What Is a Good Executive Assessment Score?

If you’re considering taking the Executive Assessment (EA) to apply to an EMBA or full-time MBA program, you’re likely wondering what a good EA score is. In this article, I’ll discuss a few different things to consider to determine what a good EA score is for you.

Let’s begin by discussing the basics of EA scoring.

There are two stories of how the EA is scored. One is the official story on the website of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the maker of the EA and the GMAT, and the other is the reality. Both the official story and the reality are that the EA has three sections, the Integrated Reasoning section, the Verbal Reasoning section, and the Quantitative Reasoning section. Additionally, both stories tell you that you get four scores when you take the EA, one score for each of the three sections and a total score.

However, when it comes to the actual numbers involved, the official story and the reality differ. The official story is that the three EA section scores range from 0 to 20 and that EA total scores range from 100 to 200. The reality is that each of the three EA section scores ranges from 2 to 18. Then, the EA total score is calculated by adding 120 to the three EA section scores. Accordingly, the minimum EA score is 120 + (3 x 2) = 126, and the maximum EA score is 120 + (3 x 18) = 174. So, you can score anywhere from 126 to 174 on the EA, and the midpoint score is 150.

I’m not sure why the official story differs from reality. It may be that GMAC left some room to expand the score range if necessary. In any case, now you know the basics of how the Executive Assessment is scored. So, let’s move on to discussing what constitutes a good EA score, first by considering EA score percentiles.

One way to determine what constitutes a good score on the Executive Assessment is to use score percentiles to determine what EA score is higher than average. After all, presumably, a score that is higher than average is a good score.

Unlike for the GMAT and GRE, for the EA, not much score data has been made available by the test-maker or schools. However, during a presentation, GMAC released the following EA score percentiles based on on the test scores of people who took the Executive Assessment between January 1, 2017 and September 15, 2019:

• 75th percentile: a total score of 153
• 50th percentile: a total score of 150
• 25th percentile: a total score of 146

There are a couple key things we can glean by considering these percentiles. One is that the middle score (50th percentile) is 150. So, at least for the time period from which we have data, 150 is an average EA score, and any score above 150 is an above average EA score.

Another thing that’s interesting is how closely clustered the scores are. Notice that the difference between the 50th percentile score of 150 and the 75th percentile score of 153 is only three points. So, scoring just three points above average could mean that you scored higher than 75 percent of all EA test-takers.

Since this data is from a few years ago, the percentiles could have shifted some. Still, we’ve seen at least what constituted an average for a year or two of the handful of years that the EA has been in existence.

OK, now that we’ve gotten a sense of how test-takers have performed on the EA, let’s consider another way of determining what constitutes a good EA score: looking at what business schools have to say.

To understand where business schools stand on what a good Executive Assessment score is, we first have to understand a key thing about the EA. Unlike the GMAT or GRE, which business schools use for determining which applicants are the most qualified, the EA is considered a readiness test. In other words, rather than use the test for comparing candidates, schools use the EA largely for determining simply whether a candidate is ready to handle their program. So, for the most part, what constitutes a good EA score for a particular school is a score that is at or above the threshold score that indicates that a candidate is ready to handle that school’s program.

Like EA score percentile data, available data on EA scores of admitted students at business schools is limited. Schools don’t release this data because, as we just discussed, they consider the EA a readiness test and don’t want to create a situation in which candidates feel compelled to compete with other candidates’ EA scores.

So, to determine what schools consider a good EA score, I scoured the internet for information and pieced together things said by schools, applicants, and admissions consultants. Here is what I found:

For most EMBA programs, a good EA score is 150 or higher. For example, at Darden, one of the few schools that publishes EA score information, the three-year average EA score for the EMBA program is 153. Since an average score of 153 would be based on a cluster of scores centered just above 150, this average is in line with the idea that the preferred EA score is 150 or higher. Darden also says that EA scores of admitted applicants have ranged from the low 140s to the high 160s. So, we can see that, while the commonly preferred EA score is 150 or higher, a score below 150 won’t necessarily tank your application.

In some cases, however, schools are looking for EA scores higher than the typical 150. Let’s discuss those situations now.