Why is the minimum score for the verbal and quantitative sections in gre 200?

Question

Hi all,

Looking at the scoring ranges for the GRE verbal and quantitative sections, it says that the scores ranges from 200 - 800. I am just curious why the range starts from 200 instead of ranging from 0 to 600?

Thanks for the answers

Answer 1

There's no real reason for it, except that the New Jersey company that publishes the GRE (as well as the SAT and National Merit exams) has always used those numbers. They are standard scores that aren't directly related to how many questions were answered correctly. My personal bet is that they didn't want people to be embarrassed by very low scores, so they made the floor 200. (By the way, it's not 200 for filling in the name, it's technically what any blank test would receive.) For a similar reason, ACT uses 1 as its minimum score, rather than 0. A 200 GRE, by the way, is a score that pretty much never happens.

A standardized test can use absolutely any scale. Some even allow negative scores (similar to how scoring works in "Jeopardy!").

Answer 2

you get 100 points for putting your name in. you have to make sure that they are are correctly bubbled in to get your points though.