New GRE Scoring – Raw, Equating and Scaled Score

Understanding New GRE Scoring will help you prepare better for the Revised GRE.

After attending ETS – Revised GRE Webinar, they gave few interesting details on how New GRE Scoring works, which I didn’t find in ETS Revised GRE Site.

We know Revised GRE Scores are in 13 to 170 range.

New GRE Scoring Details

The Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning measures are section-level adaptive. This means the computer selects the second operational section of a measure based on your performance on the first section.

Within each section, all questions contribute equally to the final score. For each of the two measures, a raw score is computed. The raw score is the number of questions you answered correctly.

The raw score is converted to a scaled score through a process known as equating. The equating process accounts for minor variations in difficulty among the different test editions as well as the differences in difficulty introduced by the section-level adaptation. Thus a given scale score reflects approximately the same level of performance regardless of which second section was selected and when the test was taken.

• Raw New GRE Score = Number of Questions Correct
• Raw GRE Scores is converted to Scaled Score by Equating
• Scaled Score will be in Range 130 to 170

New GRE Scoring – Example

Following question was asked during the webinar.

Will there be difference in scoring if a student A and B got total of 15 questions right in following order

• Student A
• Section 1 – 5 Right
• Section 2 – 10 Right
• Total Correct – 15
• Student B
• Section 1 – 10 Right
• Section 2 – 5 Right
• Total Correct = 15

Based on Section-level New GRE Scoring, student A and B will not have the same scores.

This where you have to understand the process of Equating in Revised GRE Scoring.

After you complete section 1 (say Verbal), section 2 will be tougher than section 1. So, value per question in section 2 will be higher.

Within each section, all questions contribute equally to the final score.

Which means, score for each question between 2 sections is not the same.

Did you understand the New GRE section-wise scoring?

Equating factor is multiplied with RAW Score to adjust for question toughness and question variations.

I’m not sure of Equating factor is available per question or section wise. But, unlike Old GRE scoring, where each question’s value is based on answers to your previous question.

But in section-level New GRE, difficulty level of questions in  section 2 depends on your performance in section 1.

Question?

I tried to make it as simple as possible to explain the New GRE Scoring concept. If you are not clear, post your questions below.