OCTOBER 6th, 2007. GRE SCORES OUT

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cancelled20080417
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OCTOBER 6th, 2007. GRE SCORES OUT

Post by cancelled20080417 » Sat Nov 03, 2007 12:24 pm

GUYS,
OCt 6 th gre physics scores are availabe( by phone) !! I have not called myself, but I saw somebody posted their OCt (2007) score and it is out there now.
I will call soon.
TC

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:38 pm

November 3, 2007, 12:34pm

*Robotic Feminine Voice*

"The fee for this service is twelve dollars."

"Please enter your credit card number now."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Your score for the --- October- Two- Thousand- Seven Physics G-R-E is"

**heart pounding like crazy??**

"nine" **phew**

"nine" **YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY**

"zero" **jumps up and down**

(not bad for a domestic student from a 3rd tier state school)


All I can say is that I'm grateful ETS offered an October test date, as all of us should be who took that test. I can't imagine the confusion for students in previous years who wouldn't get their scores until applications are due... How could anyone make informed decisions, at least comfortable decisions? We all have a month now to finish the rest of our apps and I wish everyone the best! The reason I was so eager to know my scores asap was since I was still going over problems in my head even yesterday... now I can forget about that silly coil of wire!!!
Last edited by quizivex on Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Coco
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Post by Coco » Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:43 pm

Hi, quizivex. Congrats for your score! Just wondering, do you have a rough idea of what was, approximmately, your raw score?

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:49 pm

Hi, no... on the phone they only tell you your scaled score and your percentile. I'm not sure if the score reports include the raw score or not.

Can anyone who's gotten scores before confirm this?

Coco
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Post by Coco » Sat Nov 03, 2007 2:01 pm

Yeah, I know they don't give you your raw score on the phone. My question was more along the lines if you had an idea based on what you did on the exam :P

cancelled20080417
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Post by cancelled20080417 » Sat Nov 03, 2007 2:17 pm

@ quizivex
DID you get 990? CONGRATS!!
thats a blast!

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Sat Nov 03, 2007 2:21 pm

oh ok... geez I have no idea.

It's really remarkable how many of those problems you can think you're doing them right but end up getting them wrong.

However, I think for me this is how it went:
I answered 99 questions (left one blank)
Of those, I think I knew how to do 96 of them and made fairly clever/probable guesses on the other three.
After the test I realized 3 questions which I botched computationally and over the next month sortof noticed about 5 more I "might have botched."

At that point I began to worry since those problems were only the ones I could remember, so I figured maybe I botched a ton of other problems too...

But anyway, if I had to guess, I'd say I probably got a raw score in the mid to upper 80's (accounting for the guessing penalty).

@RG - yeah 990. Thanks. I'm thrilled... I've had such a miserable college experience, both socially and academically. This test is probably the best thing that's happened to me!

vicente
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Post by vicente » Sat Nov 03, 2007 4:29 pm

What a great score!

Congrats quizivex!

you'll be in one of your reach schools next September for sure

theodiggers
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Other scores?

Post by theodiggers » Sat Nov 03, 2007 4:56 pm

Was the test that easy or did this guy just kick ass? I just came out of the october test. I felt its difficulty was on par with the 96 test. I answered 60 with extreme confidence, left the rest blank. Thoughts?

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grae313
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Post by grae313 » Sat Nov 03, 2007 8:11 pm

Congrats, quizivex! That is awesome!

Theodiggers, out of the four practice tests, the easiest one still required an 84 raw score to get a 990, so I think quizivex is just the kung fu master...

sirjetpackbob
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Post by sirjetpackbob » Sat Nov 03, 2007 8:24 pm

Wait, we have to pay $12 to talk to a robot? What are we paying for, exactly? I could almost understand if they were paying someone to sit on the phone and tell us our scores. What a load of BS. Someone needs to take ETS to court for extortion of poor college students.

P.S., congrats on the perfect score!

theodiggers
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Post by theodiggers » Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:34 pm

I'm sorry, I meant just came out of the November test! I wanted to see if anyone else had just taken that test too and what they thought! :)

phantom
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Post by phantom » Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:45 pm

hey theodiggers,
i took November test today too...
i thought a lot of the problems were similar to those from the practice tests...
unfortunately, i didn't finish the test... perhaps i was working at a slower pace that i should have... oh, well... it's over now, but some of those problems are still running in my head, and i'm wondering whether i got them right or not :)
So now we have to wait for another month or so!

