Charming Charlie

My reasons for posting: 1. Where are the low scores? If this forum is an unusually high scoring subset, where are all the average applicants talking about their GRE scores? 1b. If this forum is not an unusually high scoring subset and somehow represents a more typical graduate applicant, where are all the people driving our scores up? They very well could be non-native English speakers. At the moment I'm assuming so because my google searches seem to demonstrate this forum has the most traffic of all the English places to talk about graduate school. In any case, I haven't found'em. 2. The concept of a "percentile" becomes completely questionable when a majority of people are apparently in the 90th, isn't that weird? 2b. Yes, it is weird. 90th percentile scores are uncommon (1/10th as common) and posters are just being hard on themselves because they're keeners. 2c. No, it's not weird. In many disciplines anything lower than 90th percentile scores is worthless on an application. Maybe instead of thinking of the results in percentiles it's a more accurate concept to think of them as letter grades. 90+ = A. 80- = Not getting into grad school. 3. If you're reading this forum and going "wtf" like I frequently have over the past year, you're not alone. Surely there are others who don't score 90th percentile and worry about retesting. At worst that is alien behavior. At best it is Dunning-Kruger thinking. As a former lurker, reading anything suggesting so is few and far between here. I just want to know if I'm out of touch with reality or this forum generally is. 4. Contratulations, me. I did better than expected, and given my lack of academic support in all areas of my life, turning to the internet and this forum is the best place to celebrate the news.

I recognize that this forum is primarily keeners, but there has only been a single score posted so far that was under the 50% percentile. As I understand what a percentile is, GRE test takers score equally underneath 50% as above it. Yet the average percentile is something like 90% here. Can this forum really contain such a huge majority of top score earners? And if so, where are all the people scoring under 50%? Reading this message, too intimidated to post (like I have been until this point), or in some part of the world without regular internet access? My scores as someone who forgot he took the GRE until a letter came in the mail today: Verbal: 164 (94th percentile) Quantitative: 153 (65th percentile) Writing: 5.5 (96th percentile)