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Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Mon May 20, 2013 9:47 am
by soil
850(81%)

……


(sigh)

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 12:16 pm
by kal
soil, how many blanks did you leave and how many wrong do you reckon you had.?

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 1:00 pm
by soil
I left almost 10 questions blank.

and I confirmed that I made 5 wrong answers.

For sure, there would be more (maybe... a lot of :( ) wrong answers which I couldn't confirm.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 2:49 pm
by 20130710
I got a really low score. So low that to say I am devastated about it would be an understatement :(

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 3:29 pm
by mrfotih
damn 780 (70%) :oops:
I'll take again in the coming fall.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 5:10 pm
by kal
Elena and mrfotih how many blanks and estimated mistakes?

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Wed May 22, 2013 3:29 pm
by mrfotih
62 correct
22 blanks
16 mistakes
raw scare 58

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Wed May 22, 2013 6:57 pm
by Tom Joad
mrfotih wrote:62 correct
22 blanks
16 mistakes
raw scare 58
Did you actually get that with your score report or is that just an estimate? If so, that's different than the past few years's tests.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Thu May 23, 2013 10:39 am
by mrfotih
That's only my estimation!

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Thu May 23, 2013 4:41 pm
by kal
I got 850 with 7 blanks and an estimated 5-7 mistakes! The 990's must have been REALLY high . 90++ correct..

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 6:25 am
by soil
kal wrote:I got 850 with 7 blanks and an estimated 5-7 mistakes! The 990's must have been REALLY high . 90++ correct..
Absolutely same here. I assumed my raw score would be over 80 easily! So I expected over 900 scaled score.

But got 850 scaled score ... :?

I guess... everyone really did one's study super hard for this test :)

or just... The test was somewhat easy compare to past one. Although I took 4 recent PGRE tests include this one and I don't think this test was particularly easier than past one.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 8:14 am
by kal
Exactly like you soil..I expected easily above 900's... I guess the odds of them having made a mistake a pretty low...

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 1:44 pm
by pichinko
I think the scale was similar to the 2008 test.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 4:18 pm
by blighter
The test differs in different time zones at the very least if not different centres. So you guys probably didn't share a common test, unless you took the test in the same time zone.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 8:12 pm
by stengah
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought percentile scores are not based on the test you took, but an average of the tests over the past 3 years or something like that. There are some recent threads that discuss this.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 2:11 am
by TakeruK
stengah wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought percentile scores are not based on the test you took, but an average of the tests over the past 3 years or something like that. There are some recent threads that discuss this.
This is correct (see http://www.ets.org/gre/subject/scores/understand/) but that paragraph doesn't specify that it is exactly "3 years".

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 12:02 am
by hermitw
kal wrote:I got 850 with 7 blanks and an estimated 5-7 mistakes! The 990's must have been REALLY high . 90++ correct..
I got 950 and I leave about 7 or 8 blank. However, it seems 990's are never more than 85 for raw?

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 12:03 am
by hermitw
blighter wrote:The test differs in different time zones at the very least if not different centres. So you guys probably didn't share a common test, unless you took the test in the same time zone.
how do you get that information?
ets just said:
Each GRE test score is reported with a corresponding percentile rank. A percentile rank for a score indicates the percentage of examinees who took that test and received a lower score. Regardless of when the reported scores were earned, the percentile ranks for Subject Test scores are based on the scores of all examinees who tested within a recent time period.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 12:05 am
by hermitw
TakeruK wrote:
stengah wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought percentile scores are not based on the test you took, but an average of the tests over the past 3 years or something like that. There are some recent threads that discuss this.
This is correct (see http://www.ets.org/gre/subject/scores/understand/) but that paragraph doesn't specify that it is exactly "3 years".
do they put different weight on different tests? For example the scores of the guys took the same time with you would be weighted more? After all different test have quite different difficulties.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 12:08 am
by kal
@hermitw

how many mistakes you reckon you had, besides the blanks. I am thinking of asking them to check my score again, that's why I'm asking.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 3:00 am
by blighter
hermitw wrote:
blighter wrote:The test differs in different time zones at the very least if not different centres. So you guys probably didn't share a common test, unless you took the test in the same time zone.
how do you get that information?
ets just said:
Each GRE test score is reported with a corresponding percentile rank. A percentile rank for a score indicates the percentage of examinees who took that test and received a lower score. Regardless of when the reported scores were earned, the percentile ranks for Subject Test scores are based on the scores of all examinees who tested within a recent time period.
They can't give you the same test in different time zones because the tests are at different times. Percentile rank isn't calculated right away. First they convert the raw score to the scaled score based on the difficulty of the tests regardless of how the people in your particular centre performed (you may live in a place where most people manage to score very highly in the test, but that won't affect your scaled score. That is to say your percentile rank in your particular centre may be 50% and yet your overall percentile rank might still be 95%, theoretically). And percentile ranks are given out based on the scaled scores of the people who took the test over past few years. That's why even if you take the test now, your percentile rank might change over the years. But your scaled score will remain the same.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 8:11 pm
by TakeruK
hermitw wrote:
do they put different weight on different tests? For example the scores of the guys took the same time with you would be weighted more? After all different test have quite different difficulties.
No, every single test is weighted the same when computing percentile ranks. Basically,

Scaled Score = a way to compare your raw score (i.e. actual # correct) vs. those who took the exact same test as you.

