''ScoreSelect''

[allen berger]

I was enthralled when I saw this ''ScoreSelect'' option on the ETS website? When you look at the bottom of the page , you will see that it also applies to the Subject tests. Would somebody please confirm my conclusions, i.e., if I take the GRE tests many times after July 2012, then I can send to grad schools only the best score that I got rather than all those in the past five years?


Best

[allen berger]

this is the site http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/ ... coreselect

[CarlBrannen]

According to my quick read, you can send them either (a) your latest score, or (b) all your scores for 5 years.

If you've done worse in your latest exam there's no way to avoid sending it.

[quizivex]

But after test day, there's a third option. Unless I'm missing something, it looks like there's nothing to stop you from taking the general test many times and sending just the top score. I think I read elsewhere that you can take it as many as 5 times in a calendar year. Wow, that's something that certain students might realllly take advantage of.

After test day, you can send Additional Score Reports for a fee by selecting from the following:
ScoreSelect Most Recent option — Send your scores from your most recent test administration.
ScoreSelect All option — Send your scores from all administrations in the last five years.
ScoreSelect Any option — Send your scores from one OR many test administrations in the last five years.

Though BTW option (3) is not "free" or included in the test like the first two.

[TakeruK]

I read this the same way as quizivex's interpretation. In addition, because you have to send the score from an entire administration, that means you can't mix and match scores from different sections of a test -- for example, you can't choose the Verbal score from Feb 2012 and the Quant. score from May 2011, or what have you. This makes sense but some of the wording on the website confused me until I realised this is probably what they meant. Also, this point doesn't apply to the PGRE of course, which only has 1 score.

But I don't know if this is necessarily a good thing or not. Firstly, I feel this will cause people to feel even more pressure to take the test more than once, knowing that they can get a higher score without showing the bad ones. This would then cause the competition to rise, which means people want/need to get even higher scores. So it's a cycle where people may not feel comfortable until they've taken the test 2 or 3 times. Meanwhile, every test taken and every ScoreSelect-ed score (to pick out the best score) means extra money for ETS and increased costs for all of us students.

Additionally, I don't think it's really helpful to be able to pick out the best score because if you submit all your scores, I think the schools will probably only consider your best one anyways. If they are vastly different, say 500 and 850, then I think the school would look at the 850 score more. If they are similar, then it wouldn't have made a difference to submit one score or another anyways.

I guess it is good though that you can write each test as if it was your first and this makes every test equal in the sense that if you scored, say 750, you don't have to worry about doing worse on the 2nd try.