Is Percentile Rank a Lower or Upper Bound?

[Silviu]

Hello! I am a bit confused about the percentile rank. Is the value of the percentile a lower or upper bound for your score. What I mean is, if you are let's say 95 percentile out of 100 people, does it means that there is a chance you scored the highest score with other 5 people, or there are 5 people who STRICTLY scored higher than you? Thank you!

 

[jedishrfu]

Perhaps this will answer it:

http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=1&n=1

WHAT ARE PERCENTILE SCORES?

In contrast to stanines, percentiles give parents a more detailed description of how their children compare with other students who took the test by showing scores that range from 1 to 99.

For example, if a student scored in the 66th percentile on a test, that student achieved a score that is higher than 66%of the other students who took the test. So, if 1,000 students took the test, the student in the 66th percentile scored higher than 660 students.

Do not confuse percentile scores with percentage correct scores. Percentile scores allow you to compare one student's scores with a group of students who took the test. Percentage corrects cores simply reveal the number of items that a student answered correctly out of the total number of items.

 

[Silviu]

Perhaps this will answer it:

http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=1&n=1

Thank you for this, but I am still confused. My question is: If the top 3 students have the same score on an exam (and everyone else has less) and I am one of these 3 students, am I in the 97 percentile or 100 percentile?

 

[jedishrfu]

If the top 3 students out of 100 students had a tie score then I think they are in the 97th percentile meaning 97 students are below them in score.

I don't think you could ever be in the 100th percentile because that would mean out of 100 students 0 students would be in it.

 

[mfb]

I don't think you could ever be in the 100th percentile because that would mean out of 100 students 0 students would be in it.

If you round to integers, you could be. If you are the best out of 200 students, then 99.5 out of 100 students are worse than you, that could be rounded to 100.

 

[Silviu]

If the top 3 students out of 100 students had a tie score then I think they are in the 97th percentile meaning 97 students are below them in score.

I don't think you could ever be in the 100th percentile because that would mean out of 100 students 0 students would be in it.

So if you are in the 97 percentile you did better than 97 percent of the test takers, but you don't know what u did compared to the other 3 percent, right? (you don't know if you had the same score as them or lower)

 

[jedishrfu]

That's right, unless one of them says to you I'm in the 98th percentile.

 

[sysprog]

If you round to integers, you could be. If you are the best out of 200 students, then 99.5 out of 100 students are worse than you, that could be rounded to 100.

Percentile scores are not upward roundable -- 99.9th percentile means the score has an abundancy of no more than 1 in 1000 -- 98.9th percentile is part of the 98th percentile -- etc..