Preparing for Your GED: Essential Math Skills to Know at 17
Embarking on the journey to complete your General Education Development (GED) exam can be both exciting and challenging, especially if you’re starting from scratch. If you’re a young adult who hasn’t had extensive formal education in math but is eager to pass the test, understanding the core concepts needed is crucial.
Background and Perspective
Imagine beginning your academic journey in the middle of a global pandemic—homeschooled but without a structured curriculum to follow. If you’ve found yourself in this situation, it’s completely understandable to feel uncertain about what to learn next. Recognizing the need to “step up” and teach yourself the basics is a commendable first step toward achieving your goals.
Current Skills and Next Steps
If you’ve recently refreshed your skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, you’re laying a solid foundation. These arithmetic operations form the backbone of most math topics you’ll encounter on the GED. Moving forward, the logical next step is mastering fractions, decimals, and percentages, as these often appear in various problem-solving contexts.
Key Math Topics for the GED
Here’s a general list of math concepts you should aim to understand to confidently approach the GED:
- Arithmetic Operations
- Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division
- Fractions and Mixed Numbers
- Simplifying, converting between improper fractions and mixed numbers
- Operations involving fractions
- Decimals and Percentages
- Converting between decimals and fractions
- Calculating percentages and solving percentage-based problems
- Ratios and Proportions
- Understanding ratios and setting up proportion equations
- Basic Algebra
- Solving for unknown variables in simple equations
- Understanding algebraic expressions
- Basic Geometry
- Recognizing common shapes
- Calculating area, perimeter, and volume
- Data Interpretation
- Reading and interpreting graphs, charts, and tables
- Basic statistics, such as mean, median, and mode
Tailoring Your Learning Approach
Since your goal is to achieve a passing grade rather than mastering math as a hobby, focus on practical understanding rather than advanced topics. There are many online resources, practice tests, and tutorials tailored to GED exam topics that can help you prepare efficiently.
Additional Tips
- Stay consistent with your study schedule.
- Practice problems regularly to reinforce your understanding.
- Don’t hesitate to