Decent score but unfortunate split - please advise

[Darkstar19]

Hello,

I took my my first GMAT today and got a 710 (41 Q, 47 V). The Verbal is 99th percentile but the Quant is a lowly 58th percentile.

I graduated from Cornell this year with a 3.76 GPA. I will be starting work soon for a smaller strategy consulting firm. I plan on working for 3-4 years and then applying to schools then.

Now I've heard that the GMAT is more of a "check box" factor and I'm pretty sure a 710 is at least competitive at most, if not all, schools, but yeah... that Quant sucks. In practice exams I was usually getting 45 or 46 on Quant and 43 to 44 in Verbal. A major reservation I have with retaking is that I'm pretty sure I can improve quant at least a little, but I will most likely not be able to get a 99th percentile Verbal score again.

My transcript is fairly decent in regards to Quant skills... I have taken many economics courses and received A's and A-'s. I also have taken Calculus I and II and got A-'s in both. I have taken basic statistics and econometrics with an A and B+, in that order. Lastly, I got an A- in accounting and a B+ in finance.

I spent pretty much all summer prepping for the GMAT and would of course rather not retake it. I do have some time before applying, but the whole reason I took it now is so I do not have to worry about taking the GMAT while I'm working and have less free time.

I plan on applying to top schools including Harvard, MIT, and Yale. Do I stand a chance at these schools with my current Quant score, or will I be an automatic ding?

Would my decent Quant grades, and perhaps asking my recommendation writers to highlight my quant skills, be enough to compensate?

Thanks in advance for any help/guidance.

[Tani]

Hopefully admissions committees are intelligent enough that there would not be an "automatic ding" for someone with a 710 GMAT. The rule of thumb for many schools is that anything below50th percentile suggests difficulty in handling classroom quantitative work. Your combination of solid quant grades and an above 50th %ile should insulate you from a summary judgment based on your quant. You will want to be prepared to reference your previous quant history (grades) when you put together your application. Also, by then you should have significant achievement to report in a largely quant discipline. You should also have supervisors ready to testify to your on-the-job quant abilities.

Nevertheless, since you were scoring much higher on the quant before, I would seriously consider a retake. Your risk from having a lower quant score, while small, is greater than your advantage from the high verbal score. In the end, the school will see both scores and understand that you are capable of top performance in both quant and verbal. Even if your verbal drops to your former levels, it will still be well within the 90th percentile.

Try another practice test or two. If your math is back at the level you were seeing before, I would think it worth it to retake. You probably don't want to wait and retake 3 years from now. That would require studying all over, which I am sure you don't want to do.