Physics GRE Discussion Forums

I was pretty surprised when I checked my September score and found it to be 830, as I only left 3 questions black, and of the questions I answered, there were no more than 5 that I had to make an educated guess on. I walked out of the testing center thinking I got a 990, or at least something in the mid-900's. The general consensus seems to be that the test was comparable in difficulty to the '08 practice test, and on the '08 practice test a raw score of 64 got you an 830. This means I must have gotten at least 20 questions wrong just due to stupid mistakes, which I find really hard to believe.

So I'm basically wondering how other peoples' estimated raw scores correlated with their scaled scores on the September test. Did you just need a near-perfect raw score on this test to get a good scaled score? I'm half considering requesting a rescore, but I realize this would probably just be throwing away $30...

I left 8 questions unanswered, and after the test i figured out that I did two stipid mistakes. I was also expectiong 990 or at least 90%, but my score came out to be 860. There is always possibility of doing careless mistakes.

I left the test expecting to score in the low 900 neighborhood, just based on how I had scored on the 2001 and 2008 exams and my gut feeling on how it went. I left 4 questions blank, there were 3 that I could remember that I was sure that I answered incorrectly. I ended up with a 970 - which I was very happy with - but honestly, any score in the range of 850-990 would not have surprised me since there's so many opportunities to make stupid errors, not to mention the added pressure of taking the real thing. For what it's worth I thought it was similar in difficulty to the 2008 exam, maybe a hair easier. If you look towards the front of the 2008 exam book, the 2008 exam corresponded to "Form C", which is the most difficut one. For a "Form A", a raw score of 72ish would be the 830, so maybe the September exam was easier than we thought.

rufus wrote:This means I must have gotten at least 20 questions wrong just due to stupid mistakes, which I find really hard to believe.

I think you'd be surprised. Taking the the actual test is a different beast than taking the practice test. I was able to score 990s on all the practice tests, but as I walked out of the real thing I already had realized that I'd made two careless mistakes. I later found that I'd made quite a few more than those two. The heat and pressure of the moment can do that to you.

i also know one of friend who took the test last year, he was also hoping for +900, but eventually he got a 740!, so he had at least 20 stupid mistakes, "stupid mistake" is the mystery of PGRE! , i have a question from the guys that didn't believe their scores when they saw it for first time: did you solve questions until reaching the final answer? or you just answered the questions on the assumption that it's easy and can be answered by guess?
if you used guess technique, it can be a good explanation to low scores, my friend did this mistake........

Does rescoring have any benefit? Have people got a change in marks earlier?