My scores changed?!

[ZebraFinch]

I took the test twice in December, and the score I saw on the test center (for the first test) is now different from the one showing up on my ETS account, lower by two points! What gives? The percentage did not change, so I have no idea what's going on. I'm furious.

[hreaðemus]

ETS actually says on their website that the numbers you see at the testing site may be slightly different from your final score; it has to do with the relative difficulty of your test in relationship to the other versions ETS administers, I think, and to the scores that other people get. It used to happen a lot more often when the new scoring scale was first released. Now they have a large data pool to use for on-site score predictions, but I guess sometimes the system is still inaccurate... I'm sorry! It sucks to have your score go down instead of up.

[ZebraFinch]

Yeah, it was my highest score in total so I'm just extremely disappointed. It's not like I did so well that 2 points is meaningless. What I really don't get is that it was showing up the same all this time until today when it's suddenly different, so my "official" score according to them was the 2 points higher one.

Edited January 3, 2015 by ZebraFinch

[hreaðemus]

That is pretty weird, then! Maybe just wait a few days and see if it changes back? I just checked my scores too, thinking that maybe ETS updated their percentiles for 2014, but mine are the same - and it does seem strange that they would change the score itself, rather than the percentile in which it falls.   If they don't change back on their own, maybe you can at least call and ask for an explanation...