It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Scores from August administrations of the Revised GRE are now available online!

A few days ago, we reported that ETS had started to convert Old GRE scores to the new scale and we started to speculate about when the new scores would arrive. Apparently, they were right around the corner.
Yesterday, ETS released a table containing the percentile ranks for the new scale. Today, they followed up by releasing the first batch of Revised GRE scores nearly a week ahead of schedule. But what does it all mean?

1. The percentiles make more sense – ETS has done a pretty good job of pinning the 50th percentile right around the middle of the score range at roughly 151 for Verbal and 149 for Quant. From there, the scores are roughly patterned after a normal distribution. The extremely skewed percentiles of the old GRE are a thing of the past.
2. Verbal is still the tougher section of the two, but the math is harder than it used to be – The high end of the verbal scale still indicates that Verbal is the more challenging of the two sections; either a 169 or 170 on Verbal will land in you in the 99th percentile, while only a perfect 170 will do so for quant. However, the math is no cakewalk. A perfect score on the old GRE would land you only a 166 on the new scale. ETS has made good on its promise to make the math more difficult (this will help them challenge the GMAT in terms of B-School relevance).
3. 750-800 Math estimates can end up all over the place – 750-800 was the best quant estimate that you could get on the revised GRE, but today that range can mean a score as low as the 85 percentile (based on scores we have heard so far). The fact that a range of 6 score values on the old test (750, 760, 770, 780, 790, 800) translates to at least 10 different score values on the new test (162, 163, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170) shows just how out of whack the old quant scale was. Unfortunately, it also means that receiving a 750-800 estimate on your quant doesn’t tell you much about what your official score will actually be.

These are our big takeaways from today’s data. It is still a small sample and we will no doubt be updating you as further information trickles in. As I have previously mentioned, Manhattan GRE will be in attendance at the ETS score explanation webinars coming up in two weeks. We will be sure to report everything that we learn there as soon as we learn it. If you’d like to share what your scores estimates turned into today, please email us at studentservices@manhattanprep.com/gre/.

The word harrow has two definitions:
1. To break up and level (soil or land) with a harrow.
2. To inflict great distress or torment on.

We often refer to a dangerous or stressful incident as a “harrowing experience.”

As for the literal meaning, though — harrow is both the action of breaking up ground and the tool used to do it — I think that for years I had mistakenly been picturing a hoe.

Actually, a harrow is this terrifying web of spikes:

(Hey, we’re Manhattan Prep — what do we know about farming?)

So, a harrowing experience makes you feel as though someone dragged that over you! Yikes.

A similarly horrifying metaphor is found in the word excoriate, which we use to mean “to criticize harshly,” but which literally means “to run so hard as to wear the skin off of.” You could certainly excoriate someone with a harrow.

Also, here’s something interesting — the use of harrow as a metaphor is first attributed to Shakespeare, in Hamlet:

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres.

Harrow is also related to the verb harry:
1. To disturb or distress by or as if by repeated attacks; harass. See Synonyms at harass.
2. To raid, as in war; sack or pillage.

According to Etymonline, harry comes from the Old English hergian (“make war, lay waste, ravage, plunder”), the word used in the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” for what the Vikings did to England. So, when you say that you’re feeling harried due to all your responsibilities, you’re probably exaggerating a bit.

You can get a harrow like this one here.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and that we here at Manhattan Prep are making the GRE a less harrowing experience for you.