Scoring Scale 200-990?

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alainaking30
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Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:50 pm

Scoring Scale 200-990?

Post by alainaking30 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:54 pm

So it says the scores range from 200-990 in 10 point increments, but does this mean that if you get 78 questions right that you receive a score of 980, as you scored 780 points plus the initial 200? Or is this not how the scoring works?

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Nishikata
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Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2018 6:37 am

Re: Scoring Scale 200-990?

Post by Nishikata » Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:35 pm

No for the method.

The raw scores from the number of correct answers are converted to a bellcurve-like grading system. Basically your performance is compared with the others’. From this statistics, the cutoff for 990 is selected. Sometimes, both getting 67 and 66 correct answers give you the same 700 score, because they belong to the same “percentile” or whatever the applicable term is.

An easy test will have a higher raw score cutoff, meaning you need more correct answers to get 990. A hard test will have a lower score cutoff because fewer people get many problems right.

Yes for the outcome.

For many cases, getting around 80 questions right is the cutoff for 990.
100 questions in 110 minutes are hard to finish, after all. Many people cannot write calculations that quickly. My hand sore after each test.

TakeruK
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Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2012 3:05 pm

Re: Scoring Scale 200-990?

Post by TakeruK » Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:48 am

One additional note. In addition to the raw score (0 to 100) and scaled score (200-990) as mentioned by Nishikata, there is also a percentile score (0 to 100). The percentile score is how your scaled score compares to other people's scaled scores in the past 3 (or was it 5?) years. So a percentile score of 80th means you scored higher than 80% off test takers in the past (3 or 5) years.

I only bring this up because sometimes people write about percentile scores and because they have an extra complication. The calculation from scaled score to percentile score is updated every year, in July. Since it's always a comparison of how well you did compared to the *most recent (3 or 5) years*, every year, one cohort of scores is dropped and another is added. So if you took the PGRE this year, applied, and decided to apply again next year, you might find that your percentile score has changed.

In short:

raw score: how well you personally did on the test that you took
scaled score: how well you did compared to how others did on the same test date (so that different test dates can be compared)
percentile rank: how well you did compared to people who wrote the test in recent years (so that the relative difference between scores from diffferent dates can be compared)



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