Hope everyone gets the score they expect!!!
Good luck with applications!

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grae313
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Post by grae313 » Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:47 pm

I answered 84 questions and felt pretty good about most of them, but like people have been saying, you never really know until the scores come out. I thought it was similar to the 0177 practice test with a lot of really basic, plug-n-chug questions and of course a number of tricky ones too. But I went through all four available practice tests twice before the exam with the help of http://GREphysics.net and I felt they did a good job of preparing me for the exam today. I'm hoping conservatively for an 800, but if I didn't do too many dumb things it may be higher :roll:

I think there are different versions going around though, and it's really all about the percentile ranking. Maybe you took a tougher version than I did!

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Sun Nov 04, 2007 4:28 am

It's hard to say whether the real tests were easier or harder than the practice tests... Afterall, the practice tests were given as real tests at some time I think and had very different difficulties. One factor may be that after 400 questions of preparation, the questions just look easier to us. For instance, when I first looked at the practice tests I had no experience with logarithmic paper. But after realizing it's important, I learned it and answered the one related question on my October test in 10 seconds. If I hadn't reviewed that topic, I would've looked at the question on the real test and shouted, "There's a misprint on this booklet, the gridlines in this graph are uneven!"

Regardless of the difficulty, ETS supposedly has statistical methods to assure the scoring scales are fair... I looked a little bit into this because I thought that the students taking the October test would be on average stronger/more prepared and was worried my score wouldn't be as high than if I took the November one.

It may seem impossible (it did to me) to make an objective scale based on how difficult they 'think' the questions are and how smart they 'think' the students are... but it might work somewhat like this (I could be completely wrong but I hope at least to make it plausible to other test takers that fair scaling is possible.)

The test has 100 questions. Suppose 25 are questions recycled (either verbatim or very similar) from earlier tests (much earlier, and these would of course be questions not released in the practice tests). ETS could then compare how the 11/3/07 students scored on those questions and then make an objective measure of the abilities of this new population compared to the old one. Then, knowing the student's abilities, ETS could analyze how they performed on the other 75 questions and come up with an objective measure of the difficulty of those questions, and thus the whole test. Combining this data, they could set the raw score vs. scaled score levels in an objective way that does not change over the years. That's why they say an 820 today is equivalent to an 820 earned in 1991.

The precise way they do this (called equating) was rather vague on wikipedia and ETS's websites so I made some guesses but if what I said makes sense then I'm sure they have even better ways of doing it. But overall, nobody should be concerned about their test being too hard or easy.

--- yeah the scores are read by a robot. But don't fret over that, I guarantee you that robot was much more competent than any ETS operator I've ever spoken with, haha! The $12 is indeed just another ETS extortion.

doom
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October Score

Post by doom » Sun Nov 04, 2007 4:42 pm

I got my Oct score yesterday, and got 710, a very solid score. I was shooting for about 700, so I'm happy. I also took the November test, and I felt like it went better than October, so that would be really good news.

How did other people feel about their scores/ performance on the November test?

vicente
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Post by vicente » Mon Nov 05, 2007 12:58 am

I got an 880, which is better than what I was aiming for (800)

I'm applying to a range of schools that go from top 20 to top 60, hoping that I'll get into one of them.
Last edited by vicente on Wed Nov 07, 2007 6:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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grae313
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Post by grae313 » Mon Nov 05, 2007 3:17 am

dammit. I really want to know my score now :x

cancelled20080417
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Post by cancelled20080417 » Mon Nov 05, 2007 1:55 pm

deep breaths... calm thoughts... it's going to be OK.

:wink:

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butsurigakusha
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Post by butsurigakusha » Tue Nov 06, 2007 6:15 pm

dang it, I just called and was told that my score is not available. I don't get it.

brothermalcolm
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My Oct 6th Score

Post by brothermalcolm » Wed Nov 07, 2007 5:45 pm

haha I read this post soon after I phoned in and asked miss robot (wonder if there's misters) for my score and she kindly told me it was "score 780 percentile 72" .

