Lox26

Test Date: final week of September Quant: Accurate, but on the lower end. Estimated: 750-800 (82nd-99th percentile) Old-scale Equivalent: 780 New Scale: 163 (88th percentile) Verbal: Below lowest estimate. Estimated: 680-780 (96th-99th percentile) Old-scale Equivalent: 630-640 New Scale: 162 (90th percentile) AWA: Score: 5 (87th percentile)

I missed the bit toward the end about his violent outbursts. Perhaps involving a third party is warranted.

It is understandable that you are frustrated by your "friend's" actions (I am not sure how close you really are; I've learned that people who turn on you quickly are not true friends). This person is probably doubting his abilities. Education must be important to him (as evidenced by two MAs and a Ph.D.), and perhaps for the first time, he feels like he's failing. This is certainly not carte blanche to lash out at you, though. He needs to learn how to better cope with stress and accept that he has to adapt to a more challenging environment. I am not yet in grad school, so I don't know how common this is. However, at my undergrad, it is an unspoken rule to not discuss grades. No one should know how you are doing unless you tell them, and you only tell the people you can trust to be genuinely happy for you if you are doing well or who can commiserate instead of judging when you're not doing as well as you would like. If someone asks, you just say "I don't discuss grades." That's how most people deal with the competition. If you are comfortable, perhaps you and your friend can meet in a neutral, populated location to discuss the pattern you have noticed. Explain how uncomfortable and hurt you felt when he said that you were trying to make him feel stupid and say that that was never your intention. Explain that you understand how stressful the transition can be and that you/certain TAs and professors can be helpful in working through the material, if he is someone you still want in your circle. Also make it clear that you will not brook his b.s.

You are not the only one. And I tested in late September, so for me it's a futile compulsion.

Suggestion: If you are going to post your results in this thread, would you mind including the date you tested? Maybe say September 15th or the week of September 12th if you are concerned about anonymity.

I notice in 1a that the percentiles are based on scores prior to June 30, 2010. Because there were no people who scored above 94th percentile, how would ETS assign a Quant score above 166 before June 30, 2012 (the last date the concordance table 1d is valid)? Or were the higher percentiles mapped onto the 170-scale by extrapolating? Thoughts?

You are my new favorite poster.

That's true, but I would hope that the periodic adjustments are so minor as to not upset percentiles. For example, maybe a 740Q would move from 80.3 to 80.4 to 80.35 percentile. This would still be reported as 80th percentile. I anticipated this trend with the math scores. The old quant was too easy, so people were scoring in percentiles that were too high to begin with. This percentile slip is an unfortunate consequence for semi-high scorers on the old GRE quant.

Thanks for the update, Grunty. Perhaps percentiles will settle when ETS releases the scores for the rest of us in 2 weeks. *fingers crossed*

I'm with Kitkat on this. Headlines are redundant for those proficient at extracting salient information from a novel text. Yes, titles would make the reading comprehension questions easier (I sometimes had to re-read paragraphs about obscure theories in order to understand the point). But, an easy exam is pointless when you are trying to quantify a type of intelligence. You need to show a difference between those who can and those who can't do X or Y well.

One could argue that the problem with the Verbal on the old test is that it differentiated among top scorers excessively. On the old scale, the top 1% were spread across 8 scale points. Again, the top 1% were spread across 13% of the full range of scores. There may not be a meaningful difference between 99.2 percentile and 99.9 percentile; at that point, we're just splitting hairs. Top 1 percentile is high and the variability of verbal ability (as measured by the GRE) is minimal at that threshold. Two of the main effects of the new scale are to reduce the over-differentiation of top scorers in Verbal and correct the under-differentiation among top scorers in Quant. Ideally, scores should be normally distributed about the median of possible scores (i.e., about 500 in the old and about 150 in the Revised GRE). Either tail should contain as few test takers as possible, with a larger cluster mid-range. Under the old scheme, however, Verbal scores were in a skewed right and Quant scores in a skewed left distribution. To conclude, 770 and 800 are basically the same score (i.e., there is no significant difference with respect to performance on the GRE Verbal). They always have been but were perceived as different because of flaws in the old scale.

I believe that General and Subject Tests are always sent separately. That way if you underperform on a subject test, you can just choose not to send that score.

I never took the old test, but my SO's scores are below: V: 570 = 158 (80th percentile) Q: 780 = 163 (89th percentile)

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/jan/15/grad-students-react-to-new-gre/ Some Kaplan employee made that claim. Not sure how he knows this. I'm sure Kaplan has an R&D department, so it's possible their team has gone through several iterations of this process with different tests. This does not mean that new GRE scores will behave in kind, however. Sloppy argument, or sloppy reporting.

Kitkat, I have seen that claim as well. Have you been able to find support for first-round scores being lower-than-average ?

*you're considering? Also, you can try to take a free practice test from Kaplan or someplace. See how you fare on the new version. Maybe the calculator will help.

Define "want." Is 1000 required or recommended for the programs your considering? Does the university itself have a solid floor of 1000? Does the department have the right to use its discretion with respect to stated admissions criteria? Would you actually do better this time around? Is your time better spent elsewhere? More emphasis on the verbal does not necessarily mean that SLP programs completely disregard quant. Right now you are in the lowest 15% of scorers. What do people in your field deem an acceptable math score, or is it only the composite that matters? Are you confident you are competitive for your prospective programs? Is the rest of your application strong? When are your apps due? Can you study during winter break if you decide to retake?

