Digging Deeper: More About USC Marshall’s Tremendous Class GMAT Score

If you’re USC Marshall School of Business, there’s a lot to boast about in the MBA Class of 2024 which enrolled this fall, and which was announced earlier this month.

The Marshall School received 234 more applications than it did in 2021, one of only three top-25 U.S. business schools to report gains amid the continued strong economy in the United States. (The nearly 10% increase really shines when you consider that the other major B-school in Los Angeles, UCLA Anderson School of Management, lost 20% of its application volume in the 2021-2022 cycle.) Moreover, Marshall’s new class is comprised of 46% women, up from 36% last year and the most at the school since it became the first top-ranked program to achieve gender parity in 2018.

But the number that really jumps out in the new Marshall class profile is the class Graduate Management Admission Test score average: A whopping 732, 16 points ahead of last year’s score and an astonishing 25-point jump from the 707 reported by the Class of 2020.

GMAT JUMP ‘NOT ENTIRELY UNEXPECTED’

Last year, a 732 GMAT average would have placed USC Marshall second among all U.S. B-schools, tied with Chicago Booth School of Business and trailing only Stanford Graduate School of Business. This year, Marshall’s astronomical score is ahead of such peers as Virginia Darden School of Business (720), Chicago Booth (729), Yale School of Management (723), Michigan Ross School of Business (720), Duke Fuqua School of Business (718), and UCLA Anderson School of Management (711) — and just behind NYU Stern School of Business and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, both of which reported averages of 733, and Stanford, which reported a 737.

Poets&Quants asked Evan Bouffides, assistant dean and director of graduate admissions at the Marshall School, about that extraordinary GMAT number: How did the school do it?

“As is usually the case, outcomes are based on a combination of factors,” Bouffides says. “First and foremost, Marshall has experienced significant upward momentum over the past six years on many fronts including the quality and quantity of the applicant pools, curriculum innovation, the strength of our career outcomes, and a subsequent rise in rankings. This year’s applicant pool is an extension of that trend. As we have continued to attract more high-quality applicants, improvement in admissions metrics has naturally occurred. Therefore, the rise, if not the degree of the rise, was not entirely unexpected.”

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS NOT SACRIFICED TO PUMP GMAT AVERAGE

Bouffides points to one particular move by the school that made the GMAT jump possible: a reduction in class size. Marshall’s 190 Class of 2024 enrollees are 28 fewer than the Class of 2023, and that was by design, Bouffides says.

“As is the case for many programs, we enrolled a smaller class size than in previous years,” he says. “For Marshall, this was a deliberate decision to enroll an increasingly stronger class along multiple dimensions. This decision, of course, has direct consequences on selectivity and, ultimately, admissions metrics.”

He adds that while the school’s admissions team and leadership are pleased with the GMAT increase, “it is a rise that does not come at the expense of other important considerations. This particular point is critical! This year’s class exhibits record or near-record numbers in virtually every important admissions quality and diversity metric. Such characteristics of the class are consequently attractive to prospective students as they choose from a range of excellent institutions.

“I suspect that Marshall is in the consideration set of more candidates than in the past, the consequence of which is a stronger class profile including GMAT.”

INTERNATIONALS & WOMEN ON THE RISE AT MARSHALL

Bouffides says the Marshall School suffered the same decline in domestic applications that has hit its peers in the U.S. Also like other leading U.S. B-schools, Marshall received a greater volume of international applications. The result was the biggest international cohort in school history: 41% of the class, up from 34% last year.

“Prior to the cycle and long before we had a sense of the rise in international application volume or any other application trends, we made the conscious decision to increase the international percentage of our class,” Bouffides says. “Just as importantly, we wanted to make sure that we increased the international diversity represented in the class. This year, in a relatively small class, we have 30 countries of origin represented, whereas in the past it was always closer to 20.”

Diversity means gender balance, as well. Bouffides says that last year’s percentage of women in the Marshall MBA — 36%, lower than the school had reported in several years — “was an anomaly,” adding that the bigger picture shows gradual positive gains for women at the school. “We have been trending in a positive direction over the past few years and have been at 40+ % female in four of the last five years,” he says.

“Again, there are a number of strategies in place that contributed to this ‘rebound.’ To me, though, the biggest factor has been the enthusiasm and hard work of our students who have been extraordinarily helpful in a range of conversion efforts.”

DON'T MISS WOW! A 16-POINT JUMP IN GMAT AVERAGE FOR USC MARSHALL'S NEW MBA CLASS and STANFORD MBA CLASS OF 2024: APPS DOWN 16.5%, BUT PROGRAM GETS MORE DIVERSE