The Super GMAT Schools

The first hurdle every MBA applicant must jump to get into a great business school is the entry exam. Afterall, admission officers admit that a low score on the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) or the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is the single biggest reason why business schools ding MBA applicants.

As the table below shows, average GMAT scores for the top U.S. schools are extremely high. The 13 highest scores are all above 700, with average undergraduate grade point averages of 3.4 and above. There are 29 full-time MBA programs in the U.S. with average GMAT scores for entering students in the 85th percentile or above of all test takers.

Just how important is the GMAT score? A recent survey, by Kaplan Test Prep, found that 48% of some 288 responding admissions staffers said that a weak GMAT or GRE score is the biggest application killer. A low undergraduate GPA placed second at 33%, while the lack of relevant work experience followed at just 10%.

Most admissions officials tend to downplay the importance of any one piece of the MBA application. The Kaplan report, which includes responses from the admissions offices of 22 of the top 30 U.S. business schools, confirms that an applicant’s GMAT or GRE score far outweighs consideration of any other factor in a candidate’s chances–regardless of what the school’s websites or marketing literature contends.

One likely reason for the GMAT or GRE’s outsized importance is that it is a recent objective measure of an applicant’s ability to tackle the academics of an MBA program. Another likely reason is that an entering class’s average GMAT score is heavily weighted in rankings of business schools by U.S. News & World Report, The Financial Times, and The Economist. So some admissions offices often are under pressure to keep those scores as high as possible.

Here are the 29 MBA programs in the U.S. with the highest GMAT scores for the latest crop of students to enter their schools last fall:

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

Notes: Ranges for GMAT an GPA represent the 10th percentile to 90th percentile. So 10% of the entering class scored lower than the reported GMAT or GPA here, while another 10% scored higher. All numbers were reported by the schools to U.S. News & World Report.

DON’T MISS: THE 50 MOST SELECTIVE MBA PROGRAMS IN THE U.S. or WHAT AN AVERAGE GMAT SCORE WILL GET YOU

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