Kitkat, you may be right about that. I'm just worried that a hitherto decent-to-good score (750, 82nd percentile) might now be a so-so score (157). I see the future playing out as "Oh, I hope I don't get anything below 160" among applicants or as 160 becoming the new de facto cutoff among top programs. In other words, what if the definition of a "good score" changes after the new format becomes ubiquitous in the next few years? The hypothetical "good" cutoff does seem arbitrary, but even intelligent, thoughtful people use arbitrary heuristics at times (profs, committees, qualified applicants). I just don't want to fall behind. Ultimately, it probably won't matter, especially since I will be pursuing a masters before applying for a Ph.d. and might re-take for a higher score down the road. Still, I fret. *sigh* November cannot get here quickly enough.

That's not really what I am implying. What I am saying is that for the highest scorers, the new percentiles may disadvantage those who fall in the 94th percentile and slightly below. Of course someone who is really a 99th percentile scorer would prefer to be distinguished from the 94th percentile scorer. Of course that is fair. However, it is also disadvantageous to the test takers on the lower end of the top scorers. This is not unfair, but it is unfortunate for someone in our score range if he/she had hoped for a score only 5 or so scale points below the max. But now the 94th percentile to 82nd percentile scorers are more than 5 scale points below max and so look worse by comparison. That doesn't seem arbitrary to me. ETS is trying to achieve more of a spread to better compare applicants. This means that if one is 94th percentile (which I would be thrilled with), one is no longer a top applicant with respect to the GRE (whatever that counts for). One is a borderline top applicant. If we extend this reasoning, an 82nd percentile scorer is a borderline borderline top applicant. Right or wrong, human beings are not rational. Ninety-fourth percentile should be 94th percentile irrespective of how the information is presented. But, we cannot say with certainty that a 94th percentile applicant would be evaluated the same as in the old system, regardless of what ETS instructs. Clearly, you and I disagree on this point. Adcoms, which are comprised of opinionated, analytical, and biased individuals such as we, may be similarly split on this issue. Hopefully not.

What I'm more worried about is the spread. A 155 is 15 scale points from perfection (i.e., the highest possible score, which may still be achieved with 1 or 2 errors), whereas a 720 is only 8 scale points below the maximum. This difference may be more meaningful for high scorers. Assume we both score midrange for quant (no basis for this claim). A 770 is 87th percentile but just a few missed questions from 800. On a different day, with a slightly different set of questions, we may have hit 790 or 800 and would then be above 90th percentile. An evaluator might not see a meaningful difference between 770 and 790/800. In the new scale, we would score 158 or 159. While 90th percentile may still be only two points away, we no longer have a cluster of the top 6% test takers at 800. Now a 94th percentile scorer is 99th or 96th percentile. Now, we're not just below the top; we're in a completely different tier. We wouldn't get the benefit of the doubt that we're just as good as the best because it appears that we are the "second-tier" best. This of course assumes that such leeway is practiced in the current system, which it may not be. Maybe I'm overthinking this. I understand that the GRE is mostly to make a cut-off for the department/university to which one is applying. I just worry that the context of what is achievable (e.g., actually being able to score in the 99th percentile when the ceiling of 94th percentile is removed) plays a role in how percentiles are perceived.

I want to stress that the example about the parents was more my experience with applying to college. I do believe that, at 21+, a motivated individual should be able to poke around the GRE website, browse Amazon for a prep book, and seek out resources better than a wide-eyed teenager. I also accept that a prep course provides the added value of a knowledgeable instructor and that some people benefit more from the structure a course provides than from self-study. Another barrier to doing well on the GRE for people with this learning style may be the lack of disposable income to pay for a class. I realize that such courses range from several hundred to 1000+ dollars. I don't know how someone would work around that, other than giving it his/her best shot. This speaks to a socioeconomic bias of the exam and is perhaps another dimension of unfairness.

I completely agree. The gift analogy is flawed. The test is not a gift from your buddies; it's an (admittedly imperfect) assessment of your abilities. The reading passages tend to bore me, unless there is a passage with content about which I'm actually knowledgeable or curious. Part of the challenge is to be able to focus and persevere despite the discomfort. When you are tired, distracted, uninterested--as we all are on some days--can you still process and synthesize new information efficiently (i.e., do your job, whether that's working, researching, "student-ing")? Not everything in life can or should be easy. Ultimately, the test rewards those who accept this and muddle through anyway. Granted, there are other factors to consider, such as language barriers or differences in personal aptitude (e.g., a flair for rote memorization vs. for critically reasoning through a novel problem) or asymmetric access to information. For example, just because there is a wealth of information available about the test does not mean that everyone knows the proper channels through which to obtain the information. Maybe his/her parents don't know the system because the parents don't have the same formal education as their children aspire to or because the parents were educated abroad, with a different higher education system; maybe the person's advisers did not care, etc. I am sympathetic to these plights because I live with them and I know many people who have the same circumstances. Still, I don't think there is any excuse for a native English speaker with complete knowledge of the test and no learning disabilities to be upset that there are no headlines to spoonfeed information on a test for graduate school!

While I don't think a thread has been started about Kaplan specifically, people have been sporadically posting practice exam and actual GRE scores here: .

Hi Jilly, I only took 1 Kaplan test, a few weeks before my exam. I got 660-760V and 750-800Q. These scores were similar to my practice tests from other companies and from ETS. However, I don't think I had really hit my stride by the time I had taken the Kaplan test. Therefore, I'm not sure whether Kaplan's tests over- or under-approximate the difficulty of the GRE. Ultimately, though, my scores plateaued, and I got 680-780V and 750-88Q on the GRE. Take that for what's it's worth. I wish I had a more definitive answer for you.

"[T]op 5% of test takers" would be the fourth or fifth highest score range. I can't edit my post for some reason.