Well, today marks my completion of standardized test requirements for graduate school. All in all, it was a tough ride but I made it through more or less whole. Unfortunately however the chemistry GRE is significantly harder than the regular gre, so much so that I say that infinity is a reliable approximation for how much harder it really is.
The Chem GRE covers various different topics, analytical, physical, organic, inorganic etc, and requires breadth, not depth of knowledge. However, there are so many different topics to cover that unless you study extensively and or have been a chemistry major and have accumulated knowledge in these topics over the course of your study, your chances are rather slim at getting a high score.
I neglected both of these categories, as I am a chemical engineering major, so I covered about 3~ of the topics, without enough breadth. To exacerbate my situation, I only spent 1-2 months studying the topics for the exam in a very brisk fashion. As a result, I guess it came to no surprise that I would not be scoring in the top 90 percentile.
The test requires quite a bit of arcane and esoteric knowledge, so much so that I only answered 95 of the 130 questions. (there is a 1/4 point penalty for wrong answers, and I didn’t want to be tricked into choosing wrong answers based off my incorrect understanding of the question). So, I only answered questions in which I had eliminated 2 or more answer choices. In the end, my Raw score will range from 0 to 95. I’m thinking that I probably got ~20% of the things i answered incorrect, so that leaves me with 19 incorrect responses. 19/5 is 4.75. So, subtracting: 95-19-4.75=71.25. Which should put me at around 50+/-5 ish percentile.
Ultimately, I just hope that I score high enough to the point where this exam doesn’t penalize my application as whole. I had a much better experience with the GRE, but sometimes you just gotta take the test you gotta take. I don’t intend to take it again, regardless of my actual score, as I don’t feel my score would actually improve.
Till the next my fingers touch keys
Akash Sky
Akash Sky 