Daisy Fields

ETS just released the official percentiles: http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table1a.pdf Looks like the percentiles are lower than I had guessed for a given score.

Okay, just took the PowerPrep and got 750-800. Which really tells me nothing at all since it spans 18 percentile points.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. Very good comments! H24 and George - thank you for posting your practice test results. That's really good information. George, it looks like you're getting around the 82nd-83rd percentile on the PowerPrep and the 89th percentile on the Princeton tests (if my percentile guesses are correct). That's pretty close. Here is what my practice tests scores have been, just to add to our little heap of knowledge: Manhattan 800 (94th percentile) Kaplan 750-800 (80th - 94th percentile) Princeton Review 164 (97th percentile) I haven't taken the powerprep yet, but I'll post when I do.

chak: I know, another goof!

Decaf: I did not look at the sample report at all. I calculated using the 15 point spread. So, Assuming a normal distribution and a mean of 150, ((170-15) - 150)/(standard deviation) = .674 (z score for 75th percentile) Which works out to sd = 7.42 Then I just I used this formula: (score-150)/7.42 to find the z score for each score possible in the top 25 percent and used a standard z score table to find the percentiles.

Sorry, my bad! I have only been doing the quant since I got 98th on the first verbal but not so good on the quant. Grrr. So, I live in a world in my mind where everyone is doing only quant. Ugh, I have to pull my head out of this occasionally. Anyway, the article that I referred to was discussion the spread for the top 25% in the QUANTITATIVE section. I don't know what that tells you, except that if I were ets, I'd strive to structure both tests that way so that scores were related to percentiles in the same manner for both verbal and quant. In other words, both would be beautiful normal curves with the same standard deviation and mean. At least that's what I'd aim for. I don't know if they can do that as percentiles will change as people get used to the tests and I don't supposed they'd change in the same manner. But at first it seems like they would use different formulas to get from the raw score to the 130/170 scale score which would have the same percentiles. But that's a huge guess on my part!!!! As for the sample scores, I didn't really trust them. I just assumed they were made up, but I could be wrong. The article I linked is the only information I found that was real information from ets. Again, just shooting for a best guess here. I know as much as you do at this point. Caffeinated: As I see it, the problem with moving from a range in the previous scale to a guess in the new scale is that in the quant the top 6% are all bunched into an 800 score. Hmm. I've been getting ranges like 750 - 800 as well, but no smaller range (on practice tests only). For instance, nothing like 790-800. Has anybody else received a tight range near the top? My impression is that near the top things get very hazy because a 750 is only about the 82nd percentile. That's not a very tight guess. Personally, I think they're just being very careful in giving estimates, but I've only taken practice tests. And of course if you're hoping for 97th or 98th in the new test, you can't translate that from the old test. You can only know that you're somewhere above 94th percentile. Btw, Princeton Review is giving their online practice test results in the new scale, but no percentiles which is what got me searching in the first place. I hope their scores and percentiles are close to what I'm estimating. I'm really losing patience with these tests that don't give feedback on how you'd do on the real test!

I've been trying to dig around to find some information which might give me an idea of the percentiles on the new test. This is the only piece of information that I could find http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/14521_0ETSS036_supplement.pdf They state on the second page that ets expects that the top 25% will be spread over 15 points. So, please correct these numbers if I've made a mistake but, assuming a normal curve this gives a standard deviation of 7.42 and the following percentiles (score, percentile): 155 75th 156 79th 157 83rd 158 86th 159 89th 160 91st 161 93rd 162 95th 163 96th 164 97th 164 98th 166 98th 167 98th 168 99th 169 99th 170 99th Thoughts?