So, you have taken the GMAT and exceeded even your highest expectations, scoring at the very top of the scale. Congratulations! However, do not assume that earning such a high GMAT score means you can relax with respect to the other components of your application. Every year, applicants who have scored 750* or higher are rejected from their target business schools—even when their GMAT score falls within the top 10% of the schools’ range. Many of these candidates were rejected because of a fatal, but ultimately avoidable, mistake: they became overconfident and assumed their GMAT score alone would get them in.
Letters of recommendation are an important part of your overall application package—they provide the only outside information the admissions committee receives about you. One of the most stressful parts of the application process can be picking your recommender. The first question you should ask is who can write a valuable letter on my behalf?
You may have heard the old journalistic maxim “Show, don’t tell,” which demands that writers truly illustrate the actions involved in an event or a story rather than simply stating the results of what happened.
Here is an example of “telling” (results oriented):
“I arrived at ABC Bank and took on a great deal of responsibility in corporate lending. I managed diverse clients in my first year and earned the recognition of my manager. Because of my hard work, initiative, and leadership, he placed me on the management track, and I knew that I would be a success in this challenging position.”
Applying to business school is certainly not something to be taken lightly or put off until the last minute! It is a significant decision, and the process is time-consuming, but earning your MBA has the potential to provide meaningful returns, both financially and personally. In this article, we will walk you through the full MBA application timeline—from early prep through post-submission. If you are a natural planner who likes to thoroughly evaluate and assess all your options and seek the guidance and perspective of others, starting the application process as much as a year or more before your target program’s application deadline is ideal, but at minimum, plan for about a six-month timeframe. This timeline is written with a first-time applicant applying to a traditional two-year program in mind and applies to any round, but much of the guidance is also applicable to other MBA programs, such as part-time and executive programs.
You finally took the GMAT, and though your score was not bad, it was not what you had hoped—not your ideal score, but certainly not so low that you unquestionably need to try again. So, when you have a score that is just below where you think you should be, should you retake the test? The truth is that you risk very little in taking the GMAT a second—or even a third—time in pursuit of a better outcome.
Simply put, you do not need to worry if you do worse on your second try. Your target school will not average your score down or consider only your lower score. In fact, no matter how you perform the second or third time you take the exam, your target program will consider only your highest score. This essentially eliminates any risk to you or your candidacy in taking the GMAT more than once. So, if you score a 655 (on the GMAT Focus) on your first test and a 615 on your second, you are better off than if you had scored a 645 on both.
Dartmouth Tuck, for one, tacitly encourages multiple attempts at the GMAT by allowing applicants to report all valid scores from the previous five years. Tuck will consider an applicant’s best performance on each section of the GMAT, even if the individual scores are from different tests, but will not combine scores to consider a new total score.
A first-of-its-kind, on-demand MBA application experience that delivers a personalized curriculum for you and leverages interactive tools to guide you through the entire MBA application process.