Percentile Rank = a way to compare your scaled score vs. those who took PGREs in the last X years (where X may be 3, as in this example here: http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table2.pdf)

These are the only two objective measures of performance that ETS can compute, so that's why they are the results that are published and put into our score reports. Ideally, there would be a way to account for varying difficulties in different tests (on different days/time zones) but obviously that is not possible since this would require an objective way to quantify the "difficulty" of each test.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2013 6:10 pm
by hermitw
kal wrote:@hermitw

how many mistakes you reckon you had, besides the blanks. I am thinking of asking them to check my score again, that's why I'm asking.

Sorry I am not sure where I made the mistake after the test...How do you guys know that?

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2013 6:17 pm
by hermitw
blighter wrote:
hermitw wrote:
blighter wrote:The test differs in different time zones at the very least if not different centres. So you guys probably didn't share a common test, unless you took the test in the same time zone.
how do you get that information?
ets just said:
Each GRE test score is reported with a corresponding percentile rank. A percentile rank for a score indicates the percentage of examinees who took that test and received a lower score. Regardless of when the reported scores were earned, the percentile ranks for Subject Test scores are based on the scores of all examinees who tested within a recent time period.
They can't give you the same test in different time zones because the tests are at different times. Percentile rank isn't calculated right away. First they convert the raw score to the scaled score based on the difficulty of the tests regardless of how the people in your particular centre performed (you may live in a place where most people manage to score very highly in the test, but that won't affect your scaled score. That is to say your percentile rank in your particular centre may be 50% and yet your overall percentile rank might still be 95%, theoretically). And percentile ranks are given out based on the scaled scores of the people who took the test over past few years. That's why even if you take the test now, your percentile rank might change over the years. But your scaled score will remain the same.
Then the problem is how do they measure the difficulty of the test when converting to scaled score?

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2013 6:21 pm
by hermitw
TakeruK wrote:
hermitw wrote:
do they put different weight on different tests? For example the scores of the guys took the same time with you would be weighted more? After all different test have quite different difficulties.
No, every single test is weighted the same when computing percentile ranks. Basically,

Scaled Score = a way to compare your raw score (i.e. actual # correct) vs. those who took the exact same test as you.

Percentile Rank = a way to compare your scaled score vs. those who took PGREs in the last X years (where X may be 3, as in this example here: http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table2.pdf)

These are the only two objective measures of performance that ETS can compute, so that's why they are the results that are published and put into our score reports. Ideally, there would be a way to account for varying difficulties in different tests (on different days/time zones) but obviously that is not possible since this would require an objective way to quantify the "difficulty" of each test.
This make sense. The scale scores comes first then they calculate the percentile. But how do they measure the difficulty of each test to give the scale score?

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 5:19 pm
by TakeruK
hermitw wrote: This make sense. The scale scores comes first then they calculate the percentile. But how do they measure the difficulty of each test to give the scale score?
Short answer: They don't. The difficulty of the test is not directly factored into either score. The scaled score is supposed to be scaled to the difficulty of the test that you are taking -- so that the best scaled score on the test will be 990. If the test is hard, a raw score of like 65 might be enough to get 990 but if the test is easier then a raw score of 80 might be 990 (I'm just using example numbers).

The percentile rank doesn't compare difficulty of the tests though. If, for some reason, the 2011 test was insanely harder than the 2012 test, then getting e.g. 850 might be a lot harder in 2011 but someone getting 850 in 2011 will have the exact same percentile score as someone getting 850 in the 2012 test.

So, it is ETS' job to ensure their reported scores are useful by not allowing drastic differences in test difficulties over short periods of time. This is also why I would argue that small differences in score (scaled scores or percentile) are not very significant.

Re: Apr 2013 score is now available Online

Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 7:50 pm
by quizivex
hermitw wrote:This make sense. The scale scores comes first then they calculate the percentile. But how do they measure the difficulty of each test to give the scale score?
Good question... ETS says they measure the difficulty of a new version of the test by comparing it to a previous (known) version of the test using a process called "equating".

See for instance the ETS PGRE prep booklet:
After a new edition of a Subject Test is first administered, examinees’ responses to each test question are analyzed in a variety of ways to determine whether each question functioned as expected. These analyses may reveal that a question is ambiguous, requires knowledge beyond the scope of the test, or is inappropriate for the total group or a particular subgroup of examinees taking the test. Such questions are not used in computing scores.
Following this analysis, the new test edition is equated to an existing test edition. In the equating process, statistical methods are used to assess the difficulty of the new test. Then scores are adjusted so that examinees who took a more difficult edition of the test are not penalized, and examinees who took an easier edition of the test do not have an advantage. Variations in the number of questions in the different editions of the test are also taken into account in this process.
Wikipedia has an explanation of what equating is.