I think next fall I’ll put an App into Harvard just to see if I get in. I bet I get in even with my 690. Then I’ll get penis reattachment surgery.
Ha, don’t get too full of yourself CT. I’m not saying you couldn’t. But you’re talking about admissions into one of the most difficult schools in the world.
White American males tend to have a significant advantage on the verbal section.
How many Asians (Indian and Chinese) would be the kind of guys that you’d want to get a drink with? That’s the X factor for professional advancement, IMHO.
I scored a 900 gmat while deployed as a SEAL, pinned behind a rock taking enemy fire with an injury to my right lung while running a frontier markets hedge fund for charity.
Have you taken the exam? Hitting a 770 with poor verbal is impossible.
I believe 750 is the top 1 percentile of Gmat scores. I read in an article/interview from someone that worked in admissions at Sloan that if you got > 750 your application was put in the stack to be reviewed first. Then 720+ gets reviewed after that.
Median at Schools like HBS, Wharton, GSB is like 720-730 I believe, so anything above 700 is considered good.
What more important is that you look like a future Mitt Romney and you spent 2 summers in Shrilanka(sp?) building eltecromagnetic transportation to help inner city kids travel to school.
Some FOB people who can barely speak English score very well in US standardized tests, including the verbal section. This shows that you can study for these tests and master the patterns of the questions.
I agree that for the typical upper tier business school applicant, GMAT score probably has diminishing returns after a certain level. If the applicant has done IB at Goldman, he is going to get placed in a good job. It doesn’t matter if his GMAT is 700 or 800.
Maybe GMAT matters more for atypical applicants where the admissions committee needs something to quantify the person’s intelligence. Like you’re saying “see, I didn’t go to Yale undergrad, but I am actually super intelligent”.
I wonder how these high GMAT / social retards do after MBA?
In some instances, having learned English formally as a second language could give you an edge in certain sections of the verbal. But this probably varies widely among foreigners depending on their cultural background, native language and level of English proficiency.
For instance, certain obscure words with latin or greek roots whose meaning often trips up native English speakers can be very similar to every-day words in the foreigner’s native language. And if you studied English grammer formally, you are less likely to make certain mistakes that come up only in a colloquial setting.
I think foreigners often bomb the reading comprehension portion because they lack cultural context.
I spy an ironic typo.
Also, BS would you say it is fair to say you are potentially more jaded regarding the GMAT after having been dinged with a 760?
That’s in no way meant to be inflammatory, just wondering if that’s how you always felt about the GMAT.
No, I’ve always had pretty similar feelings towards it.
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It’s not necessarily a measure of raw intelligence. Someone with a strong math background will whiz through the quant section. Someone who reads a lot of real literature will ace the verbal.
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It doesn’t reflect advanced or complex thought either. It’s a test of middle school academic topics.
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Almost without exception everyone I’ve ever spoken to from top MBA programs de-emphasizes GMAT scores and places a huge amount of emphasis on demonstrable leadership and the overall “story”.
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Almost without exception, most people I’ve spoken to that didn’t get into a top MBA program (and thus doesn’t have the same level of insight) blames their GMAT or whatever. I don’t know if it’s a matter of the ego (too hard to admit they don’t have the same leadership chops) or the obsessive need to try to quantify everything and ignore valuable subjective traits that causes this. I think my extraordinarily low undergrad GPA played a role. But more than anything, I’d place it on not having a strong enough background of leadership or academic and career excellence.
Look, people tend to erroneously lump grad degrees together. A technical masters in a quantitative field giving you concrete skill sets will focus more on your aptitude and academic achievement. But an MBA from a top school is focused almost entirely on the “X Factor”, finding and fostering leadership among it’s students. It’s a degree in management, or leadership. And anyone who’s been around real leaders and lifetime academics knows there’s not necessarily a strong link between those two traits.
So I forced myself to network last night at an mba local alumni meet and greet (we were asked to introduce ourselves to the current mba class that was visiting NYC). I felt my face getting flushed when it was my turn to say, I did this and that, background in this, blah blah blah, graduated in 08’, and currently looking for work.
Turns out, maybe two current students actually approached me, one of which just wanted to ask me to hand him the can opener for the beers.
I tried my best to force myself to network, but it was just a night of hacksaw and rust.
^I feel your pain. I went to a university alumni event recently and when it was my turn to speak it took me a good 5 seconds (of course it felt like an eternity) to collect my thoughts and produce a statement that was coherent.
I think you are supposed to say “I am taking some time off to explore my interests and evaluate my future decisions” or something like that.
Easy, while you’re slaving away for the man I’m banging hotties.
In summary, for a Top MBA program:
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the GMAT score is just a filtering tool. Once you cross the cutoff (a top MBA these days is ~720), you will be taken seriously. there is no difference of getting 750 vs 780.
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high GMAT by itself guarantees nothing, except that your application will at least be looked at.
Any application with a instant hacksaw-worthy 560 gmat will instantly get trashed, unless you are the son of a CEO or senator who called in first to make sure you get looked at.
Or share the last name of the new faculty spa to be built on campus.
I think applicants often overlook the importance of letters of recommendation. For instance, firms like McKinsey or BCG every year have a solid crowd of MBA applicants, and I saw how many people where obsessed with their GMAT scores, thinking that since they already had the badass firm name on their resume, the next logical step was to have a score as close to 800 as possible. It was proved to be a wrong strategy for more than one person.
Partners and other BSDs at one of the firms mentioned above (presumably at the other one too) only signed a limited number of references every year. So the hopefuls should play their cards well. That’s a process that honestly takes like two years, because yeah maybe you can convince your team’s partner and a senior manager to sign a recommendation for you, but manage to have three partners or sr. partners, that’s a completely different ball game. Even more so if you’re trying to convince alumni of the schools you’re applying to.
Leadership in particular is measured among other things by your ability as an applicant to convince BSDs to put their name behind your application, especially from a firm with a known limited supply. Unfortunately people now are willing to say anything on their essays to portray an image of leadership, so admission committees closely look who’s backing someone’s claims. If it is the deputy director of United Against Hunger in the North of Southeast Louisiana, well, that may not work.