700 GMAT, should I retake?

Hi dehevesy,

First off, a 700 is an outstanding score (it's right around the 90th percentile overall), so you should apply to any Business Schools that interest you. As such, a retest might not be necessary. It's important to remember that when applying to a highly competitive Program, you need a strong OVERALL profile AND you need to properly 'market yourself' to each individual Program. A Q41 won't 'impress' anyone, and it would probably be a 'red flag' at certain Finance Programs and other Specialty Programs, but it likely won't disqualify you from most Programs. You're ultimately asking Admissions questions though, so you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile. There's a Forum full of them here:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/ask-an-mba-a ... t-f40.html

If you do choose to retest, then we have to examine how you were studying for the Quant section before. Once you've decided on whether to retest or not, you should post back here (or you can PM me directly) and we can talk through your study options going forward.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

dehevesy wrote:I took the GMAT and scored a 700/ IR 7, 41Q/45V (45%/99%). Is it worth a re-take? My quant is pretty weak in general, I've never been very good at math, but I also didn't study very hard. I feel like if I really put effort in, I could probably raise my quant 2-4 points, but I worry that there's also a possibiilty that my verbal or IR could go down and it may be a wash. I'm looking into top 20 MBA programs. Is the quant score low enough to hurt my admissions chances despite the decent overall score? I've heard that adcoms really look for a balance, and that a split closer to 80%/80% would hold more weight than a 50%/90% split, is this true?

I want to point out a major misconception that you're repeating here: the old 80/80 myth. This hasn't held true for decades. YOU SHOULD IGNORE YOUR PERCENTILES COMPLETELY!

Percentiles fluctuate yearly, based on who's taking the test. They do *not* reflect anything about ability. In the past 10 years especially, the GMAT has become more international, causing quant scores to increase substantially, and percentiles therefore to decrease. The opposite is happening on the verbal side.

To get an 80th percentile on the quant, you would need to get a 50 or 51. Even a near-perfect 49 is only a 75th percentile these days. You do not need to get a near-perfect quant score to get into a top school!

Schools know that percentiles change. What they care about is the ability level of students, which is correlated with the numerical score, and does not change over time. Generally, top schools would like to see a quant score of 45 or higher, but they care more about the overall score than about individual section breakdowns.

More on this here: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... mat-score/