Financier wrote:
Metallifacan,
With all my respect to you,
I must admit that I used to think the same way as you do when I thought that I'm not that smart to achieve a decent score. Honestly, this is a loser's way of reasoning and I did throw it out. Whatever you call it - "strategic planning", or smth else, the true name is laziness (we all are guilty, at least partly, of it).
You know what? Other things being equal, adcom would choose that guy with 720 rather than me with my 690. Will I be satisfied with such outcome? No! That's why I've stopped all my private life and funny weekends in order to substitute my 690 with 730 next month. I want to be admitted. In a good school.
I am not very experienced with B-school apps, but I would be scared to believe that such a scenario is indeed true. In my mind, any sensible ad-com should use the GMAT as a mere filtering tool at best. So you get 1000 apps ? You want to "weed" some out, cut off GMAT scores below 600 maybe. You might miss some good candidates, but you are unlikely to pick up a lot of bad candidates either. I don't think a test like the GMAT has the potential to fulfill any greater purpose. I might be wrong, but if I am, it would leave me pretty disillusioned about the admission process that someone gives a lot of weight to this test score.
As an example, I remember a few years ago sending applications to top PhD programs in the US, a degree far more technical than the MBA and arguably needing better math skills and maybe even verbal skills (you would be teaching and writing a dissertation at the end of it) to complete. Yet the GRE score was nothing more than a filter. You needed to get maybe a 1350+ just to make sure the big schools don't filter your applications out; but no one really cared if you got a 1450 or 1500 or 1550.
I guess I am making more a philosophical point, if an ad-com chooses a 720 over a 700, that seems like a completely random thing to my mind. I really hope that is not how telling a GMAT score turns out to be in the end