What’s a good GMAT score?
GMAC, the folks who create the GMAT, publishes
this chart revealing the link between GMAT score and percentile of everyone who takes the GMAT. To start, here are some of the correlations between GMAT score and percentile.
= 544 = mean & median score on the GMAT = higher than 50% of GMAT takers
= 650 = 78th percentile = above this, the top 22% of GMAT takers
= 700 = 90th percentile = above this, the top 10% of GMAT takers
= 730 = 96th percentile = above this, the top 4% of GMAT takers
= 750 = 98th percentile = above this, the top 2% of GMAT takers
= 760 and up = 99th percentile = above this, less than 1% of GMAT takers
(Notice that 780 and 790 and 800 all mean about the same in the great scheme of things.) What constitutes a “good score” to some extent depends on what you mean. If you score anywhere over 600, you have done better than the majority of folks who take the GMAT — you have an above average score, but far from a perfect score. If you score over 600, and certainly if you score over 650, that will be high enough to get you into reasonably respectable schools. What, though, if you have set your sights higher?
A good GMAT score for top business schools
US News and World Report lists the top business schools, and if you sign up with them, you can get the full information for these schools. Harvard and Stanford top the list. The average GMAT scores for students at these two universities are 724 and 730 respectively. Remember, those are average GMAT scores, which means that individual scores at each of those schools vary both above and below those numbers. If your GMAT score is, say, 740, then it would be above-average for every business school in the world. For the other “top ten” schools, the average GMAT scores are between 710 and 720. If you score above 710, your score is in the territory of the elite schools, and if you score anywhere above 750, your GMAT score is stratospherically high. At that point, business school admission depends far more on the other aspects of your application, especially your work experience, your references, your interview, and your essays. A high, even perfect, GMAT score will not help you if you have no valuable work experience or cannot make a compelling case for yourself.
to read the rest of this article, follow this link:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/whats-a-good-gmat-score/Thoughts about, or questions about, what constitutes a "good" GMAT score? Let me know.
Mike
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Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test PrepEducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)