All the top schools are incredibly selective, but I've never heard of any school turning someone down because of a too high GMAT. Shooting for your best possible score is admirable, but only a small part of the admissions process.

Your background as an entrepreneur and restaurant owner should be very interesting to the top schools. They are serious about building diversity into their classes and they will not see many restaurateurs in their applicant pool. Your task will be to tell them why your background will bring new dimensions to the classroom. Think about the managerial tasks you will have managed successfully. (Anyone who keeps a restaurant open for two years is successful - it's a tough business!) You have dealt with purchasing, hiring, managing hourly employees, unions, training, marketing and many more day-to-day concerns that the junior consultant or venture capitalist who is applying to Harvard has never encountered. An experienced admissions consultant can help you put together a persuasive essay set the shows your target schools how your background will being added dimensions to the classroom discussion.

You will need to think hard about why you are going to business school. Do you plan to go back into the restaurant world, keep the restaurant running while you are in school, or switch careers entirely. You can't just say you are going to b-school to find yourself or to make more money. The admissions committee will look hard at your goals and your reasons for pursuing them.

In other words, your GMAT score is only one element and it promises to be strong. You potentially can build strong essays based on your background that will make you stand out form the crowd. Once you have your GMAT score, turn your focus to building a sparkling application.

Thanks for the reply. I'm excited about everything you mentioned as I've mentally started to form my case to them.

I guess I just got worried about it based on an article I read on another site talking about how having a high GMAT can be a bad thing.

I lean toward your school of thought that the higher the better!

Think about it. Admissions officers LOVE high scores - they increase their ratings. They are way too smart to reject someone because he is too smart.

It could be a problem if it is totally out of line with everything else in an application because they might not trust that the score was actually achieved by the applicant.