The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College and The Short List: Grad School to find data that matters to you in your college or grad school search.
Prospective business school applicants who take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) starting in June 2012 will encounter an altered GMAT format with a new integrated reasoning section, which will test how applicants can analyze different types of information simultaneously. It's too early to say how the new GMAT format will affect business school applicants, but it's hard to imagine the changes dethroning the test from its status as the gold standard for business school admissions.
According to the GMAT website, more than 4,800 graduate management programs around the world use the GMAT as part of their admissions process. Even business schools such as the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, which claim on their websites that they don't have a minimum GMAT requirement, temper their words carefully. "GMAT scores have proven to be a useful predictor of success in the quantitative courses that are an important foundation for the MBA program," according to the Wharton site.
[Read six tips for GMAT success.]
GMAT scores range from 200 to 800. According to GMAT, two thirds of test takers score between 400 and 600, and only 10 percent of test takers achieve scores of 700 or higher.
Of the 142 ranked U.S. News Best Business Schools, the average GMAT score for the incoming 2010 full-time class was 624. At the top 10 schools with the highest average GMATs—all of which also ranked in the top 10 of the Best Business Schools rankings—students scored 719 on their GMATs, on average.
Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, which topped the Best Business Schools rankings, also topped the list of top 10 schools with the highest GMAT average for full-time students.
Schools that were designated by U.S. News as Unranked were not considered for this report. U.S. News did not calculate a numerical ranking for Unranked programs because the program did not meet certain criteria that U.S. News requires to be numerically ranked.
[Check out a GMAT study timeline.]
Below is a list of the top 10 business schools with the highest GMAT averages among incoming full-time students in fall 2010.
| Business school (state) | Incoming fall 2010 full-time enrollment | Average GMAT score | U.S. News b-school rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stanford University (CA) | 389 | 728 | 1 |
| Harvard University (MA) | 903 | 724 | 2 |
| Yale University (CT) | 231 | 722 | 10 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan) | 401 | 718 | 3 |
| University of California—Berkeley (Haas) | 243 | 718 | 7 |
| University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) | 817 | 718 | 3 |
| Dartmouth College (Tuck) (NH) | 280 | 716 | 7 |
| New York University (Stern) | 314 | 715 | 10 |
| University of Chicago (Booth) | 579 | 715 | 5 |
| Northwestern University (Kellogg) (IL) | 647 | 714 | 5 |
Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Business School Compass to find average GMAT scores, complete rankings, and much more.
U.S. News surveyed more than 400 schools for our 2010 survey of business programs. Schools self-reported a myriad of data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News's data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Business Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data comes from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News's rankings of Best Colleges or Best Graduate Schools.
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