Considering Retaking 760 (Q49 / V44)

Question

Hi everyone, longtime lurker here. Would like to thank everyone for their help because it has certainly been invaluable. So I just took the GMATs for the first time, having studied for about two months. I was consistently scoring >770, including two 790s on fresh runs of the GMATprep test. However, today I scored a 760, Q49 and V44. I am considering retaking it.

Here is why I am considering retaking it:
1. I consistently scored >48 on verbal and have always considered my verbal to be much stronger than my quant
2. My long-time significant other and I broke up two days before the exam. I know this affected my performance.
3. Because of a combination of work and nerves, I only got 4 hours of sleep the night before and 4 hours of sleep the night before that.
4. Between the quantitative and verbal sections, I waved my proctor over because I wanted to take a break - the proctor thought I wanted to continue and started the next section. I went through the verbal section both hungry and thirsty. I don't think this had as big an impact as the other factors.
5. I'm just really bothered that my verbal is so far below what I was expecting

Here is why I would not retake it:
1. I was never extremely comfortable with DS and still am not. I would often get 40% of all DS questions wrong in any given test. This weakness was offset by the fact I rarely answered PS problems incorrectly. In today's test, I felt that I was getting lucky and almost certainly saw more PS than DS. I am very afraid that my Q will go down with another go.

I really wanted to do well on the GMAT because I received a low GPA of 3.0 from Stanford three years ago, but am aiming for the top 5 schools. Would definitely welcome any sort of advice.

mainhoon · Answer

Well I don't know if what you are saying is true, but frankly it is ridiculous to retake at 760. That is just me. You are of course free to retake it, not sure why you would want to get input from folks here on this...

EnigmaD · Answer

I know, it's just I feel like I need to compensate for my low GPA - I guess what I'm kind of asking is, would another 20-40 points make a particularly big difference in my case?

mainhoon · Answer

I would say ZERO impact. And say you take it again and get a lower score then? Is the risk worth it? Many would kill to have that score, time is better spent on other parts of the app.. Thats just me.

bigoyal · Answer

I would suggest to better concentrate on your application rather than retaking the GMAT.

bb · Answer

Wow - retake with 760. You make me feel insecure with my lowly 750

When are your 5 Applications due? (in a month or two?) Do you have all the essays, recommendations, resumes, etc put together? They are a lot of work - ask anyone. If you come in with 790 and crummy essays, you are toast. 760 and Great essays are a much better situation. With high GMAT, poor essays, and poor GPA, you will come off really one-sided. Top 5 don't care about the gmat score once you are past 700. Moreover, they only care about the score being balanced and Q score being high enough.

Take a look here: should-i-retake-gmat-thread-retaking-gmat-strategies-83339.html for a bit
You are not guaranteed a higher score with a retake - esp when you climb that high. You have 99th percentile - you are at the top and I doubt the scores will inflate enough for the percentile to drop in the next few years. You can put it on your resume "GMAT - 99th percentile" and you can also teach for a prep company (the best ones that require 99th percentile).

I see very little value in retaking but if anything I learned about MBA applicants, it is that they are stubborn and have a clear goal, so I won't keep you from it either, but still, keep in mind - not a great investment of your time if you plan to spend a bunch on studying.

whiplash2411 · Answer

On a slightly different perspective, I think it might be suicidal to retake. A 760 more than compensates for a 3.0, which in itself is not bad. Retaking might signal the adcoms to think that you're score obsessed more than practical, and that's never a good thing. That's just my opinion, but I'd never retake a 760, not only because it's a fantastic score in the first place but because there's a really low return-on-investment in this. There's little room for improvement of any sort and like I mentioned you don't want the adcoms thinking you're just obsessed with numbers. I'd write compelling essays.

gurpreetsingh · Answer

You should retake only when you have a solid explanation for retaking. IMO Adcoms will reject the application with retake of 760. I agree with whiplash, they do not need people who can score 780+.

Gmat is very important. But once you cross the threshold 730 or 750 for any college then it really does not matter.

EnigmaD · Answer

Okay, okay, you guys have convinced me. Thank you all for your candid responses.

I certainly don't want to risk AdComs thinking poorly of me.

bb is right though - I just KNOW I could do better and it kinda impractically drives me to want to show myself that I can do better. Given that, maybe I'll try again some other day.

Thanks once more.

shorteverything · Answer

you need to retake. 760 is pathetic

Dawgie · Answer

Agreed, based on his name he is from the mainland. Average is about 785.

whiplash2411 · Answer

LOL Dawg/Short. Pathetic, apparently.

adishail · Answer

Don't see any sense in retaking. A 780~790 from 760 wouldn't change anything. Anything above 730 is good enough and you can be assured that you will not get rejected based on your GMAT. For some reason a lot of people think that a bad essay or slightly low GPA can be balanced by a high GMAT score. IMO, not true at all. 790 on GMAT will not change my GPA from 2.5 to 3.5. Do not compare apples and oranges. GMAT and GPA have their own importance and can't be interchanged.

Good luck with your apps.

Good luck with your apps.

shalva · Answer

Agree with fellow posters - there would be no practical benefit from retaking.

Also, when I started working on my apps, I soon realized, that taking GMAT is probably the easiest part of whole application process. There is a LOT of arguably more important stuff to do (writing good essays just for instance)

kissthegmat · Answer

Retake! Are you kidding?

sanlitun · Answer

Same here , once I started on the apps, I can see that GMAT was the easier part.

adalfu · Answer

Well... I'll give you another perspective that's different from most here.

If I were in your shoes, I would retake it given that I'm about 100% confident I can do better (770 or above).

I'm actually in a somewhat similiar situation. I scored a 730 almost a month ago (albeit not as high of a score as yours), but my GMATprep range was about 40 to 50 points higher than that score. I also have a low GPA (3.1) so I needed to do all that I can to make up for the poor score. I'm not completely confident in scoring above 760, but I think I can at least do better than 730.

So go ahead if you're fairly comfortable in getting a 770 or better! GOOD LUCK!

(I'm doing my retake this 20th...)

adalfu · Answer

I also want to add that if there is anything to better your chances, why not go for it? I have enough time to complete my essays (pretty much finished with Stanford's, Wharton's, and Chicago's already) and also I spoke with my recommenders and detailed out what I needed from them (i.e., a detail description of my work quality, leadership skills with a good list of vivid examples/anecdotes). The other parts of my application are pretty much trivial compared to these two things (well, maybe 3 things if you include the resume). So getting a better GMAT score seemed the next best thing for me to improve my chances. Even if the benefits are marginal, spending the next 3 weeks (1 hour per day) to get a 30+ point above the prior score seemed like a good tradeoff to me.

tinki · Answer

QiuYidio , i am fairly sure your 20-40 extra points will not make Big difference. therefore i ve heard that 
800 score could be counted even as disadvantage and some top b-schools have even rejected a number of 800 score applicants . concentrate 100 % on essays and recommendations , they are a lot more important for you Now.

tinki · Answer

QiuYidio , Could you share your strategies and the books you used? (especially Verbal ) ? 
thx

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