Get accepted to HBS with low GRE?

Right. To answer your original question, there is no singular good score for HBS or a similar school. You always want to score as high as you can on whatever test you decide to submit. The school can find enough high-scoring candidates to balance out the lower-scoring candidates and end up with a median score that looks attainable to a larger group of people. Since you focused on HBS specifically in the original post, consider that 80 percent of the matriculating class submitted GMAT™ scores and the other 20 percent GRE® scores. With a smaller sample size, the median GRE® scores might not be as reliable as the scores submitted from the other 4/5 of matriculates. Yes, on paper, a 163/163 translates worse than a 730 on the GMAT™, but if admissions were all just a numbers game, we could all either earn the target score and get in or not earn it and be left out. Remember that the application package is considered holistically, so work experience and other background information is more pertinent than a single test score, however high or low that might be.

My personal view of the two tests, with which I believe most people in the industry would agree, is that the GRE® Quant is easier than the GMAT™ Quant to score high on, but that the opposite is true of the Verbal. GRE® Verbal requires a certain proficiency with upper-level vocabulary and a nuanced understanding of such words in context, while the GMAT™ SC portion does not really match it in difficulty. Although the GMAT™ includes more CR questions than the handful of such questions that fall under the Reading Comprehension umbrella on the GRE®, their difficulty is about the same. In short, a 163V, when paired with a 163Q, might not be as simple to achieve as a percentile match across the two tests (or a score converter, official or not) would indicate.

If you have further questions, please let me know.

- Andrew