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So far, you’ve been competing against a pool of people that is basically the general population (just in your own age bracket). College is different: all those people who didn’t go to college or went to community college aren’t there, so it’s a stronger overall pool.</p>
<p>Graduate school ups the ante even more: all of those people who didn’t finish college, flunked out, did badly, or lack the motivation to continue their education are out of the game. My very general rule of thumb for estimating what your graduate school test percentile will be is to do 100-(SAT or ACT percentile), then multiply by two, then subtract from 100. </p>
<p>“Aries, check your math. Half of people get negative numbers, and there’s no such thing as a negative percentile.” Correct - and those half are the people who aren’t going to go to graduate school. </p>