GRE Scoring

Everybody appearing for the GRE test knows that scoring is non linear.That is all the questions don't carry equal marks. The questions asked in the exam fall under different difficulty levels ranging from easier ones to the tough ones. If you get the tough ones wrong your score might not suffer but if you get the easier ones wrong you will get penalized. The difficulty levels are labeled as 2,3,4 and 5. 2 being the easiest one whereas 5 being the toughest. So in both verbal and quantitative sections you should try to get all the questions from level 2,3 and 4 right. If you get those right be assured your score will be close to 800 if not 800 exactly. One of my friend who got six questions in quantitative wrong scored 800. Five of the questions that he did wrong were of difficulty level 5 and one was of difficulty level 4. One of my other friends got seven quantitative questions wrong. Five of them were of difficulty level 5, one was of 2 and the other was of difficulty level 3. This makes it pretty clear how the scoring takes place in GRE.

This is the reason why people keep on saying that you shouldn't do first five or ten questions wrong. If you get initial questions wrong your subsequent questions would be of more easier level thus hampering your score.

So don't try to be perfect (if you are gifted and can be perfect then no problem) and prepare for the core portions of the test. It's not that you should get all the questions right but it's that you should get most of the questions right.