Anybody preparing for GMAT to get admission in PhD?

As I wrote, the GMAT score is far from being the most decisive factor.

So, depending on your overall strength, you can get an acceptance into a good PhD program in the US with a score lower than 700, like the score of 680 I mentioned.

But don't get your hopes high for lower scores, at least not for good PhD programs in the US. Of course, one may be willing to accept schools that are ranked much lower, and then it is ok to apply even with a very weak profile, depending on how low you are willing to go. I assumed people want to get into top schools.

I answered a question about the average GMAT. So, let me just give a few examples, with actual numbers of average GMAT for a few good schools:
- The average GMAT score of those accepted by Chicago Booth was 738.
- The average GRE of matriculated business PhD students at Duke was 160V / 168Q, which is considered equivalent to 730 GMAT.
- The average GMAT of enrolled business PhD students at Washington University in St. Louis is 735.
So, at programs like these, a GMAT score of 700 is well below average.

Hello pihu77

3 moths are enough.

Of course that also depends on your background, your current score, your target score and amount of time and quality of work you can invest.


Hello SpidersFromMars

Its is never too late.

Welcome aboard.


Hi BrazilianPhD

Thanks for sharing valuable information to other PhD aspirants and congrats (belated) on your admission to Bauer.

Great school.


Hello SonalSinha803

You are absolutely right.

GMAT is just one aspect of application, and after you cross some threshold, being in range of average scores of previously admitted students at particular university, it becomes less important for admission decision.


Hi CAMANISHPARMAR

Yes GMAT is exactly that, a way of cutting/sorting down applications to the smaller pool of students they may admit.

Then they look at your profile carefully and holistically.


Hello AprajitaG

You are most welcomed to join us here.


Hi Jvds

How did your GMAT exam go ?

If you tell me/us where you want to go/apply, I can help you with average score info.

It is very different depending on school, specialization or region, like US vs. Europe etc.


Finally, hello to BudapestDreams

Thanks for starting conversation and yes I agree we should all work together


Additional info for you guys, BrazilianPhD has provided you with some info for top schools like Booth, Duke etc. however many very good schools in US (which is most competitive region) are not that demanding, for instance at his Bauer business school (Houston) average GMAT score of admitted students was around 680.

https://www.bauer.uh.edu/doctoral/admissions/faq.php

So those are good news for all of you.

For instance, for PhD in Finance which is by far most competitive specialization at any business school, in another words most hard to get in, due to admission demands and open slots, the average GMAT score for Bauer was 698, with range from 640 to 760.

https://www.bauer.uh.edu/doctoral/finance/faq.php

In other regions, like Europe that would be only lower, sometimes much lower, to the point they will not even mention their lower target score, meaning they want to encourage you to apply

Hi,

This is not the truth. Your GMAT is just one part of your application. Moreover, depending upon your GMAT score, you ought to apply to different tier universities. This is a wrong conception that you have score in 700s or higher and only then you will get into a PhD. It depends. Sometimes, even people with high score don't get in their dream colleges. One should be C equally focused about his/her strengthens in the area in which he/she wants to pursue PhD.


Anyways, I am in. I would love to work with you and help each other in any way we could.

Regards

Sent from my Lenovo K53a48 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

I received a message with a few questions, but I'm answering them here since it may be helpful for other applicants too.

"Why did you feel that the candidate who initially got a lower GMAT score had a strong profile? Did he have any publications?"
- Undergrad in a top 10 school in his field. First class honors, 4.0 GPA.
- MSc, again in his field, with distinction. From one of the most famous schools in the world, top 20, recognized as a powerhouse in research. Able to get letters of recommendation from professors there.
- Experience working as RA, and then another strong letter of recommendation from his supervisor.
- Experience working as TA.
- When I started talking to him, long before application, he had almost completed a paper to publish. So, I don't know for sure, but I guess that by the time he applied, he had the paper at least under review by some journal.
So, about everything schools like to see in an application: top schools, fantastic grades, experience in research and teaching, letters of recommendation from famous professors who are active in research. The only problem was the GMAT score.

"What were the applicants before/after scores and other details. In which field did he apply for PhD? What was candidates age?"
- He had a 680 GMAT score, and was aiming top 50 program in Finance due to the low score. Improved to 740.
- Don't know his age.

Hi guys!!

Count me in to, older candidate, been out of school for about 10 years now, preparing for GMAT.

Does anyone know how critical is research experience in PhD applications? Since i have none, does that jeopardise my application?

Yeah, I think this is the main discussion we have here: "If we agree that, what I presented is true in 90% of cases I am fine with that. I think you are inclined to admit that." If you say that it is true in most cases, I totally agree, and that's what I have been trying to explain. But that's not what you wrote. You wrote that "for PhD in Finance which is by far most competitive specialization at any business school". If it's ANY school, then it's not 90% or most schools, it's 100%. And that's wrong. And if it is BY FAR, then there is really a major gap between Finance and all other fields. People in Finance should be vastly superior to people in other fields, and I don't think that's true either. I can accept the idea that the Finance PhD students at Bauer are more competitive than me, for example. But BY FAR??? I don't think you can convince me of that, and I'm not the strongest student in our department.

