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GRE SCORE PERCENTILES 2017-18

In this article, we will be discussing the variation of GRE Percentiles with the score. This data was released by ETS. This is a part of our GRE Guide for students planning on taking GRE in 2018.

You may be interested in The definitive guide on How to crack GRE.

Why is GRE PERCENTILE important?

As you know, the aim of every test is evaluating and comparing different students based on the relevant scales, whether it is for admissions, for a job and what-not.

The same goes here.

ETS releases a chart with scores and percentile rankings for verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing. For instance, if you have scored a 170 in quantitative and verbal, your percentile is 98 and 99 respectively. The corresponding percentile numbers for a score of 150 is 40 and 45 respectively.

We are going to put up a table with the scores and corresponding percentiles.

Before that, We would like to tell you about the post Recommended reading for the GRE, a part of this GRE Guide.

What exactly is a good GRE score?

While it is common for the students to gauge just how well they stack up when the application season comes!

It is very difficult to define a specific “GOOD” score. Different admission officers of different programmes tend to evaluate students on different scales, which makes it difficult to fathom for students about what is a good GRE score.

The GRE Percentile data released by ETS can help you to get an idea of what might be the score required for you to get into your course of choice.

 Let’s look at some insights.

It can be seen here that the Quant scores tend to be a little bit higher than Verbal scores.

How can we tell?

Because percentiles for Quant are lower. So while a 165 has you scoring higher than 96% of test-takers on Verbal, you’ve only scored higher than 89% of test-takers on Quant with that score. So, more people scored higher than 165 on Quant than on Verbal (11% versus 4%).

Aso, test-taker scores tend to cluster around the middle of the scale. A six-point increase from 149 to 155 nets you a 26-point percentile increase on either section! By contrast, a 6-point increase from 165 to 170 only nets you a 3-percentile increase on Verbal or an 8-percentile increase on Quant.

Essentially, you get a little more bang for your buck with point increases if you are starting out closer to the middle of the scale than at the ends.

We will be adding more in the GRE Guide. Feel free to suggest anything you think we should do.

Till then, STAY TUNED!

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READING FOR GRE VERBAL

Flashcards or Novels, which is better for GRE Verbal?

While it is very interesting to weigh the flashcards against reading novels, it entirely depends on the phase of your preparation, the time you have before GRE, and individual talent to tackle the GRE Verbal section.

Should you read novels to improve your GRE verbal score? Or stick to the flash cards?

How do you decide?

Honestly, crunching flashcards would be better if you have less than 3 months to go for GRE.

Because it has been experienced that a normal student tends to learn twice as many new words with flashcards as compared to that by reading novels.

While it is no hidden fact that novels are a great source to improve your contextual understanding. Not to mention the addition of GRE words with improved reading speed and comprehension ability gradually. It is highly advisable to go for novels only if you have at least 4-5 months to go for GRE.

Here’s a list of books that we would recommend to go for in order to improve your GRE verbal score.

The Best American Essays.

This annual series culls the best writing from hundreds of journals and magazines. With the best essays from various newspapers, magazines, and journals, and a variety of genres available to choose from. This is the best pick from many GRE gurus when it comes to recommended reading for improving your GRE verbal score.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

A dystopian novel dated back to 1932. It was ranked 5th in the list of 100 best English language novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library in 1999. Not only is this a great GRE read, it’s a great read in general-not to be missed by any human, anywhere.

The House Of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton tells the story of Lily Bart.A well-born but impoverished woman belonging to New York City’s high society around the turn of the last century. It will be a great read because of her precise, glowing sentences, witty observations of human social interactions, and tragic characters.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (or any other novel) by Jane Austen

The story charts the emotional development of the protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, who learns the error of making hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between the superficial and the essential. Also, it will give a great boost to your vocab helping you push your GRE Verbal score.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

You’ll find this sci-fi novel and its sequel, Children of God, on every GRE reading list out there. Vocabulary, philosophical inquiry, intellectual speculation, complex compound sentences—these two books have ‘em all.

We will be adding much more to this list. Also, you can help the other students with your suggestions in the comment box.

Stay tuned for more!

Also, The definitive guide on How to ace GRE might be a useful read for you. Do give it a read.

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BEST GRE BOOKS THAT SHOULD DEFINITELY BE IN YOUR AMAZON CART!

Welcome to another part of our GRE Guide, our honest effort in smoothing your prep by doing the research for you and delivering right at your browser.

Hello!!

I know you must have some questions.

Have you been looking all over the net to decide which ones should be in your Amazon cart?

Are you looking for something beyond the holy grail of prep?

What if the book you pick ends up being a waste of your money?

What about the precious time you’d have wasted with that book?

Which GRE Books are the most important?

These are some of the dreadful questions you must be facing while compiling the best GRE study material for your prep.

Well, you’re going to have answers

Once you’re done reading this article our team of 4 put 30 hours of research and surveying instructors and students in.

To begin with, the nature of GRE Trends is very dynamic. And the same goes for the suitable study material for GRE.

But, we promise you. We will keep updating this piece as required and never let you put the wrong book for GRE in your Amazon carts.

Also, the pursuit and research to find the best books to boost your GRE Score are all fine. But there is absolutely no substitute to hard work and a well thought and efficiently executed strategy.

