Top Schools Ranked by GMAT Alone

[tomslawsky]

OK, so my posting this list of American MBA Programs has several motives:
1) I hope it FINALLY displaces the much outdated notion of "get a 700 and you've completely cleared the GMAT Hurdle". Unless you are a woman or minority, looking at the data tells me pretty clearly that "720 is the new 700"

2) The list shows how tightly correlated GMAT score and rank can be (surprise, right?)

3) A shameless plug for my (much underrated) MBA Alma Mater, the University of Florida, with an average GMAT score of 694, sitting tied at 17th with Minnesota and Carnegie Mellon and above USC, Cornell, North Carolina and Notre Dame!

http://poetsandquants.com/2011/04/27/th ... t-schools/

Schools Average GMAT GMAT Range Average GPA GPA Range
1. Stanford 728 680 - 770 3.69 3.38 - 3.95
2. Harvard 724 NA 3.67 NA
3. Yale 722 680 - 760 3.52 3.12 - 3.95
4. MIT (Sloan) 718 670 - 760 3.57 3.22 - 3.88
4. California-Berkeley (Haas) 718 680 - 760 3.63 3.39 - 3.87
4. UPenn (Wharton) 718 670 - 760 3.50 3.20 - 3.90
7. Dartmouth (Tuck) 716 667 - 760 3.50 3.12 - 3.85
8. New York (Stern) 715 660 - 760 3.42 3.05 - 3.75
9. Chicago (Booth) 715 660 - 760 3.52 3.10 - 3.90
10. Northwestern (Kellogg) 714 660 - 760 3.52 3.13 - 3.86
11. Columbia 712 680 - 760 3.50 3.10 - 3.80
12. UCLA (Anderson) 710 680 - 750 3.53 3.21 - 3.88
13. Michigan (Ross) 704 650 - 750 3.40 2.90 - 3.80
14. Virginia (Darden) 699 640 - 750 3.41 3.00 - 3.80
15. Duke (Fuqua) 697 620 - 760 3.40 2.80 - 3.90
16. Washington (Olin) 695 640 - 750 3.48 3.09 - 3.90
17. Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) 694 640 - 750 3.23 2.58 - 3.77
18. Florida (Hough) 694 640 - 735 3.51 3.13 - 3.86
19. Minnesota (Carlson) 694 640 - 750 3.50 3.11 - 3.93
20. California-Davis 692 650 - 740 3.27 2.85 - 3.82
21. Southern California (Marshall) 690 640 - 740 3.30 2.93 - 3.67
22. Cornell (Johnson) 687 620 - 740 3.25 2.77 - 3.74
23. North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) 686 620 - 750 3.3 2.82 - 3.80
24. Notre Dame (Mendoza) 685 600 - 750 3.33 2.86 - 3.83
25. Georgetown (McDonough) 684 640 - 740 3.37 2.98 - 3.77
26. Texas-Austin (McCombs) 684 620 - 730 3.43 2.94 - 3.86
27. Boston University 681 620 - 740 3.35 2.80 - 3.90
28. Washington (Foster) 681 620 - 740 3.34 2.86 - 3.86
29. Emory (Goizueta) 680 620 - 750 3.34 2.84 - 3.80

[StaceyKoprince]

Thanks for posting! Yep - the numbers for the top 10 schools have been pushing 710 to 720 for a while now.

When people talk about going for a 700, or a 700 is good enough, that doesn't mean you can get in with that. It just means that, if your overall application is worthy of admission, then a 700 won't keep you out (but a 650 or 600 might, for a top school). If your overall application is not worthy of admission, then getting a 780 likely isn't going to help at a top school either.

You want to be competitive, if possible - you don't want your GMAT score to be a disadvantage, and 700+ is not a disadvantage, even when the average is 720 (though it's not an advantage in that situation either). If your score is actually a disadvantage, then you have to consider that school a bit of a "reach" school, and factor that in as you decide where else to apply.