Difficulty Scale Meaning

[keshav.ramaswamy]

In the score report at the end of each MST,each question is assigned a difficulty scale (ie 200-400.. 700-800).Can someone explain the scale used? A question of 700-800 level is the most difficult and a score of 200-400 is the easiest?Is this right?

[tommywallach]

Hey Keshav,

Yes. Our questions were originally designed based on the old scale of the GRE. It's safer to keep that old range, because we didn't write them with the new range in mind. But in terms of difficulty:

7-800 = hardest
6-700 = next hardest
5 - 600 = next hardest
3 - 500 = easiest

Hope that helps!

-t

[keshav.ramaswamy]

Thank you! :)

[tommywallach]

Glad to help!

-t

[esserstuart]

Hi Has this been updated to harder, devillish, medium high, etc?

If on the second round of the practice test we're getting disproportionately more 'harder'/devillish, can we expect this to happen on the test day?

[tommywallach]

Hey Esser,

That's actually how the test works now--it's section adaptive. Your first section for both quant and verbal is "medium difficulty" overall. If you do well on it, your second section is "hard". So yes, that is what will happen on the real test!

-t