GRE Scores in Writing

I received my GRE score report in the mail today, and I did not misremember the Quantitative and Verbal scores they gave me at the testing center. The report also gave my Writing score.

800 V (99th percentile)
750 Q (83rd percentile)
6.0 W (97th percentile)

(Percentile = percentage of test-takers scoring below my score)

The "99" given for the Verbal score is a bit misleading; a 740 still gets you in the 99th percentile. Robert's estimate, based on the reported data, is 99.7% scored below 800.

Using the correlation between Verbal and Quantitative scores ETS provides (0.35) and making some assumptions about the distributions of the data, Robert also looked at the percentage of test-takers scoring an 800 V and a 750+ Q (i.e. at least as well as I did) - this turned about to be about 0.25%, or one in four hundred.

In his model, a person scoring an 800 V is expected to score just about what I did on the Quantitative section.

So, I guess you could say I not only survived the GRE, I pwned it.


So now I am hoping that what I hear is true - that assistanceships and fellowships are often awarded based a combination of GRE score and GPA. Although my GPA is very good but not stellar (although I do not know how/whether they view GPA in context of the rigor of the undergraduate program), it should be good enough in combination with a 1550 GRE to get me funding.