GRE Score Validity and Reporting: Five Years, Two Reports, and Percentile Ranks

ETS keeps GRE scores reportable for five years following the test date. The worked example in the Bulletin ends the window on the day before the fifth anniversary of the test, and the Getting Your Scores page includes a calculator that shows the exact last date for any test date you enter.

Past that point, ETS can no longer report the score, and you would need a new test for any program that wants one. Near the edge of the window, allow for processing: ETS says sending takes about five business days, and warns that scores may not go out if the request comes too late.

Reportable is ETS's term for what it will send. A program may have its own view of how recent a score should be, so check each program's instructions rather than assuming five years is always acceptable.

ETS produces two different documents. The Test-taker Score Report lives in your ETS account and is meant for your records. It includes your contact details, date of birth, gender, intended graduate major, test dates, scores with their percentile ranks, the institutions that received scores and which scores they got, and a cumulative record of scores reported within the last five years. You can print a copy from your account.

The Institution Score Report is what a program receives. It covers your contact details and background information, and only the test dates and scores you selected with ScoreSelect, with their percentile ranks. ETS says it omits your other recipients, any scores you chose not to send, and any sign that you took other GRE tests.

The number is not the only thing a school can see. ETS makes your test-day photo and your Analytical Writing responses available to recipients through the ETS Data Manager for each administration you select from your five-year history.

ETS's guidance to institutions describes these essays as something like a rough first draft, since there is no time for full revision and no spell-checking tool on the computer-delivered test. Even so, if you send more than one test date, assume a reader may look at more than one essay.

Four free reports come with the test if you name recipients on test day. After that, you order Additional Score Reports in your ETS account, which ETS lists at $40 per recipient, available any time within the five-year window. Orders cannot be canceled, changed, or refunded after submission.

When you order later, ScoreSelect gives you three choices for each recipient: your most recent administration, all administrations from the last five years, or any combination you pick. If your name or mailing address has changed since the test, ETS asks you to contact GRE Services rather than handle it through the online order.

Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning are each reported from 130 to 170 in one-point steps. Analytical Writing runs from 0 to 6 in half-point steps. If you answer no questions in a measure, ETS reports NS, meaning No Score, for that measure.

ETS cautions that scores from different measures should not be compared directly, because each measure is scaled separately. A 155 in Verbal and a 155 in Quant do not represent the same standing. The tool ETS points to for that comparison is the percentile rank.

A percentile rank is the percentage of test takers in a reference group who scored below a given score. If your Quant score carries a rank of 70, you scored higher than 70 percent of that group.

The reference group changes. ETS bases its ranks on everyone who tested within a three-year period and updates the tables regularly; the 2026-27 edition of Interpreting Your GRE Scores uses test takers from July 2022 through June 2025. ETS explains that a scaled score represents about the same level of ability whenever it was earned, but its percentile rank can move as the comparison group changes.

Two practical points follow. First, a percentile printed on an older report may differ from the current table for the same score. Second, ETS advises institutions to compare applicants using the most recent tables. If a percentile matters to your decision, look it up in ETS's current interpretive data rather than relying on an old printout.

If one of your results comes from before September 22, 2023, when ETS shortened the General Test, it is still reportable for five years from its own test date. ETS's guide for institutions says the score scales were kept the same for the shorter test so that admissions processes would not be interrupted.

In practice, that means a school sees an older Verbal or Quant score on the same 130 to 170 scale as a newer one, and you choose it through ScoreSelect like any other administration. Because older-format scores are the ones closest to the end of their five-year window, check the last reportable date in your account before you plan around one.

ETS publishes standard errors of measurement for each measure and tells institutions that small score differences may not reflect real differences in ability. The same logic applies to your own retake: a one- or two-point change between sittings may sit inside normal variation.

That is useful when you set a target. Aim for a gain large enough to matter to your programs, then use the percentile rank to see what the new score means in context. RetakePrep's 100-question practice exam ends with a readiness score, one way to check before you test whether your practice has moved enough to justify another sitting.