Along the lines of standardized tests, I've been learning about the GRE recently. Did anyone here know that it's impossible to get a GRE score that's three standard deviations from the mean (general and subject tests alike)? That is, except on math, where a perfect score of 800 is at the 94th percentile and therefore isn't even two SDs above the mean. Likewise, you can't go 3 SDs below the mean without going under the lowest possible score of 200.
This document is produced annually by ETS (the folks who write the tests). It shows average GRE scores and standard deviations. For the general Verbal test, the average is 462 and an SD is 119. The 3rd SD would be 819.
This information, which is from a published paper, discusses how many SDs you need to discriminate between strong and weak students (a lot more than two-ish.).
Do most graduate schools in the US rely on GRE scores? It seems to me that the test is terribly watered down and mostly a tool for measuring averageness. This is what we're looking for in graduate students? Averageness?
I don't get it. Well, I do but I don't want to, so I'm blocking.
Val
