GRE scores are reported alongside a percentile, but most people don't have an intuitive sense of what those percentiles mean until they see them mapped out. Here's the breakdown by section and what it means for different program types.
Unlike the raw 130–170 scaled score, the percentile tells you how you performed relative to other test-takers over the past three years. A 160 Verbal and a 160 Quant sound identical, but they represent very different percentiles — roughly 83rd percentile for Verbal and 64th for Quant — because the pool of test-takers scores differently on each section.
| Score | Percentile | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| 330+ | 96th+ | Elite — top PhD and funded Master's programs |
| 320–329 | 88–95th | Exceptional — competitive almost anywhere |
| 310–319 | 73–87th | Competitive — above median at most strong programs |
| 302–309 | 56–72nd | Above average — competitive at a wide range |
| 296–301 | 43–55th | Average — near the national median |
| 285–295 | 24–42nd | Below average — room to grow |
Programs weight Verbal and Quant very differently depending on field. A humanities PhD program may barely look at your Quant percentile, while a quantitative field like economics or engineering may weight Quant percentile more heavily than Verbal. A single “good total score” target ignores this entirely.