<p>I took the GRE two weeks ago and my verbal score ended up being in the 11th percentile. I am usually very good with language and argument analysis, so I genuinely don't know what went wrong. My writing score was a 4.5, which isn't great but it's 75th percentile - so clearly I have some sort of grasp on language. To prepare for the GRE the first time around, I used ETS's online materials and a Princeton Review prep book. During preparation, I would generally get most of the verbal questions right and my scores on practice tests for verbal were usually in the 160's - which I was happy with.</p>
<p>I just registered to re-take the test in a month. I started going through my study materials again and found I am still getting all the verbal questions right. I think the study materials I'm using are not adequately preparing me for the actual test. Does anyone have any suggestions on study material that is more similar to what is on the test? Preferably something free, because I just had to spend another $180 on this test that I couldn't afford in the first place.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>If you are using ETS’s online materials and the Princeton Review prep book, I would say that those materials are the closest possible things you can get to the real test. ETS actually makes the GRE and their prep materials consist of questions from retired GREs, and I think that Princeton Review’s questions are the most similar to the actual GRE test questions (and I scored in the 99th percentile for the verbal, a 790 under the old system).</p>
<p>If you are normally scoring in the 160s (which ranges from the 84th to the 99th percentile) and you scored an 11th percentile on the exam, something went wrong on the exam either on your end (sickness, mis-entering, anxiety) or on the computer’s end (mis-scoring, malfunction). Take advantage of the GRE’s free diagnostic service (<a href=“https://grediagnostic.ets.org/GREDWeb/gred/signIn.jsp[/url]”>https://grediagnostic.ets.org/GREDWeb/gred/signIn.jsp</a>), which includes information about the question type (e.g., text completion), whether you answered it right or wrong, how hard the question was, and how long you took to answer it.</p>
<p>If you look at the questions and something doesn’t seem right (you missed a lot of questions in a row, or you missed questions that you know you should’ve gotten right - questions don’t appear in the diagnostic service but you may be able to tell by type and difficulty level) then you may want to consider getting the more detailed question-and-answer review service (which is $50 and gives you a paper report of each question on the exam and how you answered it). If you see discrepancies, you can pay $30 to have GRE score your test by hand.</p>
<p>I gotta say that I was consistently testing in the 95th percentile and above, and I scored an 800 on the verbal section of the SAT and have taught for Kaplan. If I suddenly tested in the 11th percentile on test day I would want the QaA service and I would pay to have my test hand scored, because something would be very wrong.</p>
<p>These may be moot to you, though, since you already re-registered to take it in a month and the hand-scoring wouldn’t be finished for 4 weeks.</p>
<p>Wow. Thank you. I had no idea that a diagnostic service was even available. It isn’t letting me sign in despite having already received my official scores. </p>
<p>I was sick on the day of the exam, but I felt pretty confident that I knew what I was doing. It would be really nice to have some idea of where I went wrong at least.</p>
<p>I was just able to look at my diagnostic results for the GRE (tells you how many problems you got wrong, what level of difficulty they were etc.) and I actually didn’t get that many verbal questions wrong. I only got 14 wrong out of 40 and ended up with a 141 score. I got significantly more wrong in the quantitative section (I got the majority of the questions wrong) and I got a way better score there - a 160. </p>
<p>I don’t understand how this is possible. I have googled all over to figure out how the test is scored and I still don’t get it. ETS would not explain to me how the test was scored or what was going on unless I paid $50 to have my test gone over again. Which I can’t afford because I just paid these idiots another $180 to take the test again. </p>
<p>The woman on the phone just kept saying over and over that “each question is worth one point.” Which, if that were true, the test would only be out of 80 points. And if that were true, I would have scored much better on the verbal portion.</p>
<p>What the hell is going on here?</p>
<p>The GRE is an adaptive test - by sections now rather than by question, but it’s still adaptive. That means the difficulty varies section-by-section.</p>
<p>If you completely bombed the first verbal section, it gives you an easier second verbal section, but your overall verbal score will be unalterably lower no matter how many questions you get right on the second section.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it sounds like you probably did well on the first quant section, which gives you a harder second quant section but also a higher overall quant score.</p>
<p>It doesn’t look like that was the case with me, just the opposite. On my diagnostic, it actually looks like I did really well on the first verbal portion. The second portion was where I had some difficulty. I got harder questions for the second portion and did not do as well with them - that’s where the majority of my wrong answers came from. </p>
<p>I bombed the first quant section and got easier questions later on - I actually remember this happening during the test because the first section was really difficult for me and the second one was a piece of cake.</p>
<p>But I still got a lot wrong on the quant section (2x more than I got wrong in the verbal) over all and still ended up with a decent quant score. </p>
<p>Are scores just based on how well you did in relation to other people? Or is there some other mysterious scoring quality I’m missing?</p>
<p>The scores are not absolute, because of the adaptive nature of the test. There’s no way to say with any degree of certainty that X number of correct answers means Y score - at least, not without having access to ETS’ scoring values and algorithm.</p>
<p>Frankly, it does sound like something may have gone wrong in your test scoring.</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply. It makes me feel a little better to know that someone else thinks the scores sound a little weird.</p>
<p>I am trying not to obsess over the scores that I received, but I really really want to be sure to improve on my next try. I can’t afford (time or money wise) to take the test again after my upcoming second attempt (in three weeks!), and I have to improve my score if I want to have any chance of getting into grad school. </p>
<p>It’s difficult to know what to expect when I have no concept of how scores are computed. It’s also frustrating that I am getting consistently great scores on practice tests when my true results were not so stellar. I feel like there is no truly adequate way to prepare.</p>