Another 710 GMAT with a low quant.

[thought]

Hi I'm in a similar position to others -- I scored a 710 on the gmat with a (very?) low quant -- Q42 (63%), V45 (98%).

I do have a strong quantitative background -- I'm an African-American male with a BA in Economics from Morehouse College (3.28) and a minor in Mathematics and several courses in Computer Science. (I was also inducted into both the Beta Kappa Chi Honor Society for Math and the Omicron Delta Epsilon for Econ.)

In addition, I took four introductory graduate level economics classes at Duke with a 3.0 average after undergrad. and have been a high school math teacher at a prestigious prep. school and an SAT teacher in Shanghai in the past. I also currently work in a somewhat quantitative industry in web analytics/online market research/digital intelligence. (One blemish worth nothing is that I pursued an M.Ed. at Harvard in the economics of education but didn't complete it due mostly to immaturity and a splash of disinterest -- The four courses I completed were with a 3.0 I believe).

I am pursuing an MBA to break into consulting and I want to target mostly top 15 schools. I took the GRE in late 2004 and scored 770(87%) on the quant. there also.

My first question is this: Will schools consider my GRE scores if I submitted them? Would you think would even be necessary?

Secondly: My short (or long) list of schools so far is Emory, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Tuck, Fuqua, Harvard, Northwestern, NYU, Wharton, Stanford, UCLA, Virginia & Yale. Given my GMAT, desired field and profile, which of these would you say are a fit versus not a fit. (The underlined programs are those I have a strong notion that I will apply to.)

Thanks!

[Cindy Tokumitsu]

Hello,

It’s an interesting situation overall and not black-and-white. Of course, the low quant GMAT score is an issue. But you have mitigating factors: the strong quant coursework and the quant component of your job. The GRE quant score is strong – although the adcoms won’t take the GRE scores officially, you can mention the score as part of an optional essay. My suggestion is to write the optional essay straightforwardly and succinctly addressing the low quant GMAT score. Acknowledge the low score, then discuss the mitigating factors. Include the GRE score and offer to provide an official record if they wish it.

I agree that pursuing the education degree will not look great; that matter too you can discuss succinctly in the optional essay.

You present a range of schools, which is good – some are reaches and some are on-pars. I don’t have enough information about you to really understand how competitive you’d be – to do so I’d need to know the strength of your career advancement/performance and leadership and the details of your extracurricular activities. On the limited info I have from you, I’d say probably HBS and Stanford are a bit out of reach – but I would change that opinion if you had extremely strong career record of accomplishment/impact and/or exceptional extracurricular contributions/leadership. The other schools seem like a good mix of reasonable reaches (Yale, Tuck, Fuqua) and on-pars (Emory, Brandeis). I believe they’d all meet your needs.

Best regards,
Cindy Tokumitsu
Senior Editor, Accepted.com
www.Accepted.com