About scaring applicants for European schools, I clearly explained that "my opinions and guesses (like the average) are based on programs that would be considered top 70 in the US". Do I really need to explain it better than that? I'm talking about AVERAGE, not range, and top US schools.

Yeah, I found an outlier. But the thing is: THERE ARE outliers. And these outliers can sometimes be great opportunities. As one of my professors said, one big mistake people do in research is excluding outliers from the analysis, since those outliers can be of extreme interest. And yeah, the very definition of an outlier is that it not a common thing, so it's no surprise to find it 1 year, for example. A lot of applicants start with a list of schools like Harvard, Sloan, Staanford, without thinking about great opportunities that may be hidden. I was surprised to see one of the best professors for my research interests in a school that is pretty low ranked and probably less competitive, for example.

Yeah, I know that psychology is important to Finance, I also studied Thaler, Kahneman etc, both in my Master's in Finance and now doing a PhD. But you didn't mention it. You only talked about competitiveness in Quant. Or do you think that Finance PhD students are more competitive not only in Quant, but also in Psychology? If you take Psychology into consideration, then you will see strengths in Marketing applicants that would show they are also very competitive, something that you can't see if you just talk about Quant background.

I this is true "I certainly was not talking about importance of research in any field, which would be value measure." Then all that your reasoning about applicants having bachelor's, master's, and even PhDs makes no difference. Because in Marketing for example it is the same. The difference is that often those degrees are not in Quant-related fields. So, again, I don't see that "BY FAR" difference that you wrote.

Maybe I'm overly sensitive because of the PhD. But I think you will be the same way when you are doing a PhD, and you see people trying to support an hypothesis by choosing to ignore the variables and the cases that go against the hypothesis (even if they are outliers), to then reach very bold conclusions. If you tell someone during your PhD that something is "BY FAR" different from each other, you'd better be able to show a really significant difference. And if you tell someone during a PhD that something is true for "ANY" case, you'd better be prepared to really show that it's really ANY case, and not 90% of the cases. 90% of the cases is less than the percentage related to 2 standard deviations from the mean in a normal distribution, so it would be barely enough to reach some mild conclusions, certainly not enough for your wild conclusions. Even if you use 99% with 3 standard deviations, you still cannot say ANY case.

And maybe I'm exagerating when talking about self-selection bias, omitted variable bias, confidence interval, and things like that. But this is a Business PhD forum, and if you plan to do a PhD in Business, you'd better start thinking and talking like this, especially for the Quant guys. This is something you may be required to do if you are asked to review a paper or to present a research proposal (things that some school do to evaluate an application). I have seen people get crushed because that kind of thing during the PhD.

Generally speaking, my opinion is this:

- Top 50 would be the aim for applicants that are pretty confident they have a strong profile. Often they hope to be accepted by someone around top 30, but apply a little wider.

- Top 100 would be the aim for applicants that are not so sure because they are concerned about the impact of some weakness.

Let me give you my own example. My application had some parts that I considered as strengths, like a GMAT score of 750, some research experience including conference presentation, and two graduate degrees (MBA and MSc.). However, my undergrad GPA is very low when converted to the US system (3.0) and my letters of recomendations were from professors who would be unknown (from Brazil, and a different field). So, a combination of strengths and weaknesses. My dream was top 30, my hope was top 50, and I applied to top 70. I'm at a school that is ranked around 50th in my field.

Now, some things that I think that are important to take into consideration before you follow those guidelines blindly:

- I expect it to be different for different fields. Level of competition, number of applicants, expectations and requirements can be quite different depending on your field. And not only to apply to a PhD program, but also when thinking about your career after you graduate. If you are into a field where the job market is better, you may be more willing to go to lower ranked schools. But if your field has much more limited opportunities in the job market, higher ranked schools will probably improve your odds a lot. I applied to Quantitative Marketing, a field that is relatively good. Better than Consumer Behavior Marketing, for example, and probably better than some other business fields.

- Rankings can very deceiving. Each ranking has its own system to evaluate schools, and different systems lead to different results. MBA rankings, for example, are often dangerous, because a school may be great for MBAs, but awful for PhDs. Check not only the ranking, but the system used to rank, to see if it makes sense to evaluate the quality of the PhD program you have an interest.

- Fit is much more important than rankings. It's better to apply to a school ranked 50th with a great fit than to a school ranked 20th with an awful fit. A bad fit is expected to make your PhD life harder, with less support, slower evolution, difficulties to feel part of the department. Ideally, a program should match your research interests, your personality, your values, and your goals.

