MBA Ivy wrote:Are your GMAT scores good enough to get you in to a 'Top Ten' MBA business school? How about if you're interested in getting your EMBA? Do you even know what the average GMAT score for your target school IS? You should.

That is the magic question after all, and what everyone wants to know: is my GMAT even competitive for the programs I'm targeting? What if I'm targeting Stanford, MIT Sloan, or HBS, Wharton and the Ivy League? Can I even get in?

Obviously, the higher your GMAT or GRE score the better chance you have of gaining admission to a strong MBA or executive EMBA program, and crossing over that 720 GMAT line truly does put you in a different league with the MBA business school ad com around the world.

The highest score of any client I ever personally worked with as an MBA admissions consultant was a 780. The applicant, a young man in his mid-twenties from NYC, didn't have much in terms of professional experience. In fact, due to downsizing at his company after the last economic downturn, he was forced to take a job, just to survive, in an entirely unrelated career! He had been working in finance and now was in straight tech. Like IT.

In other words, though very smart, this guy's resume was a mess.

BUT...he took the GMAT and got a 780. With that alone, regardless of his professional experience, regardless of a career that seemed pretty disjointed and fragmented and not too stable right from the start, our 26 year old guy in point got in to all 3 of his target MBA programs: Columbia, Kellogg, and Chicago Booth.

My point? A high score can mean an awful lot.

So, what are the average GMAT scores of the Top Ten MBA programs in the U.S.? This data put together by the website "Poets & Quant" shows the average GMAT scores from the most competitive business schools around, including HBS, Stanford, Booth, Wharton, Kellogg, Columbia, MIT Sloan, Berkeley Haas, plus many more.

Remember though, these are GMAT averages. That means there were GMAT scores both above and below what you see here, which means people got in with higher scores than this, and people got in with lower GMAT's than this. Not hitting this exact score in other words doesn't mean you can't get in.

So, take a look below and see how your own GMAT scores compares! Does yours make it on the list?

HBS: 725 GMAT
Stanford: 733 GMAT
Chicago Booth: 726 GMAT
Wharton: 732 GMAT
Kellogg: 724 GMAT
Columbia: 715 GMAT
MIT Sloan: 716 GMAT
UC Berkeley Haas: 715 GMAT
Dartmouth Tuck: 717 GMAT
NYU Stern: 720 GMAT

In terms of the non-U.S. schools, I did the following research, and came up with these, again average, GMAT's for the top non-U.S. schools:

INSEAD: 704
LBS: 700
Cambridge (Judge): 690
Oxford (Said): 690

Slightly lower than the U.S. schools, but still breaking 680 (in averages).

So, what does all this mean? Overall, if you want to go to a highly competitive MBA program, you want to be hitting around 680+ on your practice tests and the higher the score the better, so studying and preparing truly helps and there are a lot of good online GMAT courses and books out there.

So, do your best, take the test, and get the GMAT score of your dreams!
_________________
I'm a former Harvard admissions interviewer and Harvard grad, and currently run the award-winning MBA & EMBA admission firm and blog: https://www.MBAIvyLeague.com. Check out the blog and contact me for a free consultation today!