Can I get into a top 5 B-School with a 640 GMAT?

Graduate School Business School - MBA
1

<p>Has anyone done it? Long story short my company was paying for b-school at a local top 25 school, so I just took the GMAT without studying to get in. I finished my first year of school and corporate cost cutting took effect and my company no longer pays for school. I figure if I have to foot the bill myself I might want to go to a higher ranked program. I’m wondering if I need to retake my GMAT.</p>

<p>My background:
BSE AeroE Honors from a Top 5 School
MSE AeroE from a Top 5 School
3 years full time in an engineering project management role at a Fortune 100 company
1 year of bschool at a Top 25 School</p>

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<p>Is that what you have? What do you think?</p>

3

<p>Yes and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to re-take it.</p>

4

<p>Do the top B schools even accept transfers? But yes, you would need a higher score to be competitive.</p>

5

<p>Wasn’t planning on transferring. I’ll just start over again. Time to dust off the gmat study book.</p>

6

<p>First of all, what do you mean by a ‘top 5 b-school’? People on this forum can’t even figure out what the top 4th b-school is…</p>

<p>Unless you are an underrepresented minority, you are likely to need to retake the gmat-- unless you are willing to attend a (very good) school in europe.</p>

7

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<p>I don’t know if any of the top 10 MBA schools would allow you to start over, either. I had a friend get into Harvard with a 650 GMAT, although this was earlier in the decade and the GMAT scale seems to have changed a little bit since then.</p>

8

<p>It’s not impossible to get into a top 5 business school with a 640 GMAT, but it’s very, very unlikely. The rest of your application would need to be outstanding. It’s be best for you to retake that GMAT.</p>

<p>Since you’re already in an MBA program, you will be considered a transfer student, even if you don’t plan to transfer any courses (and at best, you’d probably only be able to transfer 9 credits, anyway.) Some MBA schools don’t accept transfers, at all. Others, like NYU, will accept you, but won’t let you transfer credits. Still others will let you transfer credits. You’ll need to check the policies at each school you’re interested in, to find out if you are eligible to apply.</p>

9

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<p>You can get into ANY B-School with almost any GMAT score. You just have to know the right people who can pull the right strings. So to answer your question: Unless you you know someone and I am assuming you do not know this person, you have a 99.66 [repeating of course (most statistics are made up by the way, including this one)] chance of NOT getting accepted to a top 5 B-School.</p>

<p>If you are serious about a top 5 school, then retake the exam and get a 700+ score and reapply. You may or may not want to add an addendum but that is entirely up to you. Most schools only consider the highest score and improvements can only help you.</p>

10

<p>I think you would not need to do so, you have good credintials.</p>

11

<p>I don’t think his credentials are that great. His academic credentials look very good. His professional credentials are quite generic. Obviously, his essays could be of great impact, but I don’t think a 640 GMAT will do the trick in this case. The problem is not the 640 though. It’s the entire package. The 640 is the easiest to correct.</p>