So, it's better to find the schools that you can realistically expect to get an offer from, and that are a good match for you. That's the reasoning I recommend to choose the schools to apply. If you get offers from two schools or more, then ranking is often used to decide between offers (since both are a good match for you, if you followed that reasoning).

Hi Hullas,

Point-wise ----

* How important is TA/RA experience? Not important.
* Published Paper? Very Good.
* Career Break and its impact? Your career break is not big at all, considering mine, which is 10+ years, since I last attended any kind of classroom as a student.
* 700 or anything above is indeed great! But don't waste your sleep over it if you can't score that much. Since your research will be in OB, you don't really kill yourself for 700+ scores in GMAT.

This is also a time to connect with Professors in your target universities (please don't apply MBA way of thinking while choosing your universities). I have already written a long post on that. Try to excite them with your research proposal/idea. Finally they will be your advocate at the time of application evaluation.
Also, identify your recommenders and make a team of 4-5 potential recommenders (you might need 2 or 3).

All the best!
Rudra

Hi! Nice to know that you would love to go for PhD in Marketing or Consumer Behaviour or Brand Reputation related areas.

As desired, lets take this chat to PM.

Hi everyone,

I am a German girl also preparing to get into a PhD programm in Summer 2019. Trying to do the GMAT on 07/15.
At the moment I am undecided wether to go for Marketing (Marketing Controlling, Consumer Behavior) or Hospitality/ Recreation Management (Cruise tourism).

I am actually curious about the average GMAT score that was accepted in PhD Programs. GMAT Club is offering an overview for MBA programs. Do you know if there is anything similar for a PhD program existing?

Looking forward to a great discussion.

Generally speaking, my guess is that the average GMAT score for PhD programs in the US is around 710-720. For PhD applications, this kind of score is average, not really impressive.

However, bear in mind that the GMAT score is far from being the most decisive factor, you must think about the strength of your application as a whole, not only the GMAT. There are applicants who are accepted into top programs because of their other strengths, and applicants with stellar scores who are rejected everywhere. So, I guess a realistic range is between 680 and 750, depending on the strength of the rest of your application.

Hi,

I am also working towards PhD in Management (focus on Consumer Behavior). Would love to get in touch with individuals who are pursuing the same goal.

Aprajita

Well said! BrazilianPhD - You could not have said in a better way!! It boils down to what are your final goals. GMAT is used as a mechanism for rejection rather than selection and you definitely don't want to get rejected due to a low GMAT score!! If you have a very good GMAT score the ADCOM will take the pain to look into your profile.

Yes, you are right. That's why I said that with lower GMAT you need to target lower tier universities. I just contradicted the fact that you said that the average score is around 710 - 720. It seemed you wanna say that below that you cannot expect to get into a good PhD program. What I said is that other factors also weigh in.

Regards !!

Sent from my Lenovo K53a48 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

I still think the AVERAGE score is around 710-720. But that's the average, there is a standard deviation of course, and so the range would include scores that are lower or higher than that.

Let's talk a little about those "other factors". There are several other factors, but I think most people would agree that two major factors that can really help to overcome a lower GMAT score are research experience and letters of recommendation. However, very few PhD applicants have a really good research experience, and very strong letters of recommendation. And those who do have those factors as strength, usually are also able to get great GMAT scores. There is a correlation, even if it's not perfect, it's not like those other factors are independent from the GMAT score.

If you have strong research experience and strong letters of recommendation, then in my opinion it is really a shame to apply with a score lower than 700. In such cases, you will probably be accepted by a good school, when you could be accepted by an excellent school if you had a few more GMAT points.

I recently helped an applicant like that. His profile was very strong, except for the low GMAT score. Because of the GMAT score, he was aiming top 50 programs, and I was pretty sure he would be accepted in that range despite the low GMAT, given the "other factors". But I recommended to try the GMAT again, raise the score, and then aim higher. He did that, and with the higher score, he is now enrolled at UCLA, which was beyond his dreams. So, even if you have a strong profile with those "other factors", increasing your GMAT score can make a difference from a good school to a dream school.

If you don't have strong research experience and strong letters of recommendation, then the GMAT score is really the best bet to try to get the attention of good schools.

And, just to be more clear about what I mean by "good schools", my opinions and guesses (like the average) are based on programs that would be considered top 70 in the US. It's very rare to see applicants willing to go below top 70. But if you are willing to apply to, let's say, a program ranked 200th, then of course it doesn't make any sense to talk about GMAT score higher than 700. But I don't see many applicants like that around these forums.

Hi there!

Hoping it's not too late to get involved as well. I'm just in the early stages of my prep to apply for Fall 2019, and am still learning a lot about the process - I would definitely appreciate the chance to work with some folks going through the same thing.

Thanks!

HI:
I am preparing for Gmat in India top business school .Planning to give GMAT by october end ..

Hope three months are enough.