Is a 720 GMAT Score Your Ticket to an Elite MBA?

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Many ambitious business school applicants set their sights on a 720 GMAT Total score. A 720 GMAT score is often thought of—rightly or wrongly—as something of a cutoff for the “M7.” The M7 is the informal group of seven prestigious business schools considered to have the world’s best MBA programs: Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, Booth, Columbia, and MIT Sloan.

But how accurate is this mythologizing of the 720 Total score? Do you have to get at least a 720 to get into a top business school, and will it guarantee you admission? Conversely, is a 720 GMAT score really good enough for the elite business schools? If you’re applying to the M7, should you retake the GMAT and try to score even higher—even if you already have a 720? Do you need a 730 GMAT score for Harvard or Stanford? And what do the top 20 schools think about the 720 GMAT score, or the top 50, or the top 100?

In this post, we’ll give you all the answers to these questions, deconstructing the common thinking about the 720 GMAT score and delving into actual data from M7 business schools as well as thoughts on the GMAT from their admissions offices. Finally, we’ll help you think through the 720 and other score goals in terms of your own application and target business schools. Continue reading “Is a 720 GMAT Score Your Ticket to an Elite MBA?”

The 19 Best GMAT Tricks and Tips

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As with any standardized test, there are some key, simple shortcuts that you can implement right away to improve your overall performance on the GMAT. While there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned studying, you can try out the quick and easy strategies below to maximize your performance right away.

With these GMAT tips and tricks—plus the boatloads of test prep you’re surely doing—you’ll be prepared to face any challenge that comes your way on test day.
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The Best GMAT Essay Template to Help You Ace the AWA

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The essay portion of the GMAT, known as the Analytical Writing Assessment, probably doesn’t resemble the kinds of essays that you’ve written for college.  Luckily, the essay task itself and the prompts that you’ll encounter for it are fairly formulaic. This means that your approach to writing the essay can be boiled down into a template. A template is like a blueprint or a model: it gives you a predesigned, customized format and structure. You’ve likely written outlines for essays before—the GMAT essay template is similar but a bit more detailed, as anything that is standard can be pre-written out, so that all you have to do is fill in the specifics. 

If you’ve already done some research, you know that there are several variations of GMAT essay templates out there—both individual high scorers and a few test prep companies have offered up their own template styles, based on the approaches they like best. In this post, we’ll go over what the GMAT essay assignment is, how a template can help you nail it, and give you a few example templates that reflect different kinds of approaches you can take. Finally, we’ll discuss how to make your own template based on what works best for you.

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What’s a Good GMAT Verbal Score?

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The Verbal section of the GMAT often gets the short end of the stick when it comes to discussion, and there’s very little free information out there focusing solely on this oft-neglected part of your Total score. So if you’ve navigated to this article, you’re probably wondering: how high of a score do you need to do “well” on the GMAT Verbal? How do business schools assess Verbal scores and percentiles, and what’s a good score for your target schools? You might be wondering exactly how much your Verbal score affects your Total score as well. 

Luckily, you’ve come to the right place! The below guide will give you all the important context for understanding the Verbal score on the GMAT. We’ll give you the entire GMAT Verbal score range, the general parameters for a “good” score and a “great” score, and all the guidelines for setting a target Verbal score for yourself. Continue reading “What’s a Good GMAT Verbal Score?”

The 11 Best GMAT Reading Comprehension Strategies

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The reading comprehension part of the GMAT Verbal section can be intimidating at first. You have to glean key ideas and information from dense, jargon-filled passages, which probably don’t resemble the kinds of articles you read for fun.

Luckily, whether you love these kinds of passage-based questions or they fill your heart with dread, there are a number of tried-and-true strategies that you can use to improve your score. In this post, we’ll give you all the tips and tricks you need to ace GMAT reading comprehension—including how to approach the passages overall, how to attack the questions, and how to pace yourself so that you spend just the right amount of time on them.

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GMAT Exponents: Rules, Tips, and Practice

feature_GMATexponentExponents are one of the more frequently tested concepts on the GMAT. It’s likely that you learned all the exponent formulas that you’ll need for the GMAT way back in middle and early high school math, so you’re probably overdue for a refresher! And even if you consider yourself an “exponent expert,” you’re going to have to apply your knowledge of exponents in extremely particular ways on the GMAT, as exponents can appear in a wide variety of question types and are often combined with other mathematical concepts.

Luckily, we’ve done the hard work of distilling everything you need to know about GMAT exponents! In this post, we’ll cover all the relevant rules, properties, formulas, and shortcuts. We’ll also walk you through an example of every main kind of exponent question that you’ll encounter on the test, so you can see these formulas in action. By the end, you really will be an exponent expert!

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Which vs. That on the GMAT: What’s the Difference?

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What’s the difference between “which” and “that”? When is it correct to use one or the other? What kinds of questions will you see about them on the GMAT? These are all great questions. The good news: that vs. which GMAT sentence correction questions aren’t as tough as they appear—even if you’re not a native English speaker.

In this post, we’ll give you all the rules you need to know about which vs. that GMAT questions, an in-depth breakdown of all the kinds of sentence correction questions that test this concept, and some tips for easily distinguishing between the two pronouns (even in long, complex sentence constructions)! By the time we’re done, you’ll be able to nail any that vs. which GMAT question that comes your way.
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GMAT Fractions and Decimals: Everything You Need to Know

GMATfractionsfeatureAfter integers, fractions and decimals are usually the next most frequently tested concepts in the GMAT Quant section. The good news is, the math itself is fairly simple: you’ve likely learned all the rules you need to know about working with fractions and decimals in middle and early high school math. The bad news is that these rules and properties have probably been gathering dust in some unvisited corner of your brain—and even if they haven’t, you’re going to have to apply them in new ways on the GMAT.

Never fear! In this post, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about fractions and decimals for the GMAT. We’ll give you a refresher on all the relevant rules and formulas, tips and tricks for every question you’ll see on them on the GMAT, and some example questions with thorough explanations so you can see these strategies in action.
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The 11 Best GMAT Verbal Tricks and Tips

feature_gerundwordmapThe GMAT Verbal section is notoriously difficult to do well on: a perfect score is 51, but only 1% of people score above 45. Luckily, there are some GMAT Verbal tricks and tips that you can quickly implement to maximize your performance.

In this post, we’ll give you the best overall GMAT Verbal tricks as well as the best tips for each question type, including sentence correction, critical reasoning, and reading comprehension. By the end, you’ll know all the key tricks and tips you can start using right away to improve your Verbal section score.

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What’s a Good GMAT Writing Score? Does the Essay Matter?

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How much does your GMAT writing score really matter? Business schools only release GMAT score data for their students’ Total scores, so it can be difficult to find information about what constitutes a “good” or “bad” GMAT writing score and how important your GMAT analytical writing score really is.

Luckily, we’ve done the research and figured out the answers for you. In this post, we’ll tell you what business schools have to say about the Analytical Writing Assessment, how they weigh it against other parts of your GMAT score and your overall application, and how your score stacks up against other test-taker worldwide. Finally, we’ll help you figure out what a good GMAT analytical writing score is for you.
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