Here’s the list of the MUST HAVES for a successful GRE Preparation.

1. ETS’ The official guide to the GRE General Test.

The $28 Official Guide to the GRE General Test (3rd Edition) is available on Amazon.

Let me do a favor to you, tell you something about this book. About its importance.

Your GRE Score is directly proportional to how well have you used this book. You heard it right, it’s THAT important.

And I’m not kidding you when I say that even a difference of 3-4 marks does make a difference, whether or not you’ll make it to your dream college. Have a look at How percentile varies with GRE Score.

The questions in this one are the best ones for GRE Prep out there. They’re written by the test makers themselves, after all.

The best part is the robust strategy section that they have put in. This would be a blessing for those weak in maths or new to the dynamics of GRE Prep. The book is divided into 9 parts. The well-structured design of this book is another plus for it. Also, it has an absolute degree of authenticity and credibility for being the OFFICIAL guide in the first place. It’s meant to reflect the real GRE.

2. Manhattan Prep GRE set of 8 strategy guides, 4th edition.

Having one book giving you an idea what the test-makers think of the GRE and how they want you to approach the test at your disposal. Yes, the official guide I mentioned above. What else do you need to ace the GRE?

You need something which can give you the touch of an experienced instructor who has had years of experience with GRE. This set of 8 books is just that. You need an intelligent voice taking you through the gruesome GRE syllabus, helping you with doubts, giving you insights only years of experience can help one make. This set of 8 books is just that.

Another plus of these books is their engaging nature which is very important if you don’t love being bored or left scratching your head with incomplete explanations. The most important part of this series, buying any one of these will get you access to their practice tests.

3. Manhattan 5 lb Book of GRE Practice Problems

Another one from Manhattan Prep in our must have GRE Books. The reason being, there is just NO other resource which comes this close to the actual GRE Test. The text completion and sentence equivalence do have some obscure vocabulary, but the tailor-made reading comprehensions do make it up. Not to mention the indisputable quality of the quant section.

Just like other materials from Manhattan prep, this one too has the comprehensive nature, which is applaud by students and instructors alike.

4. Barron’s 1100 words you need to know for GRE.

Vocabulary being something whose importance cannot be underestimated, this book is something that helps you with the questions on vocabulary, saving you the pain of learning a list of words with definitions.

The use of paragraphs and inferential questions asked along with these paragraphs are something that proves to be instrumental in a great GRE Verbal score.

Have any other book in mind suitable for this list? Help us get there.

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PROVEN GRE VERBAL STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE.

A lot of dreams depend upon your GRE Score. And not to mention GRE is as much about verbal, if not less, as it is about quant. The verbal section becomes even more crucial when it comes to students from Asian continent since English is not their native language.

What comes as even more of a surprise is the fact that even students from these countries have been averaging almost as good as the English speaking ones. So, if you think that you can’t score great in the GRE Verbal section, you are wrong. If you think that you don’t need to, after all, score that much in verbal because you can make it up for that in Quant, you are wrong.

Absolutely Wrong.

There’s only one, and one way around the verbal section. And that is to attack it head-on with all you got. And since you’re reading this article…We ensure you, you’ve got us by your side.

We have created this strategy that you must follow in order to score better if you are a non-native speaker.

1. Start reading books, newspapers, magazines and even blogs.

Start reading, this is the first step when you start working to improve your GRE Verbal score. There’s no getting around this. And if you look at it, it’s the easiest way too. It may seem that why to put so much effort in books and magazines when you can just learn words from your flashcards, but that’s not true.

Is it?

Because GRE Verbal is not just about vocabulary.

It’s about Reading Comprehension.

It’s about text completion.

It’s about sentence equivalence.

All these parts can never be perfected just by learning a few hundred words. You need to make yourself more comfortable with the English language in all manners. It wouldn’t make much of a GRE verbal score if you fail to perfect even one of its subsections.

Reading books and novels would sure as hell help you in building your vocabulary, in fact they’re better than your flashcards.

Because they come with new words and context in which those words are used. Learning new words is much easier when you learn the with context.

Also, being an avid reader also helps you with the analytical writing section. Try reading quality magazines such as The Economist, The Guardian etc.

2. Say NO to Dictionaries and vocab books.

It really does not make sense learning words from the dictionary or Word Power made easy when you have more than 3 months for your GRE exam to go.

Why would you want to learn a language from a dictionary?

And to make no mistake, GRE Verbal is not a test of vocabulary but the whole English language. Trying to improve your vocabulary is just like learning the names of chemical elements in your chemistry paper. And even with all that hard work, not even 10 percent students manage to remember all those elements at all times. How can one possibly imagine, to remember all the words in a given dictionary. Leave alone knowing how and when to use them.

Even for improving vocabulary, the dictionary is not the right thing to do. It has been experienced by instructors and students that reading is the only long-term answer to improving your vocabulary.

3. Watching English movies, TV Series and News.

If you’re not much of a reader and can’t read more than a certain level, don’t worry.

You can always watch some of the magnificent TV series and movies. Watching them will definitely not replace reading, but can help shorten your reading list.

Also, following some of the most renowned personalities, watching English talk shows will help you move towards a better GRE Verbal score.