<p>D is a college junior and has taken statistics (in her major, which is not math) and symbolic logic (which counts as a math class at her school). She took math every year in hs (through calculus) but of course that has been 2+ years now. </p>
<p>It looks to me that the math on the GRE is pretty much math that she did in high school. Which she might not remember now but at least she did learn at one point. Or is there math on the GRE that she was supposed to get in college? In which case I'll need to see if I can track down her old math tutor, as she wants to study for the GRE over winter break . . .</p>
<p>Can’t she do a practice test and see how she does in the math? My recollection from a gazillion years ago matches your impression. I think my GRE math score was within 10 points of my SAT score. I took one year of calculus in college (junior year), having bombed the AP Calc exam in high school. That was all the math I took in college.</p>
<p>I took the GRE and did fine on math despite the fact that I hadn’t had a math class since junior year in high school (I skipped senior year). I just did some review ahead of time.</p>
<p>Despite math to differential equations and heavy duty numerical analysis / statistics / discrete math / probability in the US I still bombed the GRE math (but aced GRE verbal :)). </p>
<p>Take a prep course or two… DD1 took a year of math in Architecture freshman year but will be taking a loooooong prep for GRE soon since they do very little math and even less writing after 1st year.</p>
<p>Like bethievt, I hadn’t taken math since high school, and with some brush up from my son, I got a 750 on the math (brag, brag…) Just need to review basic algebra.</p>
<p>Depending on the field she intends to pursue in grad school, the math score may not matter at all.</p>
<p>When I taught GRE prep back in the last century, the math went up to about Algebra II. That may have changed. She should sit down with the CollegeBoard’s Ten Official GREs (or whatever the book is called these days) and work her way through a couple of tests. She will know pretty quickly what she needs to review in order to get the scores she wants.</p>
<p>use the PowerPrep software provided for free by ETS and see how she scores first. The math is just high school level math and can be self taught.</p>
<p>This is probably ancient history, but I remember that the GRE Quantitative section looked just like the SAT Math section (i.e. based on high school math up to about algebra 2). Back then, the GRE Verbal was also just like the SAT Verbal (i.e. mostly a vocabulary test). Of course, they may have changed it since then.</p>
<p>Son took it a few years ago and a friend’s son took it recently. I think that son got a perfect score in math and a very good score on the verbal which is a pretty common combination for engineering majors. I think that he said that it was algebra-2 type stuff.</p>
<p>lots of STEM kids get 800’s in the Quantitative on the GRE which is why the percentile isn’t that high for an 800 in Q. </p>
<p>However, for Verbal it’s a different story. My son’s 770 in Verbal was a higher percentile than his 800 in Q for the GRE. When he was applying to PhD programs, his V score was mostly mentioned…along with his subject Math GRE.</p>
<p>The GRE is no longer scored on an 800 point scale. Top score is 170.</p>
<p>(Thought that might be useful. My daughter was frustrated because her scores were so low on practice exams, but apparently she didn’t realize that 170 was the top score, hence the freakout out of practice scores in the ~160 range).</p>
<p>My impression is that the math is mostly basic algebra with some statistics added in – there are a few questions that require understanding of standard deviations & formulas for probability, permutations & combinations.</p>
<p>My son had no college math other than a basic statistics course, which he took online from a community college – plus he was taking the test several years down the line - and he got a perfect score on the math GRE first time around.Now he teaches GRE for one of the major prep companies.</p>
<p>For my daughter it seems like more of a struggle – so I think part of it depends on whether math comes easy for the kid. Tutoring or a review course might be a good option for a student who has a harder time with math.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, my older d. never took a math course. As in NEVER. She was homeschooled. No high school math course. No college math course. Nada. Her GRE math score was higher than the average entering engineering graduate student at Caltech. </p>
<p>Which doesn’t mean she knew what a grad student at Caltech knows. It just means it is testing a different skill, one that may require no “schooling” at all.</p>
<p>No, there’s no college-level math on the GRE. As per the GRE website on the Q section, there are three kinds of math: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and data analysis. The data analysis stuff is very basic descriptive statistics that generally gets taught in high school algebra classes (mean, median, mode; how to read charts and graphs; perhaps some introductory probability like dice rolls and stuff).</p>
<p>From the page:</p>
<p>The content in these areas includes high school mathematics and statistics at a level that is generally no higher than a second course in algebra; it does not include trigonometry, calculus or other higher-level mathematics.</p>
<p>As mini stated above…the Q section is not intended to be a test of how much math you know. They have a subject test for that. It’s a test of your quantitative reasoning ability.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. So long as it is stuff she has learned before, and it sounds like that is the case, I think she will be fine with the practice tests.</p>
<p>Why they bother to test HS math for graduate school admissions is another question . . .</p>
<p>D2, a math allergic humanities major, got through the math portion of the GRE with an acceptable but by no means stellar score by simply doing some online prep in the week or so before she took the test.</p>
<p>"Why they bother to test HS math for graduate school admissions is another question . . "</p>
<p>It is a test (whether valid or no is another question) of mathematical reasoning skills. The social sciences in particular have become very quantitatively oriented in the past two decades, and the mathematical skills needed can be easily taught, provided there is some native aptitude. But without that aptitude, some graduate students find themselves in trouble, in places where they wouldn’t necessarily have expected. </p>
<p>Some graduate schools also use aggregate GRE scores in awarding fellowships. Don’t ask me why.</p>
Just need to review basic algebra.</p>