The Application Process

Worried about having a GMAT score below 700? Do you wonder if your score is high enough to get into your target school(s)? We at Fortuna Admissions address these questions in a recent Poets & Quants article, Can A Sub-700 GMAT Take You Out?

It might be comforting to think that the range of GMAT scores for the MBA class of 2015 is 550 to 780 at Harvard, and 550 to 790 at Stanford. But the distribution of GMAT scores of students in a program will roughly fall according to a bell curve. So if you remove the outliers who had something exceptional to offer, you're left with a more realistic sense of what constitutes a competitive score. At Wharton, for example, 80% of those admitted for the class of 2015 had a GMAT score between 690 to 760.

Schools do at least look at the GMAT alongside your undergrad/grad school record, and rate you on your academics considering the whole picture. A really strong undergrad record, which perhaps included a consistent presence on the Dean's List, can go some way to compensating for a borderline GMAT.

Although schools look at your academics holistically, you should bear in mind:

1) Quantitative majors are often considered to be harder than the qualitative ones, so e.g. a 3.5/4.0 in Engineering is more highly regarded than it would be in History. Not all majors were created equal, and not all undergrad institutions were either.

2) Schools have higher GMAT expectations of consultants, finance pros, and engineers.

3) As well as expecting a higher GMAT from candidates with common profiles, schools also take cultural variations in performance into account. For example, if you're coming from a country or a professional background where historically the numbers are high on the quant, you need to really present within that range.

There's only one school in the Poets & Quants' Top 10 with a GMAT average below 700 (see the article for a chart of school GMAT averages). Any applicant with less than 75th or even 80th percentile on the quant will need to have other evidence of strong quant skills (e.g. through undergrad courses, work experience, additional courses, etc.). Though you're not doomed to rejection if your score is below that level, the sheer volume of applicants with competitive GMAT scores means that the rest of your application will need to sparkle to mitigate your lower test score.

If it makes you feel any better, every year one of the Fortuna Admissions team of former MBA Admissions Directors would routinely receive around 175 applications from applicants with a perfect 800 score on the GMAT. And every year the MBA program would admit...none of them. We guess sometimes you can be too clever for your own good.

For the full article, click here. If you'd like our opinion on whether your GMAT score is strong enough for your target school(s), alongside of the rest of your application, contact us anytime.

Best wishes,