On the computer-adaptive GRE general test, the number of questions that you answer
correctly is adjusted according to the difficulty of the questions that you are
given. The staistical properties of the questions, your performance on each question,
and the number of questions that you answered are all factors that are used to compute
your score. Therefore, two students who correctly answer the same number of questions
may receive different scores that reflect the difficulty of the questions that were
answered correctly. The scoring process for the paper-based test is similar.
For the computer-adaptive GRE general test, the type and difficulty of each question
that you are presented is based on the difficulty of the questions that you have
answered correctly, your progress so far, the types of questions that you have seen,
and the coverage of content. Remember that you shouldn't try to guess if a question
is difficult or hard; just do you best to answer each question that you are given,
knowning that you cannot proceed until you answer the question that you are presented.
For the paper-based GRE general test, the number of questions that you answer correctly
is computed as the raw score. Your raw score is then sclaed to your final score
by a process that is called equating. Your final score is adjusted to account for
differences in difficulty of the questions among test versions. ETS indicates that
scores on both the GRE general test and GRE paper-based test are comparable.
The analytical writing section will be read and scored by two readers, each of whom
will rate your critical thinking and writing skills rather than your grammar and
mechanics. A few grammatical errors are allowed, but if an essay is plagued with
many such errors, your score will be impacted. Each of the two readers of each of
your essays will provide a score on a range from zero to six, in one-half point
increments. The reader scores for your essays will then be averaged to yield your
final essay score. In that case that the scores that are received by the two readers
differs by more than 1 point, a third reader will read your essay.
Your score report will contain three scores. For the verbal reasoning section, reported
scores range from 200-800, in 10 point increments. In the Quantitative reasoning
section, scores range from 200-800, also in 10 point increments. On the Analytical
Writing section, scores range from 0-6, in one-half point increments. Along with
each of the three scores, you'll be give a percentile rank that indicates the percentage
of students who have scored as well or worse than you. Thus, for example, a percentile
rank of 72% incidates that 72% of all test takers scored as good or worse than you,
and that approximately 29% of test takers scored better than you.
