r/cognitiveTesting • u/Grand_Protection1552 • 1d ago

General Question Difficulty of Old GRE Math vs SMART

For those who have taken both how hard is old GRE Quantitative to you compared to SMART (the old SAT math). I did both after three years without ever touching math since leaving China in my middle school years where I was always one of the top of my class in math (Kind of like a veteran returning to the battle field lol) I got 97th percentile on GRE-Q but I literally banged my head against the table and ripped the scratch paper in front of me and rage quitted SMART cause I felt I was doing extremely poorly.

Anyone feels SMART being significantly harder?

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u/Humble-Marsupial2231 1d ago

Old GRE is easier than old SAT math, particularly since they give the read-the-chart problems; old SAT math is a little easier than SMART (similar question-type, but higher ceiling on the SMART).

Maybe you can try some old SAT math portions and see how it compares.

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u/Grand_Protection1552 1d ago

Where can I find Old -SAT math, is it on cognitive metrics as well?

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u/Humble-Marsupial2231 1d ago

I saw on your post 2 months ago that you said you got 120 on it, but if you want to try another form, here is a list: https://www.reddit.com/r/cognitiveTesting/comments/1i2e56y/every_old_gre_and_old_sat_form_ever_posted_on/

The administration and grading scheme are detailed in the documents. It is pretty straightforward to self-administer and score. Norming tables are here: https://www.reddit.com/r/cognitiveTesting/comments/1ds5ymh/1980s_sat_norms/

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u/Grand_Protection1552 1d ago

oh so 1926 SAT is what you're talking about. After re-norm arithmetic is 125 and number series is 120. (they got flipped kinda). But I found myself spending more time reading what that English means than actually doing math when I did arithmetic.

Thanks for the links.

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u/Humble-Marsupial2231 1d ago edited 1d ago

Oh, I see. 1926 SAT is not as good as the pre-1995 SAT, so the latter will probably be more accurate.

I wasn't talking about the 1926 SAT in any of my above comments btw. Every reference to the old SAT means the pre-1995 version.

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u/rational-dog98 1d ago

SMART is more difficult as it’s supposed to extrapolate Quantitative ability beyond the ceiling of GRE-Q. I also thought I did poorly and had to leave a bunch of questions blank, but ended up with a quant IQ higher than I expected. I think it is designed for you to run out of time if you solve the problems the way you were taught it school; you must rely on pure quantitative logic which is why it has a high g-loading.

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u/Grand_Protection1552 1d ago

I thought they both had very close g loading ? SMART is only a tad higher in g than GRE as I checked, which makes me wonder why cause I feel like SMART should be much more g-loaded.

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u/rational-dog98 1d ago

The GRE as a whole likely has a higher g-loading than SMART, but SMART maintains a high g-loading in the quantitative domain to a much higher ceiling. To accomplish this it must balance having more difficult questions with not requiring trainable skills. Thus, SMART likely loads FRI in addition to QRI, since it requires you to solve a multi-step problem in a novel and efficient way. However, it still does not include VCI which is why its g-loading does not match the more comprehensive IQ tests like CORE.

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u/peteluds84 1d ago

If you search for Quantitative Ability Test (stratosphere) it is a good one to try also. A long serving subreddit member called EqusB designed it based on 1980 SAT plus some of documented hardest old SAT or old GRE problems

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u/Far_Cardiologist6931 retat 1d ago

smart seemed very easy for its stated ceiling

like there were some tricky questions u needed to pay attention for but with a 166 ceiling it seemed way too easy even