I felt rather ambivalent initially but then I remember telling myself before the phone call that I'd be really happy if I got 800 so I felt increasingly content and relieved that I didn't make a complete poo of it all. Anyways it means I shud hopefully now have a fighting chance with some top schools and I should have no more excuses to delay starting the apps :)

Props to the ass-kicking kung-fu-master quizivex (ur completely sorted mate!). Also thanks to PhysicsGRE website and forums for the useful exchange of gradschool info.

Now I should go back to calculating a loop diagram which was what I was supposed to spend tonight doing...

FYI: oct6, answered 83 questions and I guessed randomly on at least 5 of them. so on consultation with the ETS's 'how to interpret ur scores' pdf I must have had a correct/incorrect ratio of about 60/20 . Higher than I'd ever done on any past papers!

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Wed Nov 07, 2007 6:47 pm

Yeah nice work!

I thought it was interesting to look at the score/percentile ranges over time...

Here are the 4 practice tests, their years, and the percentiles of 680, 780 and 880...


_____680_______780______880
1986___62______82_______93
1992___54______74_______88
1996___57______76_______89
2001___54______74_______88
2007___?_______72_______ ?

Student scores seemed to jump much higher after the 1986 test (since the percentile of each of the scores went down in the later tests). Does anyone know why this happened? If I had to guess, I'd say after the release of the 1986 test, students could prepare much more easily than they could previously. Certain things like the energies of hydrogenic atoms, positronium etc... came from equations we would probably not have memorized unless we knew things like that showed up on the test... students in 1986 wouldn't have been expecting questions like that.

geomar
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Post by geomar » Thu Nov 08, 2007 5:13 am

butsurigakusha,

Did you take another GRE test since the October test? In that case, you are going to have to use your registration number for the physics GRE test instead of just your social security number and your birthday. That happened to me and I called up customer service.

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butsurigakusha
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Post by butsurigakusha » Thu Nov 08, 2007 1:49 pm

Thanks for telling me that.

Well, I did it. I pulled of a 990, which curiously was only 97th percentile. Anyway, now I have to do decide what to do with my life.

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Wed Nov 14, 2007 1:42 am

@Coco

Ok so I got the score report in the mail today and it does list raw scores.

<deleted for anonymity>

Since the numbers only add to <deleted for anonymity>, I guess ETS threw out one of the problems.

I'm having trouble with the online applications. Embark.com kicks me off every third click of the mouse. The schools do not have clear directions where to send the transcripts or GRE scores, whether to the grad school or the physics dept. I hope the stuff arrives to the places by the deadlines. Fortunately we all still have a month left. Good luck everyone!
Last edited by quizivex on Mon Jan 14, 2008 5:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.

luckybohr
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raw scores

Post by luckybohr » Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:06 am

i also got my score today and got a 990. it seems the range for getting that is very high because i only answered 87 correctly and missed 11 (omitted 1) for a raw score of 84. I wonder what the lower limit was to get 990?

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Thu Nov 15, 2007 11:24 am

ah congrats! Well, they do give different versions of the test throughout the world time zones and it's possible that yours was slightly more difficult than mine or vice versa (I took mine on the east coast of the US), so the cutoffs could vary.

We could probably figure out the approx cutoff if someone who scored in the 900-980 range posts his raw score.

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grae313
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Post by grae313 » Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:09 pm

For the 0177 test, a raw score of 84 or above was a 990. I had thought this test was slightly easier than 0177 so I was expecting a 990 to be 85 or 86 or higher. However, this year a 990 corresponds to 97th percentile instead of 98th or 99th, so I think it all fits together about as we were expecting it to. Luckybohr, I imagine you were right on the edge at an 84. Not that a 980 is anything to sneeze at! Congrats on your score.
Last edited by grae313 on Fri Nov 16, 2007 3:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

vicente
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Post by vicente » Fri Nov 16, 2007 2:42 am

_____680_______780______880
1986___62______82_______93
1992___54______74_______88
1996___57______76_______89
2001___54______74_______88
2007___?_______72_______ ?

You can put in 880 = 87% for 2007. I got 880 and it's listed as 87%.

