Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

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chp380
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2015 3:21 am

Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

Post by chp380 » Thu Nov 26, 2015 3:34 am

Hi everyone,
I recently took a GRE Subject test, and I got a shockingly awful score (620 out of 990), while actually I was expecting it to be at least 800. It means I must have answered about 20 or 25 questions wrong out of my total 54 answered questions, and honestly, I doubt that I have done such an awful performance in exam.Therefore, I am considering a re-scoring request, but since it will cost me US$50, I wanted to know if it worth it to be done. I mean I'm afraid that the score wouldn't be changed by ETS, and I just lose some extra money.
I really appreciate it if anyone can share his/her re-scoring experience with me.
Thanks

slowdweller
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:47 am

Re: Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

Post by slowdweller » Thu Nov 26, 2015 6:35 am

I don't know how you are arriving at the 800 figure. You say you answered only 54 questions. Looking at the 2008 scale, that corresponds to 750 if you answered all of them correctly. A 620 corresponds to a raw score of 35, which means that (assuming your test had a similar curve) you got about 15 of the 54 wrong. Also note that the 2008 test was a form C test, which means that it was the most difficult of the 3 versions that they give on every test date and thus it had the most generous curve. On other versions a 620 could be a raw score of around 40 or 45.

chp380
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2015 3:21 am

Re: Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

Post by chp380 » Thu Nov 26, 2015 12:00 pm

slowdweller wrote:I don't know how you are arriving at the 800 figure. You say you answered only 54 questions. Looking at the 2008 scale, that corresponds to 750 if you answered all of them correctly. A 620 corresponds to a raw score of 35, which means that (assuming your test had a similar curve) you got about 15 of the 54 wrong. Also note that the 2008 test was a form C test, which means that it was the most difficult of the 3 versions that they give on every test date and thus it had the most generous curve. On other versions a 620 could be a raw score of around 40 or 45.
First, according to the conversion tables of the ETS practice books, the 1996 test is the most difficult test, and according to this scale I should have gotten 890, and a 620 score means I have about 26 incorrect answers out of 54, which is kinda impossible. Second, I actually asked for re-scoring experiences not score evaluation. By the way, thanks for your answer.

slowdweller
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:47 am

Re: Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

Post by slowdweller » Thu Nov 26, 2015 3:30 pm

chp380 wrote:
slowdweller wrote:I don't know how you are arriving at the 800 figure. You say you answered only 54 questions. Looking at the 2008 scale, that corresponds to 750 if you answered all of them correctly. A 620 corresponds to a raw score of 35, which means that (assuming your test had a similar curve) you got about 15 of the 54 wrong. Also note that the 2008 test was a form C test, which means that it was the most difficult of the 3 versions that they give on every test date and thus it had the most generous curve. On other versions a 620 could be a raw score of around 40 or 45.
First, according to the conversion tables of the ETS practice books, the 1996 test is the most difficult test, and according to this scale I should have gotten 890, and a 620 score means I have about 26 incorrect answers out of 54, which is kinda impossible. Second, I actually asked for re-scoring experiences not score evaluation. By the way, thanks for your answer.
The 1996 test is terribly outdated. The test these days aren't nearly as difficult as that one. Like I said, these days the most generous curve you will get will be close to the 2008 curve. I've taken the test 3 times and each time it was of a similar difficulty level to the 2008 test. Others on this forum report getting even easier ones.

I don't have any experience with getting a test rescored but I very highly doubt your score will change. I say this first because like you said you only answered 54 questions and when the maximum possible score you can get is 750, a score around 620 is kind of expected. Second, because freaking computers check it. But still if $50 means nothing go ahead.

TakeruK
Posts: 941
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2012 3:05 pm

Re: Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

Post by TakeruK » Thu Nov 26, 2015 5:20 pm

I have never heard of anyone who asked for a rescore getting an actual difference. But it's a small sample, maybe only 2 or 3. The way I understand it, the rescoring option is there for extreme cases. I can't say whether or not it's "worth it" to you because that depends on what $50 means to you.

But I can add that when I first took the test, ETS provided me with my raw score and it was something like 35 (I got about 39 correct answers and 16 incorrect answers) and my score was 640. This was 2009. I made a lot of mistakes because I am not good at the PGRE and there was a lot of tricks that got me. There were questions that I was sure about at the test time but then afterwards realised I made a huge error. Oh well.

Sportsfan77777
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2014 12:30 am

Re: Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

Post by Sportsfan77777 » Sat Nov 28, 2015 5:57 am

slowdweller wrote:
chp380 wrote:
slowdweller wrote:I don't know how you are arriving at the 800 figure. You say you answered only 54 questions. Looking at the 2008 scale, that corresponds to 750 if you answered all of them correctly. A 620 corresponds to a raw score of 35, which means that (assuming your test had a similar curve) you got about 15 of the 54 wrong. Also note that the 2008 test was a form C test, which means that it was the most difficult of the 3 versions that they give on every test date and thus it had the most generous curve. On other versions a 620 could be a raw score of around 40 or 45.
First, according to the conversion tables of the ETS practice books, the 1996 test is the most difficult test, and according to this scale I should have gotten 890, and a 620 score means I have about 26 incorrect answers out of 54, which is kinda impossible. Second, I actually asked for re-scoring experiences not score evaluation. By the way, thanks for your answer.
The 1996 test is terribly outdated. The test these days aren't nearly as difficult as that one. Like I said, these days the most generous curve you will get will be close to the 2008 curve. I've taken the test 3 times and each time it was of a similar difficulty level to the 2008 test. Others on this forum report getting even easier ones.
I agree with this. In my opinion, the test I took in 2014 was even easier than the 2008 version (the practice test with the smallest curve).
I would expect this year's versions (and future versions) have similarly bad curves, if not worse. (In other words, you have to answer a lot of questions to do well.)

I was targeting high 700s / low 800s, and my plan was to leave ~10 blank (ideally, less not more), under the expectation that I would get a decent fraction of questions wrong. That's what I ended up doing, and it worked.

If you get all of the questions you answer correct, I believe you need to answer in the low 60s to get an 800. But that is very risky. If you are that confident in your answers for those ~60, you can probably afford to answer 10 to 20 more questions (if not more).

athari
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 3:07 pm

Re: Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

Post by athari » Fri Sep 30, 2016 1:07 pm

please who can explain to my how I can calculate my score in GRE physics practice book?
I can answer 23 questions correctly and other questions I can not solve it

athari
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 3:07 pm

Re: Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

Post by athari » Mon Oct 03, 2016 2:51 pm

please answer me !!!!

Qwaps
Posts: 36
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2016 9:21 am

Re: Is it worth it to request a GRE Subject test re-scoring?

Post by Qwaps » Mon Oct 03, 2016 5:10 pm

athari wrote:please answer me !!!!
23 correct questions out of 100 is a very low score. If you really can't make at least some educated guesses for the other questions, then you really need to study more. The practice exam you did has the scoring guidelines, in a table.



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