‘approach’ is what the most important aspect to succeed in GRE. A student should know how to approach a question.
What is the percentage of students who secure 100% in GRE Quant?
Ans. GRE is a percentile based test. Scoring 170 doesn’t mean that the student got each and every question correct. It means the student secured in the range of 98-100%. Only top 20-30 students secure 100% score. Getting a score of 170 is not tough, students generally miss by doing silly mistakes. They get trapped into small tricks of a question and select a wrong answer. That is what makes people stop from getting a score of 170. One has to work on how to avoid silly mistakes to score 170. GRE is a test where timing is a constraint, it is a time-test. If you give any GRE question to any student he/she should be able to answer all the questions if there is no time constraints. So it is the timing and the pressure where people make mistakes. There are trends of GRE mistakes that students make usually, so GRE exploit these things, they know a student’s mind change in this direction. They make sure that students think in this direction and pick wrong answer. What happens is -- when a student solves a question and what answer he gets if it’s there in the options, he is confident of his answer. But when the question is set, they know what are the different possible wrong ways of solving a question and make sure those options are there. So a student has to work on what are the different possible wrong ways to avoid such traps.
Example of such traps: A question which asks to calculate the value of X2. But a student solves the equation, and gets the value of X and as soon as he/she gets the value of X, he starts looking the answer options. What the student forgets is, he/she needs to calculate the value of X2 and not X. And the student happily marks the value of X instead of marking for X2. This is a kind of trap and what students can do is -- as he reads the question, he should write what is given and what solution needs to be calculated, in that case it is better to circle around what needs to be calculated if the problem is different from finding the value of X. Students can highlight by making circle around what needs to be calculated or draw a star mark. One reason of doing this is, it reminds that there is something different in this particular question which he/she has to deal with. Even if one miss the problem, the highlight text reduces the chances of missing-out the problem very less. So there is a different strategies we discuss that remove the chances of doing silly mistakes.
How students should effectively handle the question paper?
Ans. On the day of the test, a student should be mentally prepared what strategy he/she will follow on the day of GRE exam. The student should be very clear about the strategy for e.g. If a student is not comfortable with inequalities problems, and he come across an inequality question he can move forward and back to answer it later, if he is weak in that particular question and doesn’t get the answer. It is better to do those questions he/she is confident about, then probably move back to the question which he/she had left. Another thing is, there is a question and a student would like to take a guess. In that case, he/she should be even clear that this is a question he can answer. A student should be clear on what to pick. It should be like each and everything should be clear in the mind before sitting for the test. Students should be able to identify which question to pick and which to attempt later.
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