Second Retake Lower Than First - help!

[AnnieG499]

Hi Stacey,

Appreciate your time in responding to all of our questions! I took the official GMAT test 2 months after finishing a Manhattan live instruction course, and did fairly well (Aug 2016). Score was 720 Overall, 48 Verbal, and 41 Quant. I was pretty happy with it but decided to try again to see if I could improve 20-30 points. I studied for another month and a half and retook it this past weekend (Nov 2016) and did significantly worse - 690 Overall, 65 percentile Quant (I don't remember the score specifically because I cancelled it right away), and 84 percentile on Verbal.

I think this was a result of my only spending a month on this retake and it was going to be fairly hard to improve a 720 score to begin with. Originally just wanted to focus on improving quant to a 50. However, this time BOTH my verbal and quant decreased and I was really worried about the 30 point decrease so I cancelled the score. I am aiming for a top 5 school and know that while 720 is a good score, it wouldn't have hurt to get a 740/750 if I could. Was wondering if you had any advice on if 1) I should reinstate a 690 and 2) if it makes sense at all to retake it a 3rd time and aim for a 750? I'm not applying till Sept 2017 so I technically do have a few months to study again and retake. Thanks for your help!

Annie

[StaceyKoprince]

First, wow! Congratulations on the 720.

Agreed that it's hard to improve on a 720 in general—that's already a great score. There's also one other thing you should know: all standardized tests have a standard deviation for scoring ranges. The idea is that, on any given day, the score you are capable of earning is likely to be within one standard deviation of the score you do earn. On the GMAT, the standard deviation is about 30 points—meaning, if you score a 720, your "true" scoring range is 690 to 750. (This also means that, technically speaking, there isn't a statistically significant difference between your 720 and a 690. But humans aren't that great at ignoring statistically insignificant differences... )

So it isn't actually the case that 690 is significantly worse, as you called it. It's in the normal deviation for your original score. It's annoying that you scored at the lower end of your range...but it's still in your range. (That also means that you do, potentially, have the capability to go higher.) So hopefully that makes you feel a little better.

Admissions isn't my area of expertise, but I'll tell you what I think. I'd recommend, though, that you talk to a real expert: an admissions consultant. I'm a fan of MBA Mission and they offer a free 30-minute consult to talk about admissions issues.

If you are applying to schools that have average scores at or below the 720 figure, then I probably wouldn't take it again unless there were some other concern—eg, a lower-than-average-for-that-school GPA, a really low IR score (1-2), etc.

There are a few schools with averages closer to 730 (eg, Stanford). In that case, what I've heard anecdotally is that schools like to see that you have tried again if your score is below their average. But here's the interesting thing: if your first score was already good, they don't necessarily care that you do exceed the average on your next try. They mostly want to see that you did try. So that might be a point in favor of reinstating the 690 score.

And if you're thinking of doing that, then you should definitely talk to an admissions consultant first to see what they think.

If you do talk to someone, I would love to hear what they tell you to do. (And, of course, I'd love to know what you decide regardless!)