A couple days ago, I posted a thread in another part of the forum, but I thought I’d ask here due to a lack of response. I am looking to take the subject test in biochemistry and cell and molecular biology after the summer, and I was wondering what a “good” score would be on the GRE subject tests. I’ve tried to find it elsewhere, but it’s kind of confusing. Also, if anyone has taken this specific test, is there advice you can offer? Thank you!
Specific to the math exam (don’t know if this generally applies to all of them):
under 500 (don’t know %ile, maybe under 20-25%?): awful, don’t report to anyone
under 50% (probably under 650): pretty bad
50%-60% (probably around 650-700): not so great, can probably get into programs ranked 50-100
60%-70% (probably around 700-750): pretty decent, can get into schools ranked around 25-50
70%-80% (probably around 750-800): good score, have a shot at some top 20 schools
80%-90% (probably around 800-850): great score, good enough for any school if the rest of your app is just as strong (Berkeley in particular has a minimum of 80%)
90%+ (850-900ish): fantastic score, can get in anywhere with good LORs, SOP, grades, a little research, etc.
That really really helps. Thank you so much. The biochem test is not a common test to take (judging by the lack of people talking about it) so I am kind of starved for knowledge. I’m sure the percentiles are relatively similar between tests.
https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table2.pdf
These numbers are a couple years old, but look pretty accurate in the Math column. What’s more difficult to figure out is how to translate raw score to scaled score. Also, the Math GRE max score is officially 990, but in most years, the real max seems to be 900 or so. The highest score I’ve seen reported has been 910, and that was 98th or 99th percentile.