A GRE question, probably quickly answered.

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi again,</p>

<p>I've been reading all around this forum and getting some pretty great insight and advice - thank you everyone. :)</p>

<p>I'm just a little confused regarding the GRE Q score. I was under the impression that an 800 was a perfect Q score, but upon reading everyones comments it seems as though getting somewhere in the 700s is just average.. Am I off-base here or correct in my interpretations of the comments?</p>

<p>Now, I'm going into English so I know automatically that my Q score will not be as important as someone looking to go into engineering! Still, I obviously don't want to have a terrible score..</p>

2

<p>I believe people are referring to the percentiles. If you score a 700 on the quantitative, then you may be in the 60th percentile (just an estimate) which is not that far from average.</p>

3

<p>The distributions of the two scores are very different. Although the averages are not far off from each other, high Q scores are much more common than high V scores, especially in scientific fields - for example, a 800Q might only be a 92 percentile but the lower 720V might be a 98 percentile. This is due to the fact that the “difficulty limit” is much lower on the quantitative - they just cannot give you very complex problems in such a time-limited and general test, and so mathematically-focused graduates usually tear through those sections.</p>

<p>When you hear people talk a 700Q score, they are usually talking in terms of science and engineering programs, where a 700 is essentially a qualifying score and a 750+ is preferred for top programs. If you are in the arts and humanities, they will probably not care about your Q score, just like the engineers don’t really care about their students’ V scores.</p>

4

<p>The quantitative section is more straightforward and so people tend to do much better on it than the verbal. So, the average for the verbal is lower while the quantitative is higher. The scores are given as percentiles so obviously if everyone is doing well in a section, then the percentage of people doing worse than you drops.</p>