We did a comparison (huge thanks to Dzyubam), of GMAT Club member acceptance rates to Top 10 Schools vs. general acceptance rates as published by schools and are for the lack of a better word - Shocked! On average, for class of 2012, GMAT Club members had much greater chances of getting into a top 10 school: 24% vs 15% (that's a 60% greater chance) with some schools really standing out. For example, from the review of the HBS thread, out of 112 applied GMAT Club members, 33 were granted admission, which is a 29% acceptance rate, compared to 12% HBS average. Thus for HBS, statistically speaking, GMAT Club members, had a 145% greater chance of admission Detailed results follow - comments welcome! Applied Admitted GMAT Club Admission % Average Admission % Difference Scholarship Waitlisted Denied Matriculated* UNKNOWN Harvard 112 33 29% 12% 145% 1 9 70 30 0 Stanford 176 22 12% 9% 38% 0 12 49 21 93 Wharton 252 43 17% 16% 6% 18 52 75 33 82 Booth 160 62 38% 22% 76% 14 32 66 60 0 Tuck 42 15 35% 16% 123% 3 5 18 13 4 MIT Sloan 150 18 12% 15% -20% 2 23 32 16 77 Columbia 162 27 16% 15% 11% 0 10 44 23 81 Kellogg 233 78 33% 19% 76% 3 46 109 74 0 NYU Stern 111 27 24% 15% 62% 1 14 17 24 53 Haas 89 15 16% 12% 40% 2 5 25 13 44 I know there are many factors involved in the admissions process and a sheer registration with GMAT Club will not get anyone to Harvard, but still, the numbers are numbers. I would argue that GMAT Club and information exchange do enhance one's application and its quality I would also argue that the forum helps applicants estimate their chances better and thus if they know, the school is a stretch, they are not wasting their effort on unreasonable goals. Finally, I think the results demonstrate that effort always pays off and that those who are determined will reach their goals and dreams (including the 3 people who chose not to matriculate at HBS - another shocker).

I knew !We are the champions! we are the best! Great work BB and Dzyubam!

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Admission Chances for GMAT Club Members - Shocking?

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ThomasD

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27 Jul 2010, 14:18

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I do agree with riverripper in his earlier post, the number of admitted vs. matriculated doesn't quite add up. With the exception of Wharton, less than a handful of admits chose to not attend the school(s) they were admitted to. One has to wonder, there are quite a few people on here that did apply to multiple top programs and did get into them - is that really correctly reflected in the numbers?

ThomasD

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27 Jul 2010, 14:24

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Also peculiar:

Total Admits: 340 Total Matriculation: 307

so I take it that means a good 10% of the people that got accepted into what one could arguably call the top group of schools chose not to matriculated and presumably go somewhere else...hmmm....I wish I had that 'dilemma'

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27 Jul 2010, 15:22

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I agree with the suggestions that the matriculation rate should be lower than 90% but these are the best numbers we have from GMAT Club records...

staind

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27 Jul 2010, 15:33

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Maybe we should do a similar analysis for the upcoming season as well and look for trends. It might be easier to collect all required data if we start now as well. Also maybe restrict it to members with at least 10 posts or something and to the top 6-7 schools only. If we add individual roll call spreadsheets in to one work book it should be easy enough to create a summary sheet that gets updated automatically whenever one of the individual school lists is updated.

mba2013

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27 Jul 2010, 19:14

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why restrict the data to 6-7 schools? the analysis can't be exhaustive, but theres no reason for it to be exclusive, right?

staind

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28 Jul 2010, 18:57

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mba2013

why restrict the data to 6-7 schools? the analysis can't be exhaustive, but theres no reason for it to be exclusive, right?

no reason, just more work :lol:

kt780

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29 Jul 2010, 02:38

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1. do accepted students actively participate in forum discussions?

2. Is it quite possible that a single member got into multiple schools....so it would mean same members pushing the acceptance rate upwards...

as other members have mentioned i would like to see stats around -- participation to conversion...one factor that can be used is Avg posts/convert or avg kudos/convert

also..if same members are getting thru all the mentioned schools then it doesn't represent the correct picture...

jdk61710

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29 Jul 2010, 02:51

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Regardless all of the applied/admitted/rejected numbers, I really do think that GMATClub helps candidates to perform better on their exam AND write more refined applications.

