MA improve chances of getting into MBA?

B-Schooler
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 08:56:15 +0000

hmom5,

I am currently a student at one of the business schools listed in VectorWega’s post. The low median GPAs (at least at my school) is representative not of a decline in addmissions standards, but is instead a reflection of the increasing numbers of engineers and scientists entering MBA programs. If you examine addmissions statistics from the last 10 years or so, you’ll see that as the average GPA for admitted students has fallen approximately 0.2-0.3 points, average GMAT scores have increased by 30-40 points. Over the same period, the fraction of students at top MBA programs with undergraduate degrees in the technical fields has risen from about under 15% to about 25%.

I think few people realize just how much lower average GPA’s are in engineering and physical science programs when compared to liberal arts and similar majors. Having worked in my schools addmissions office I’ve had a chance to play with some of the data. Some interesting tidbits:

The average UG GPA at Berkeley Engineering was 2.7. The average GPA for Berkeley UG as a whole was 3.3.

The average UG GPA at Georgia Tech was 2.8.

The average UG GPA at Carnegie Mellon CIT was 2.9.

The average UG GPA at Cornell Engineering was 2.9. The average UG GPA for Cornell UG as a whole is 3.33.

The average GPA at MIT was 3.1 out of 5.0.

If you compare the populations of students with technical degrees to those with non-technical degrees with the same GMAT scores, you find that the GPA gap for technical majors vs. non-technical majors is around 0.5-0.6 points. Its actually been a big dilema for admissions to figure out how to admit more student with technical degrees (who are in demand with the majority of employers), while at the same time maintaining the schools standing in the rankings.