GRE Scores

The maximum score for the test is 1600: verbal and quantitative sections are each worth 800 points.

The student can get the results at the test center immediately after the GRE-CAT. This is not an official score as the results of the writing section come later. The writing mark (on 6) is reported along with the score, but is not included in the score for the other sections.

What is a good GRE score?

A good GRE score is one that gets you into the graduate program of your choice. You can check the median score of last year’s intake to put an actual number to the score that any particular program requires. (The range of GRE score might actually give you a better idea of your chances for admission.)

GRE score is certainly an important factor in admissions: your application might not be considered if you don’t pass a certain cut-off level. As a rough guide, a score of 600 on the verbal section is the 85 percentile, whereas 600 on the quantitative section is only the 50 percentile. (The percentile rank indicates the percentage of people taking the test who performed worse than you).

The mean score on verbal is of the order of 460, and the mean score on quant is of the order of 580. So it should be obvious that 600 on verbal might impress an admissions officer, but you would need above 700 on quant to impress anyone. Putting these two numbers together, we get a score of 1300: this is definitely ‘good’. However, for a highly competitive program a 1400+ score would be nearer the mark.

Do note that an ‘unbalanced’ score – with a very high percentile in one area and a low percentile in the other – is not as impressive as a balanced score.

The score on the analytical writing section needs to be 4.5 and above to qualify as ‘good’.

Next Steps

To improve your score, try our GRE practice tests, we have over 50 tests that you can test yourself on, all the tests are free.