For the first two months of my studying, I just bought random books from B&N and just went through the pages without a strategy. Score danced around 630 ~ 660.

I got some insight from GMATClub, bought the right material, strategically focused on weak areas, followed suggestions, took GMATClub practice Q's, etc for a month. Score jumped to 750+ :-D

Oh and that post on 6.0 AWA strat is magical.

I suppose you can say the first two months laid the foundation for a high score. But I'd argue that GMATClub advice/material really helped me.

Bon voyage to all!

carelesswhisper

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29 Jul 2010, 03:45

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This is simply amazing...though i just joined the club..i am really liking it ..it is extremely helpful..and thank you very much gmat club

KUDOS!!

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29 Jul 2010, 07:21

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I knew !We are the champions! we are the best! 8-)

Great work BB and Dzyubam!

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29 Jul 2010, 08:51

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I think the applicants did all the work - we just tallied up the stats

Good luck this year!!!

grandtheman

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29 Jul 2010, 22:13

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Thank you all for comments.
I will try to dig in deeper to see the correlation between participation and admission.

The only comment I have about lurkers is that they are not necessarily out. A lurker may visit the site more often than others and learn more from it than a person with many posts - that's not an exception. I lurk on a few other travel-related forums. Does not mean I don't visit/engage. I just don't feel I can add any value - I am learning....

Hi bb, I am one of the lurkers you mentioned, I have been learning so much about GMAT, business school here in this community. Since I'm so junior here so that I would rather keep quiet, review content that is so valuable.
many thanks to everybody for contribution and time toward this community, I really appreciate it.

madammepsychosis

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30 Jul 2010, 07:51

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Don't get me wrong, this is an awesome find. But as an exercise in CR, don't we think this might be a spurious relationship? That is, is it that GMAT Club members are more likely to be accepted, or is it that people who are more likely to be accepted tend to be GMAT Club members? I think it's logical to think that people really serious about being a top candidate at a top 10 b-school spend the time to check out forums on the subject, whereas there are a lot of people who throw their app out to HBS but have not spent a competitive amount of time on it, and who do not take the time to see what other people are saying on GMAT Club either. But, again, don't get me wrong, this is an AMAZING forum and does a LOT for people. I like to play devil's advocate...

maximillion

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28 Oct 2010, 18:57

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Wow, glad I found this thread, hopefully this can be of use to others who are just joining GMAT Club for Fall 2011 applications.

lhomme

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03 Mar 2011, 12:15

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No doubt the information on this forum has been extraordinarily useful (I certainly have been lurking around absorbing stuff for some time), but I would also point out self-selection plays a big role, both in the people who are willing to post results and the people who are [strike]obsessed[/strike] driven enough to be constantly on these forums!

One other interesting point about this data is that Booth and Wharton seem to give far more scholarships than anyone else! Hmm...

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03 Mar 2011, 12:34

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Well, to assess the statistical significance of these findings, one needs to consider how representative is GMATclub members' sample - as opposed to the total number of applicants at a given school (usually measuring in the thousands - vs. 100+ GMATclubbers per each).

Also, you need to control for double- and triple-registered members of the community (same person under different nicks).

Interesting - for sure, not so sure how convincing the proposed correlation really is.

alokalamban

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23 Apr 2011, 04:23

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THE list shows that gmat club is full of talented members who are realistic about their chances of getting into top schools

fivedaysleft

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04 Jul 2011, 06:07

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my goodness! perhaps gmatclub should start its own admission test to accept new members!

spivey181

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17 Aug 2011, 06:59

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I agree with those who have said that lurkers can benefit from GMAT club. I have only posted a handful of times, but I have been lurking for almost a year. A big part of the reason I haven't posted much is that I search for topics before posting about them (as is often recommended on message boards), and I usually find an answer to my question.

I may post more often now that I am starting applications, but I think I have already received most of the knowledge/advantage that GMAT club will provide.

spacecurves

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17 Aug 2011, 09:05

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Very interesting study, thank you! I will say that the numbers could just be a result of correlation, not causation. It could be that capable people who are working hard at their applications are registered on this site just because they are exploring every possible resource that could help them, and that doesn't prove that THIS resource contributed to their later success.

However, I think it would be silly to argue that there isn't some causation in there as well. There is a lot of great advice and hard information here that I have no doubt will help me in my applications. The conclusion that can be drawn is that using the resources of this site increases your chances of getting in where you want to.