http://www.aaa3.net/interpreting-gre-test-scores/
ETS and GRE report of scores?
I’ve just received my score report in the mail for the GRE General Test. I am fully aware of how to interpret them…except I’m not sure what the “% below” columns are telling me. Does the number there represent the percentage of people who I did more poorly than? Or does it represent the percentage of people who did more poorly than I did? The accompanying “Interpreting Your GRE Scores” publication does not give distinctions about what the percentages mean. Any experience with these reports?
Please do not waste your time or my own by posting “how to interpret your GRE scores” since I already know how to determine everything else except this one part.
For example if your percentile is 95% it means that 95% of test takers got a score less than you did. Obviously you can take the test, get a higher score but a lower percentile, because the percentile depends on how other do on the test.
The following explains it well:
The GRE percentiles are calculated in a very simple manner. Your individual score is compared with the scores of all the other students appearing for GRE. The number of students scoring lesser than you is considered to calculate the percentile. This score literally tells you what percent of students you have scored more than. Say if your GRE percentile for a section is 75% it means that 75% of the test takers scored lesser than you did in that subject. And consequently 25% of the students scored more than you. Moreover the same score does not hold the same meaning for different sections. Say if you score 720 in the verbal section and get a percentile of 97% then it does not mean that a score of 720 in the quantitative section would also get a percentile of 97%. This percentile could be very different from 97%. The percentile score depends on how others have performed in that particular section and hence the corresponding differences occur. Also if you retake the test it is likely that even a higher score does not get you a higher percentile. For example, if you score 720 with 85 percentile once, then it possible that scoring 740 gives you 82 percentile in another attempt. Like you have performed better others too could have performed well.
Check out the following website for more information:
http://www.greguide.com/gre-percentile.html
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