We are doing GRE prep in my household. The on-line sample tests are great, with one small problem: actual scores are nice and good, but in the cut-throat world of graduate school admissions we re more interested in percentages, which are not given. Does anyone happen to have a rough idea of what a “good” GRE score is?
Ack! “percentages” should be “percentile ranks”–I can figure out the percentage correct, it is being better than the competition that is importatant!
As far as I know GRE scores are generally not all that important, and admissions officers use them mainly as a tie breaker when candidates are equal in other respects. More important factors are GPA, undergraduate research, programs, internships, scholastic achievements, etc. I will check with a friend who is currently involved with this kind of stuff and see what a good score is, though.
Here are the national means for each section:
verbal: 472
quantitative: 563
logic: 547
Now, a score of 700 in each section with rank you in the following national percentiles:
verbal: 97%
quantitative: 78%
logic: 86%
Hope this helps!
Can’t answer our question exactly, but I would agree that percentiles are more important, especially when you can get some answers wrong and still get a perfect number score. I found a cite about a cutoff of 1000 (Verbal and Math combined only, I believe) will disproprtionately affect non-white students but not whether that actually is a common cutoff.
This http://www.petersons.com/graduate/discuss10/messages/1385.html has a little anecdotal evidence on what schools expected.
GRE scores are only part of the package but I think they have a lot to do with how much money you are awarded.
Looking at the form that came with mine (I took them in 96/97 so it’s a little dated but the means are pretty close to what chriszarate posted so hopefully they’re still ok for a rough guide:
scaled score------800—700—600—500–400—300–mean
verbal percentile—99-----96----83----57-----25----4----479
quantitative---------98-----81----59----36-----15----3----555
analytical-----------99-----88----63----35-----14----3----543
FWIW, Mensa, the I.Q. society for folks who score in the top 2% of the population on a standardized IQ test, will accept a GRE score (verbal+analytic+quantitative) of 1875 as evidence for admission.
ref:
http://www.us.mensa.org/join_mensa/testscores.php3
Thanks everyone!
Just as another data point, I took the GREs about a month ago… here are the current percentiles
Score------Verbal------Quantitative------Analitical
800 99 99 99
700 97 78 86
600 85 57 61
500 60 34 34
400 27 14 14
300 4 2 3