The updated language on this page of the mba.com website:
https://www.mba.com/articles-and-announ ... est-optionalso suggests that equal or lower 200-800 composite scores (aka "total scores") on GMAT Online retakes will no longer be hidden from the test-taker's view:
"After your upcoming second attempt, you will have two scores available in your mba.com account. You will now have the opportunity and flexibility to send one or both of your scores to an unlimited number of programs of your choice, at no additional cost."This is welcome news, because an equal or lower composite score on the GMAT Online retake is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if the two scores are close (for example, a 750 and a 730, one with a a high Verbal and the other with a high Quant). There are plenty of hypothetical scenarios where one's composite score could go down or stay the same, yet that person could still have earned a personal-best score in Quant, Verbal, IR or AWA, a score that the test-taker would never be allowed to send to b-schools (or even see!) under the previous policy.
Conversely, even seeing one's total score go
up on the retake was occasionally problematic under the previous rules. Some GMAT Online physical whiteboard re-takers had issues where their personal-best Quant, Verbal IR or AWA scores were in fact being overwritten due to a higher composite score on the next exam, which ironically had a negative effect on their "superscore" aka "Frankenstein" GMAT score (in other words, their best scores from all 4 sections put together, which some b-schools do consider, on at least an informal basis).