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:17 am

@ Vicente

Thanks... what was your raw score? so we can compare to 0177


App Phy also got an 880, if you see this App Phy, please post your raw score, so we can see if everyone's test was scaled the same...


@grae313

I think the 990 %ile probably only varies slightly each year but because they have to round them to an integer, we see 98 sometimes and 97 other times.

I too find it hard to believe my Oct test would have a 990 cutoff much below 85. The test was difficult but I had much more trouble with 0177 than I did in October. However, maybe that's just me...my test had a lot more thought-provoking conceptual questions that I could just sit and think about and answer, and that's what I like, as opposed to 0177 that had lots of petty calculations I'd always manage to screw up a factor of 2 or whatever. I still have the 4 practice pamphlets laying around... 3 are unharmed but the 0177 book has many pencil holes and rips in it. I hated that test. haha.

vicente
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Post by vicente » Fri Nov 16, 2007 6:02 pm

My raw score was 66

geomar
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Post by geomar » Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:22 pm

I guess there are different forms with different raw score conversions. Here are 2 additional data points to add to the set:

raw score - score
67 - 850
84 - 990

AppPhy
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Post by AppPhy » Fri Nov 16, 2007 8:40 pm

...
Last edited by AppPhy on Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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fermiboy
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Post by fermiboy » Fri Nov 16, 2007 11:48 pm

More Data for October 2007

Raw: 52
Score: 730

Percentile: 64

I wish I had done better.
Last edited by fermiboy on Sat Nov 17, 2007 1:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

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grae313
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Post by grae313 » Sat Nov 17, 2007 12:27 am

fermiboy, what percentile was that?

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fermiboy
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Post by fermiboy » Sat Nov 17, 2007 1:14 am

I edited my post above listing my percentile.

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Sat Nov 17, 2007 3:32 am

Here's a few of the data you've posted:

Score____Raw Oct 07____ Raw 0177
730________52__________48-49
850________67__________65-66
880________66__________70
880________70__________70

Ok so from this data alone it's clear that all of us who took the October test at different regions had different tests with different score scaling. You can see this since the guy who got 850 needed a higher raw score than he would with 0177 and the one guy who got 880 needed fewer than he would have with 0177. and the other guy had the same...

It's also clear since the guy with 850 had a higher raw score than one of the guys with 880 in the first place.

Thanks for the posts, I was just trying to make some sense of this stuff.

phamvh
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Post by phamvh » Tue Nov 20, 2007 11:32 am

hi
Last edited by phamvh on Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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quizivex
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Post by quizivex » Tue Nov 20, 2007 12:04 pm

I don't know what you're doing wrong... when I called, I did the same steps (one to eight) that you did and got this:

"We have located your record for Oct, 2007 gre test. The fee for this service is $12. Please enter your credit card number now."

Before the scores were available, I got this...
"We have located your record for Oct, 2007 gre test. The scores for this test date are not available at the current time. Please allow one week before placing your call again."

So it looks like everybody gets the same prompts upto "we have located your record..." After that, it changes...

Scores by phone is a service to get the scores earlier than you get them by mail... But the score reports have already been mailed. The rest of us got ours last week. All this leads me to believe that the phone serviice is no longer working because they think nobody should be using it anymore. So you haven't gotten your score report yet? Are you international?

Have any other international students not received their score reports yet?

Unless someone else has a better idea, I suggest you call ETS general inquiries and explain your problem to them... they might even tell your scores themselves since they know the score reports are out.

vicente
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Post by vicente » Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:35 pm

I keep forgetting that I'm an international student because I'm from Canada. America feels just like home except with lower taxes and less rampant socialism.

As a foreigner outside the U.S., I did receive my score by mail a week ago. What country do you live in, phamvh? Is your country's mail service especially slow? You paid for the test you wrote, right?

phamvh
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Post by phamvh » Wed Nov 21, 2007 4:40 am

:D :)
Last edited by phamvh on Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

vicente
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Post by vicente » Wed Nov 21, 2007 5:14 pm

Have you tried calling the information phone line at:

1-609-771-7670

?

It looks like there's something wrong with your record since other international students like me have been able to access our scores but not you. So you should definitely give them a call.



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