Once you have appeared for the test, you await your GRE scores. A good score is very important as it will decide if you will be able to secure admission in the graduate school of your choice. The GRE scores are valid for 5 years so that you may still be eligible to secure admissions even if you have to take a gap of a year before your admission.

The GRE test has 3 sections. For the old tests, the GRE scores were out of 1600 but as per the new pattern of the GRE revised general test the maximum score is 340. Out of this, 170 marks are allocated to the Verbal reasoning section while the other 170 are from the quantitative reasoning section. The Analytical section is marked on the basis of points out of a maximum of 6. Scoring around 4.5 and above in this section will be considered as a good score for which you need to get approximately 70% and above marks in your essays.

The GRE scores of each student can be sent to 4 different universities chosen by the student after receiving the results. For any additional university to which the scores have to be sent, an extra fee will be levied. All the students who will appear for revised tests from August 2011 to November 2011 shall receive the scores only in November 2011. Post November, students will start receiving their GRE scores within 10-15days of the test.

You may also know about your GRE scores through mail, phone or internet. The score sheet also describes your percentile rank which will remain constant for all the 5 years of validity. However it is beneficial to secure admissions in the same year as the next years may have better scores from students which will be a hurdle to your admission.