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What exactly IS the GRE? What is the "excellent" range of the GRE (the 1300+ SAT equivalent)?

What is the typical GRE score for a prestigious grad. school? I don't know, let' say Yale or Brown?

By Coureur (Coureur) on Wednesday, November 26, 2003 - 10:50 am: Edit

The GRE (Graduate Record Exam) is the entrance exam for grad school. When I took it, it consisted of three sections (Math, Verbal, and Reasoning) instead of two like the SAT. But like the SAT each section has a total possible score of 800. So a perfect GRE score is 2400. A 2100 GRE roughly corresponds to getting a 1400 on the SAT.

There are also GRE subject tests which are vaguely similar to SAT II tests, but instead of taking a bunch of them, you take the one subject test for whatever subject you plan to study in grad school: Chemistry, Biology, English Lit, or what not.

By Kyle (Kyle) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 02:01 am: Edit

Actually, that information is incorrect. I just took the GRE and it has recently changed.

There is a verbal and quantitative section, which are both out of 800, and there is an analytical writing section that is scored on a 0-6 scale (2 essays).

Next, there is no "typical" GRE score at ANY school because it varies depending on the graduate program. The GRE is required for most graduate school programs. Since you're admitted based on your program (and not your university), the average candidate for an engineering program at Berkeley or Stanford may have a quantitative score of 800 but a verbal score of 600, while the reverse may be true for the Ph.D program for English at Berkeley or Stanford.

The verbal section of the GRE is alot more difficult that the SATs, while the quantitative section is comparable. However, the entire test is "Computer-Adaptive", meaning that its taken on the computer, and "adapts" to your skill level. As you continue to answer questions correctly, the computer will continue to give you harder and harder questions.

Finally, while on the SAT, you can add your two scores together, this is not done on the GRE because of the overwhelming discrepancy between the Verbal and Quantitative sections. A score of "800" on the Quantitive section is ONLY the 92nd percentile, and a score of 700 is 75th percentile. On the contrary, a score of 800 on the verbal is 99.9%, while a score of 700 is 98th%, and a score of 600 is approximative 85%th. Thus, a 600 on the verbal section roughly corresponds to a 750 on the quantitative. And adding the two scores is like adding apples and oranges.

By Coureur (Coureur) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 10:54 am: Edit

Thanks for the updated info. It's been a few years since I took it. One question: with the computer adaptive feature, how do they meaningfully compare one score to the next, since everyone will be taking customized tests of varying difficulty?

By Ksolo (Ksolo) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 03:44 pm: Edit

Well, everyone takes the same test. It's just that every student's questions are placed in a customized/different order. And as someone said earlier, it "adapts" to your skill level.