GRE Percentiles: A Complete Guide

Last Updated on November 6, 2023

If you’re planning to take the GRE for graduate school applications, you may be wondering about GRE percentiles. If so, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, I’m going to discuss how GRE score percentiles are calculated and used, provide percentile tables, and more.

Here are the topics we’ll cover:

• The Basics of GRE Scoring
• How Are GRE Percentiles Calculated?
• What Are the GRE Score Percentiles?
  • Estimating GRE Total Score Percentiles
• How Schools Use GRE Percentiles
• Why Did My GRE Percentile Change?
• Why Are GRE Score Percentiles Decreasing?
• Are GRE Scores Curved?
• Is There a Best Time of Year to Take the GRE to Maximize Your Score?
• What Is the 50th Percentile on the GRE?
• What Is the 80th Percentile for the GRE?
• What Is the 99th Percentile on the GRE?
• Final Thoughts
• What’s Next?

Let’s begin by reviewing the basics of GRE scoring.

The Basics of GRE Scoring

The GRE has three sections: the Analytical Writing section, the Verbal Reasoning section, and the Quantitative Reasoning section. When you take the GRE, you get a score for each section and a total score, which is the sum of the Verbal and Quantitative section scores.

The GRE score ranges are as follows: 

• For the Analytical Writing section, scores range from 0 to 6 in half-point increments. 
• Both the Verbal Reasoning score and the Quantitative Reasoning score range from 130 to 170 in 1-point increments. 
• Since the GRE total score is the sum of the Verbal and Quantitative scores, it ranges from 260 to 340.

KEY FACT:

Your GRE Analytical Writing section is NOT factored into your total GRE score.

Each score in each of these ranges is associated with a percentile. So, let’s discuss how the percentiles are calculated.

How Are GRE Percentiles Calculated?

To calculate GRE test percentiles, ETS uses all GRE test-takers’ scores from the most recent three testing years. Each testing year runs from July 1 of one year through June 30 of the next year. 

To calculate the percentile for each score, ETS determines what percentage of scores are lower than the score in question. The percentile assigned to the score is that percentage.

For example, currently, a 159 Verbal score is in the 81st percentile. That percentile indicates that a 159 Verbal score is higher than 81 percent of GRE test-takers’ Verbal scores. In other words, it indicates that 159 is in the top 19 percent of GRE Verbal scores.

KEY FACT:

The percentile of a GRE score is the percentage of scores that score is higher than.

What Are the GRE Score Percentiles?

The following are the most recent GRE score percentiles that ETS released.

Looking at the above tables, we see that, overall, GRE score percentiles are lower for Quant scores than for Verbal scores of the same level.

Here are the Analytical Writing percentiles.

Looking at the above table, we see that most GRE test-takers score above 3.0 on Analytical Writing.

Estimating GRE Total Score Percentiles

ETS does not provide GRE total score percentiles. However, we can get a sense of what GRE total score percentiles are by using the Verbal and Quantitative percentiles. 

For instance, the 73rd percentile Verbal score is 157, and the 76th percentile Quant score is 165. So, we can estimate that the 75th percentile GRE score is somewhere around 322, though it’s probably a little lower than 322, since people tend to score relatively higher on one section than on the other. So, not everyone who achieves a 157 Verbal score achieves a 165 Quant score, and vice versa.

Let’s now discuss how GRE percentiles are used.

How Schools Use GRE Percentiles

Grad school admissions officers use GRE percentiles for understanding GRE scores.

For instance, what does a 318 GRE score mean? Is 318 a “good GRE score”? It seems pretty good, since it’s closer to the top of the GRE score range of 260 to 340 than to the bottom. However, considering that score in a vacuum does not enable us to perform an effective score interpretation. After all, the position of 318 in the score range alone doesn’t indicate how knowledgeable or skilled a test-taker has to be to score 318.

However, by considering the 318 GRE percentile rank, or the percentiles of the section scores that add up to 318, we can get a better sense of what 318 means. For example, the 159 Verbal GRE percentile is 81st, and the 159 Quant percentile is 58th. With that information, we can tell that a GRE test-taker who scores 318 has scored higher than a large majority of grad school applicants, who tend to be relatively skilled and motivated. So, now we have information indicating that 318 is indeed a good GRE score.

GRE score percentiles also help schools use scores from different tests. For instance, some  schools accept both GMAT and GRE scores. Since the two tests are different and are scored differently, doing a GRE to GMAT score conversion could be difficult. So, what schools do instead is compare test-takers’ GRE and GMAT score percentiles.

KEY FACT:

Schools use GRE percentiles to better understand what GRE scores mean.

Now that we have a good understanding of GRE score percentiles, let’s answer some common questions related to GRE percentiles.

Why Did My GRE Percentile Change?

Sometimes GRE test-takers see on the ETS website or on their score reports that their GRE score percentiles have changed. This experience can be particularly disconcerting if a test-taker has already reported score percentiles to schools and now sees percentiles different from the reported ones. So, what’s going on?

