For context if anyone needs it, the Physics GRE is (was?) a multiple-choice exam where you get penalized for wrong answers but not for blanks. It works out so that if you eliminate one answer there’s no harm in guessing, in expectation. There’s also considerable time pressure—something like 90 seconds per question on average.
how much deliberate effort you put into calibrating yourself on “how much effort to put into multiple choice questions”
Enough to get through all questions with some time left over, even if that meant guessing on some I could fully solve. I’d mark the questions I’d guessed on with different symbols that let me go back at the end and prioritize solving them. For three or so practice tests, I systematically went over every problem that I missed, guessed, or spent a long time on and did the metacognitive thing including questions like “how long did I think this would take? when was I 50% confident? when should I have decided to move on? how could I have decided faster?” (Using purely retrospective judgment—I wasn’t actually timing individual questions or anything more complicated.)
whether you put any deliberate effort into transferring that into the PhD experience
Not really. I think I had some notion that being able to solve small problems quickly could lead to a sort of qualitatively better fluency, but in the end there just wasn’t enough in common between test content/conditions and research (or even coursework) to prioritize that. I definitely didn’t learn the lesson that I was generally underconfident.
what did you actually do in your PhD experience?
Pretty normal experimentalist route, maybe heavier on math and programming than typical. Coursework for 1-2 years shading into helping with senior students’ experiments, then designing and running my own.
what do you think would have better prepared you for PhD experience?
In the end I was reasonably well prepared in terms of technical knowledge, problem solving, [meta]cognitive skills, and so on (irrespective of the GRE). I think I mostly lacked perspective, particularly in terms of choosing problems and working with a supervisor. I’d guess, starting with most helpful, one or more of these:
Industry experience with a good manager
More research experience in other subjects
Research in the same subject
Other industry experience
As far as things I could have done instead with the time I used to study, I don’t know. Make friends with grad students?
For context if anyone needs it, the Physics GRE is (was?) a multiple-choice exam where you get penalized for wrong answers but not for blanks. It works out so that if you eliminate one answer there’s no harm in guessing, in expectation. There’s also considerable time pressure—something like 90 seconds per question on average.
Enough to get through all questions with some time left over, even if that meant guessing on some I could fully solve. I’d mark the questions I’d guessed on with different symbols that let me go back at the end and prioritize solving them. For three or so practice tests, I systematically went over every problem that I missed, guessed, or spent a long time on and did the metacognitive thing including questions like “how long did I think this would take? when was I 50% confident? when should I have decided to move on? how could I have decided faster?” (Using purely retrospective judgment—I wasn’t actually timing individual questions or anything more complicated.)
Not really. I think I had some notion that being able to solve small problems quickly could lead to a sort of qualitatively better fluency, but in the end there just wasn’t enough in common between test content/conditions and research (or even coursework) to prioritize that. I definitely didn’t learn the lesson that I was generally underconfident.
Pretty normal experimentalist route, maybe heavier on math and programming than typical. Coursework for 1-2 years shading into helping with senior students’ experiments, then designing and running my own.
In the end I was reasonably well prepared in terms of technical knowledge, problem solving, [meta]cognitive skills, and so on (irrespective of the GRE). I think I mostly lacked perspective, particularly in terms of choosing problems and working with a supervisor. I’d guess, starting with most helpful, one or more of these:
Industry experience with a good manager
More research experience in other subjects
Research in the same subject
Other industry experience
As far as things I could have done instead with the time I used to study, I don’t know. Make friends with grad students?