Standardized testing and me

[chanaleh]

Okay, so I took (on zero prep) a practice GRE* online today and scored as follows:
Verbal: 161
Math: 157
(Writing: not yet scored)

Of course, this is on the New New Revised GRE, which is scored from 130-170, not from 200-800 like the old GRE. And since it is so very new (released in August 2011), they won't even publish the new percentiles until November (when they have a statistically significant sample, apparently).

Soooo... how am I supposed to know how I did?!? Arrgh!

Also, I take issue with some of the questions where they marked me wrong -- there are places where their idea of "right" is different from mine, which I accept, but I definitely think there were a few places where I *did* choose the answer they wanted and it STILL came out marked "wrong"!

*Just pondering opening up my options for next year. Nothing interesting to report at present.

Anyway, it's clearly time to go take a shower. Or something.

Also, happy birthday to justom, and happy Simchat Torah tonight!

Comments

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

Your scores are clearly closer to 170 than to 130, so you probably did pretty well. I don't know anything about the new test, but the old one was nearly identical to the SAT. You must have scored well on the SAT to get into Brandeis, so the GRE should be a piece of cake. Chag Sameach!

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Huh, I know nothing about the new test (but I used to teach the old test).

One counter-intuitive tip (for the verbal section) is that any answer with a strong word in it (i.e. always, never, etc.) is almost certainly wrong. I think I saw this the right choice once.

Happy Simchat Torah!

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

The tips from Kaplan seemed like they would be pretty helpful (though not worth paying $1000 for; get the book from the library). I didn't have those tips when I took the GRE, but then I taught for Kaplan and thought they seemed pretty sensible.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

Wait, it's scored from 130 to 170? So really it's 0-40, but they add 130 for no particular reason? Seriously?

[mjperson.livejournal.com]

They've always done wacky things like that. The SAT's were each 200-800 right? You got the first 200 points for paying the testing fee.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Simple algebra here for rough analogues. The baseline for the old test was 200, for the new test 130. So, take 'em out.
Range for the old text was 600; range for the new test is 40. So, 600X = 40Y
Y = 15; so for each point you got on the new one, it's the equivalent of 15 points on the old one. You got 27 basis points for math, 31 for verbal. So, it would be roughly analogous to a 665 Verbal and 605 Math on the old test.

At least, that's my considered opinion, worth everything you paid me for it.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant. I was thinking of approaching it that way, for just that sort of rough analogue, but hadn't sat down to do the math. :-D Thanks!

[goljerp]

Only problem is that you're assuming an even distribution in the range. A gaussian distribution would be more likely. Or they could do something wacky, just for yuks. But considering your price, I think that's a very decent solution. :-)

[taylweaver.livejournal.com]

Isn't that similar to the score range on the LSAT? If so, you could use that for comparison.