Performance on the practice exams VS actual exam

[slm]

Hey guys,

I am taking the GRE this Satudary . I reviewed carefully and everything. I have done the Princeton review exam and the two older ETS sample tests. My performance on them was not as good as I wanted. I spend 2 hours and 20 mins on the Princeton one and got 53 as my raw score. I spent 1 hour and 50 mins on each of the ETS samples and got 90% and 92%. This makes me frustrated because I am shooting at 90%. I heard a lot of horror stories about the actual exam being a lot harder than the practice, which means I probably cannot get above 80%. I have been having nightmares these past few days about the GRE.

May I ask how did the percentile you got on the practice compare to the one you got on the actual GRE? Thank you so much!

[Topoltergeist]

Don't trust the two old tests. They could give you a false sense of confidence. The two newer test are the best.

I got 92%ile on the Oct. exam, and was getting 2 wrong and omitting 1-5 on the practice exams right before the real thing.

[quinquenion]

Also, keep in mind that because test takers are getting better, percentiles are being revised downward just about every summer. The two newer released tests are decent for figuring out your scaled score (the three digit number), but you should look online for the latest conversion table of percentiles/scaled score, bearing in mind that the trend is for you to need a higher scaled score to get the same percentile every year.

I posted a tad bit more about the annual revision of percentiles earlier.

[slm]

Don't trust the two old tests. They could give you a false sense of confidence.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any sense of confidence, I got frustration.

I will do the two newer ones in the next two days.

[slm]

Also, keep in mind that because test takers are getting better, percentiles are being revised downward just about every summer. The two newer released tests are decent for figuring out your scaled score (the three digit number), but you should look online for the latest conversion table of percentiles/scaled score, bearing in mind that the trend is for you to need a higher scaled score to get the same percentile every year.

I posted a tad bit more about the annual revision of percentiles earlier.

800 for 82%?? That's crazy... I know someone who took it too years ago and got 98% with a 880...Argh, panicking..
Thanks for the heads-up.

[owlpride]

I did better on my real exam than the practice ones. (Partly because my real exam had a much more lenient raw score to scaled score conversion rate than the past released exams.)

[talkloud]

I scored in the 70-80th percentile on all four of the practice exams and ended up with a 51 percentile on the real thing.