coakleym wrote:
The average thing might make sense when adcoms are discussing candidates and weighing us all against each other. But you can rest assured that when it comes to quoting their statistics for the major published rankings and for their websites, they are going to happily take your highest score. Some top 10 schools have even asked admitted students who they think have better ability than their current GMAT score to retake it before matriculation (with the implication being they want better stats for their incoming classes).
I think people tend to retake the GMAT while at school because many consulting firms ask for it during recruiting. Certain firms won't consider people whose scores are below 700, and simply put, GMAT score is one data point that firms can use to sort people. I do agree with you that for ranking purposes, the school absolutely will use the top score. I don't know that it holds true for admissions purposes, and I'm almost certain that if someone retakes the test while at school, it's strictly for recruiting purposes and not to pad a school's stats.
Getting back to the original post. I don't know of any schools that won't consider your best score, but I think it's a bad idea to take the test more than 3 times. If you scored 600 twice, and then scored 730 your 3rd time, I'm not sure what you'd read into that. I would think the 3rd time is a fluke. Yes, I'd rather have the 730 on the application but it's hard for an adcom to not think about the 2 600s when evaluating your application. Just my .02.