Hello and welcome to this video where I will explain what percentile scores are and
how they are used in some exams.
Percentile scores are a way of comparing your performance to other people who
took the same test. They tell you how many percent of the test takers scored lower
than you. For example, if you got a percentile score of 80, that means you scored
higher than 80% of the people who took the test.
Percentile scores are not the same as percentage scores, which tell you how many
questions you answered correctly out of the total number of questions. For example,
if you got 80% on a test, that means you answered 80 out of 100 questions correctly.
But that does not tell you how well you did compared to other people who took the
same test.
Some exams, such as the SAT, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT, report percentile scores
along with other scores, such as raw scores and scaled scores. Raw scores are the
number of questions you answered correctly on each section of the test. Scaled
scores are the result of converting raw scores to a common scale that allows for
comparison across different versions of the test. Percentile scores are based on
scaled scores and reflect how well you did relative to other people who took the
same test in a recent period.
Percentile scores can help you understand your strengths and weaknesses on
different sections of the test. They can also help you set realistic goals and
expectations for your future performance. For example, if you got a percentile score
of 90 on the verbal section of the GRE, that means you did very well compared to
most people who took the test. But if you got a percentile score of 50 on the
quantitative section, that means you did average and have room for improvement.
Percentile scores can also vary depending on the difficulty level and the number of
people who took the test. For example, if you took a very hard test and got a scaled
score of 150, that might translate to a high percentile score because most people did
worse than you. But if you took a very easy test and got the same scaled score of
150, that might translate to a low percentile score because most people did better
than you.
Therefore, it is important to understand what percentile scores mean and how they
are calculated for different exams. They can give you valuable feedback on your
performance and help you prepare for your next test. Thank you for watching this
video and I hope you learned something new today.