Cross The Average GRE Score Barrier

Admission for graduation, post graduation, Masters Degree and fellowships at the US universities requires you to take the GRE  first. The GRE or Graduate Record Examination is one of the renowned competitive exams existing today. The credentials of this test are so good that this exam is also valid for the universities in the UK, Australia, Canada and other leading countries of the world. This test offers tough competition and only well prepared candidates can dream of crossing the average score barrier. Once you know about the  score and the scores calculation procedure, it will be easy for you to plan your attempt for the test to obtain above average score. This article aims at guiding you about what is an average score on the test and how to obtain more than average score.

Scores Calculation

The test is composed of the General test and the subject tests. The General test is compulsory and taking the subject test depends on the requirements of the universities you wish to join. The General test has three sections. These are the Analytical writing, the Quantitative Reasoning and the Verbal Reasoning sections. The subject test can be taken for one of the subjects from Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Literature in English, Mathematics, Physics and Psychology.

You need to write two essays in the Analytical writing section. Both the essays are scored by two separate examiners on a scale of 0 to 6 each. If their scores are at the most one point away then the average is taken as the final score. If they differ in their score by more than one point then a third examiner is asked to score your essay. His score is considered as the final score. Thus, for both the essays one can get a maximum of 12 points at the increments of half a point. If you leave an essay blank then nil is reported in your score card.

The Verbal Reasoning section is a test of your English vocabulary and how good you are at analyzing and evaluating the given information. To understand the relationships between the words and concepts you need to be strong at your use of grammar. This section is scored on a scale of 130 to 170 with 1-point increments.

The Quantitative Reasoning section is all about your fundamentals in the areas of mathematics and data analysis. This section is also scored on a scale of 130 to 170 with 1-point increments.

What is an Average Score on the GRE?

The GRE is valid for various universities in the US and many other countries. Therefore, it does not have a standardized average score. In simple terms if you want to know about what an average score on the test is then I would say it is the 50th percentile score. It means that 50 percent of the candidates have scored below this score. While calculating the average score, the scores secured by all the candidates who have appeared for the test in the last three years are also taken into consideration. What an average score on the test effectively means is that if you aim for the average score then you are better than 50 percent of the total candidates of the last three years. The ETS follows certain calculations for equating the scores of last three years and finds out information about what the average score of that year was. You can access the official web site of ETS, www.ets.org/gre to find out about what the average GRE score of the recent past is.

One can score better if he knows what average score he has to cross. Along with the score of the complete test it is also useful to know about the average score of the individual sections of the exam. As per the official web site of GRE, the average score for Verbal Reasoning section is roughly about 470 and for the Quantitative Reasoning section is around 610. The average score for the Analytical Writing section of the test is around 4.1.