Low GMAT Top Reason For Getting Dinged

Getting dinged from one of your favorite business schools is often as mysterious as it is stinging. That’s mainly because business school admission officials rarely if ever tell applicants why they got a rejection letter instead of an acceptance.

application killersBut a new survey of B-school admissions officers shows that far and away the biggest application killer is a low GMAT score followed by a low undergraduate grade point average. Surprisingly, few candidates are turned down because of their written essays or letters of recommendation.

The poll released today (Nov. 20) by Kaplan Test Prep includes responses from 140 business school admission officials in the U.S. and Canada, including five of the top ten full-time MBA programs. They were surveyed by telephone between July and September. Kaplan’s survey showed that 51% of the officers cited a low entrance exam (GMAT or GRE) as the biggest “application killer,” up a tad from 50% last year and down from a high of 58% two years ago.

ONLY 4% OF OFFICERS CITED POORLY WRITTEN ESSAYS AS A REASON TO DING APPLICANTS

That compares with 28% of business school admissions officers who cited a low undergraduate GPA for most likely rejecting an applicant, down from 32% a year earlier. The lack of relevant work experience got 12% of the vote for being an application killer, while poor recommendation letters received 6% and poorly written essays was cited by only 4% of the officials.

Dan Bauer, founder of The MBA Exchange, a leading MBA admissions consultant, said the findings “should encourage applicants with modest college grades to prep hard and redeem themselves — even in the 11th hour — via the GMAT or GRE. However, it also discourages individuals who demonstrated their academic competence in the classroom for 4 years but can’t overcome standardized-testing issues.  Candidly, it’s faster and easier for an adcom to make decisions based on a common denominator like the GMAT rather than by examining the far more subjective GPA.”

Bauer believes that ‘poorly written essays; probably refers more to writing skill than to actual content.  “This is not surprising in light of the schools’ nearly universal emphasis on ‘authenticity,’ he says. “The fact is that most applicants are not great writers, so adcoms place more importance on substance than style.  All the more reason to build a strong underlying candidacy before you start writing about it.”

ANOTHER REASON FOR REJECTION: ARROGANCE AND RUDENESS

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons why a school rejects a candidate and often times it’s a mix of reasons. The Kaplan survey, moreover, may well be designed in a way to limit the number of reasons an applicant gets dinged, suggests Linda Abraham, founder of Accepted.com, which recently asked several admissions directors about candidate rejection as well.

“What’s interesting for me is that a factor that showed up repeatedly in response to Accepted’s survey is rudeness and unethical behavior. Nine out of 13 respondents mentioned rudeness or arrogance,” says Abraham. “Those qualitative measures aren’t even mentioned in Kaplan’s results. Admittedly our questions was ‘What behavior or information would cause you to reject an MBA applicant who otherwise is a strong candidate?’ A different question will get different results.”

She also believes that at schools that are less selective, “the raw numbers play a larger role. At schools accepting one out of every three, five, or 10 applicants, i.e. the top 50 pretty much, the essays and qualitative factors will play a much larger role.”

MBAs STARTING TO LOOK MORE ‘BIG BANG THEORY’ AND LESS ‘APPRENTICE’ 

For the first time, Kaplan also asked admissions officials whether they accepted more students with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) backgrounds and found that 54% said admitted more STEM undergrads for the 2013-2014 cycle compared to three years ago. That trend has been apparent at Harvard Business School where 39% of the Class of 2015 boast STEM educational backgrounds, up five full percentage points from 34% last year.

“Business school demographics are shifting, with growth coming from applicants who are younger, more international, and have STEM backgrounds — and this is translating to growth in specialized master’s degree programs,” said Lee Weiss, executive director of pre-business and pre-graduate programs at Kaplan Test Prep. “A specialized master’s degree can be a great fit if an applicant knows they want to pursue a career in that particular field, while a traditional MBA provides broader options.  Students exploring business school programs should think carefully about why they want to go to business school and how a particular degree can help them achieve their career goals.”

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