Full Range of GMAT Scores

UCLA listed their full range as 540-780. No doubt, every school will have a few outliers each year. There are just some people that schools will admit, no matter what.

I have heard that a $10 million donation will get your kid into Harvard. It would probably take considerably less, say $1 million to get your kid into Virginia or UCLA. There are also some backgrounds that are impossible to turn down, an Olympic athlete from an underrepresented country perhaps, or someone with an established name brand in business, science or politics.

I also believe that certain students are admitted so a school an establish and/or maintain recruiting relationships with certain companies. I remember reading that years ago, all of the top business school wanted to get in good with Microsoft. Of course, business (along with pay, benefits and stock options) was so good at Microsoft that the best people didn't leave to go to business school; so schools fought over the few people - likely not the highest achievers - that did apply to business school.

I think normal folks without such backgrounds should remember that people with these super low scores were probably admitted in spite of their scores, not because of them. Heck, I wish I had a $5 million sack of cash to hand over to some school.