GRE Percentile

There are a large number of students who apply to colleges for graduation every year. They come from different socio-economic backgrounds and thus their school scores can not be compared. The Graduate Record Exam is conducted for making the admission process uniform throughout US. The basic idea of GRE is that students seeking admission in a graduate course in US can be compared on a common basis. Since GRE is a standardized exam which is conducted by ETS, a private agency, its results can be used to compare students.

For a comparison of any two things we have to use the means of measurement. This measurement can not be qualititative or subjective, it has to be quantitative. If we say that two students are ‘good’ in studies we can not compare them unless we have some scores in hand. We can not determine which student is better just on the basis of grades. For comparing any two students we need to have their scores in hand. Now, different schools have different scoring schemes. Where one school might be having a simple testing technique and liberal scoring the other might be having a difficult one. Hence we can not compare two students from different schools, even if we know their scores. We need to have a system of testing and scoring which is common for both the students. This purpose is solved by GRE. The GRE test is of the same difficulty level throughout the world and the scoring scheme is also the same. For this purpose a major part of the test is objective.

There are two types of scores for each section of the GRE. Firstly you will be given a raw score and secondly you will be given a percentile score. The raw score ranges from 200 to 800 in the two multiple choice sections and from 0 to 6 in the analytical writing section. The scoring scheme for the raw score is different for the computer adaptive test and the paper based test, because of the difference in their formats; but the two schemes give comparable results. The second type of score is the percentile score. This is the more important score and gives a better idea of your performance. The percentile score means the percent of test takers who have scored less than you. The percentile scores are given for each section separately.

The GRE percentiles are calculated in a very simple manner. Your individual score is compared with the scores of all the other students appearing for GRE. The number of students scoring lesser than you is considered to calculate the percentile. This score literally tells you what percent of students you have scored more than. Say if your GRE percentile for a section is 75% it means that 75% of the test takers scored lesser than you did in that subject. And consequently 25% of the students scored more than you. Moreover the same score does not hold the same meaning for different sections. Say if you score 720 in the verbal section and get a percentile of 97% then it does not mean that a score of 720 in the quantitative section would also get a percentile of 97%. This percentile could be very different from 97%. The percentile score depends on how others have performed in that particular section and hence the corresponding differences occur. Also if you retake the test it is likely that even a higher score does not get you a higher percentile. For example, if you score 720 with 85 percentile once, then it possible that scoring 740 gives you 82 percentile in another attempt. Like you have performed better others too could have performed well.

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