As we’ve discussed, ETS bases GRE test percentiles on all GRE scores from the most recent three testing years. So, every year at the end of June, when a new testing year is complete, ETS recalculates the percentiles. Thus, in July, new GRE percentiles are released, and all people who have current (non-expired) scores see their percentiles change.

Naturally, grad school admissions officers know that this change occurs every year. So, they won’t be surprised to see that percentiles applicants have reported don’t match the most current percentiles. Thus, discrepancies between percentiles applicants have reported and new percentiles schools get through ETS score reporting don’t cause problems for applicants.

KEY FACT:

GRE score percentiles change in July of each year when ETS updates the percentiles upon the completion of a testing year.

Why Are GRE Score Percentiles Decreasing?

There are a few reasons why GRE score percentiles have been decreasing.

Probably, the biggest reason for the decrease in GRE score percentiles is that schools are going test-optional. When reporting GRE scores is optional, people who expect to score high on the GRE are more likely to take it than people who expect to score lower. As a result, the percentage of relatively high GRE scores increases, and the percentage of relatively low GRE scores decreases. 

As we’ve discussed, a GRE percentile is the percentage of test-takers who have scored lower than a certain score. So, percentiles have decreased as a greater percentage of GRE test-takers have scored relatively high and a smaller percentage of test-takers have scored lower than each GRE score.

Another factor causing GRE score percentiles to decrease is the increase in the number of people taking the GRE for law school or business school. Since the test-takers in these groups are especially competitive, they tend to score high on the GRE. Thus, they have increased the percentage of high GRE scores and pushed percentiles down.

Meanwhile, in general, students and test prep professionals have gotten better at GRE test preparation. So, for this reason as well, GRE scores in general have increased, and GRE percentiles have thus gone down.

KEY FACT:

GRE score percentiles are decreasing because test-optional policies and other factors have caused an increase in the proportion of GRE scores at higher levels.

Are GRE Scores Curved?

The point of the GRE, like that of other standardized tests, is to provide a standard measure of test-takers’ skills. For GRE scores to be useful in that way, they have to continue to mean the same thing regardless of how test-takers are scoring on the GRE. Therefore, ETS does not curve GRE scores in response to how test-takers are performing on the test. Rather, ETS seeks to keep GRE scoring consistent regardless of what the score distribution is at any given time.

Is There a Best Time of Year to Take the GRE to Maximize Your Score?

As we just discussed, ETS does not curve GRE scores and seeks to keep GRE scoring consistent over time. So, there is no time of year when it’s better to take the GRE to maximize your score. 

What Is the 50th Percentile on the GRE?

ETS does not provide GRE total score percentiles. However, it does provide percentiles for the Verbal and Quant section scores that sum to the total score. The 50th percentile GRE Verbal score is 152, and the 52nd percentile Quant score is 157. So, we can estimate that the 50th percentile GRE score is somewhere around 309.

What Is the 80th Percentile for the GRE?

The 81st percentile GRE Verbal score is 159, and the 80th percentile Quant score is 166. So, we can estimate that the 80th percentile GRE score is somewhere around 325.

What Is the 99th Percentile on the GRE?

The 99th percentile GRE Verbal score is 170. There is no 99th percentile GRE Quant score; 170 is a 94th percentile Quant score. So, we can estimate that 340 is a 99th percentile GRE score. This estimate that the percentile of a perfect 340 GRE score is 99th is probably accurate even though the average of 99 and 94 is not 99. After all, it’s likely that only a fraction of those who score 170 on Verbal also score 170 on Quant.

Let’s now wrap up with some final thoughts on GRE percentiles.

Final Thoughts

Considering GRE percentiles is just one way schools evaluate GRE scores, and it’s certainly not the only way. Many schools focus more on absolute GRE scores than on percentiles, since they are more interested in the meanings of particular scores than in using GRE scores to compare applicants. Schools can take this approach because GRE scores have had consistent meanings over the past several years. So, admissions officers can use historical student performance information to understand what a particular score means about an applicant’s skills, without considering percentiles.

For example, many schools use GRE scores only to confirm that applicants are ready to handle coursework. So, these schools use the same benchmark GRE scores for that confirmation year after year, even though average GRE scores and percentiles change.

Thus, while percentiles can be useful, it’s good to keep in mind that absolute GRE scores have significance as well. In the cases of some schools, applicants are well-served by being highly cognizant of percentiles. In other cases, applicants can pay less attention to percentiles and emphasize absolute score targets.

What’s Next?

For tips on how to increase your GRE score and percentile, you can read our post on how to improve your GRE score.

If you’re just beginning your GRE journey, our post on how to start studying for the GRE could help you get on track to your target score.

For specifics on how to prepare for GRE Verbal and Quant, see our post on how to ace GRE Verbal and these GRE Quant strategies.

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