Monthly Archives: November 2015

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis

Many applicants worry about applying to business school if they have a low GPA. I analyzed the low GPA MBA acceptance rate at the top 25 schools to see what are the realistic chances for applicants with a GPA below 3.0. In my data sample from GMAT Club, less than 3% of applicants had a low GPA, which I defined as below 3.0. Individual schools did not have enough data for me to analyze in depth, so I grouped schools into clusters for analysis. I was surprised to see that low GPA MBA acceptance rate is a lot higher than I expected.

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by School Rank

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by Business School RankFor applicants who have a low GPA, school selection is extremely important. Only 8% of applicants with a GPA below 3.0 are accepted by top 10 schools. This is much lower than the 18% acceptance rate for applicants with a higher GPA. Acceptance rate is much closer at schools ranked 11 to 16 for low GPA applicants. Low GPA MBA acceptance rate is highest for schools ranked between 17 and 25 on US News’ top business school rankings. There is only a small disadvantage for low GPA applicants who apply to schools ranked 17 to 25. Next I looked at how GMAT impacted chance of admission for low GPA applicants.

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT and School Rank

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT and Business School RankAs you can see in the graph above, GMAT is especially important for applicants with a low GPA. An applicant applying to a top 10 school with a GMAT below 700 has an extremely low chance of being admitted. Scoring a 750 or higher raises an applicants acceptance rate to 13% at top 10 schools. However, an applicant is much better off just applying to lower ranked schools. Low GPA applicants with a GMAT below 700 had a respectable 20% acceptance rate at schools ranked 11 to 16. An applicant with a GMAT of 750 or higher has double the chance of admission, with acceptance rate of over 40%. For MBA programs ranked 17 to 25, it seems that applicants with a GPA below 3.0 only need to score 700 or higher to have a 50% chance of admission.

Although there is not enough data to analyze low GPA acceptance rate in depth at each school. I posted the acceptance rate for each school below. I included the sample size of so you can get an idea of how trustworthy the acceptance rate calculations are. For example, Foster and Mendoza have a sample size below 10, so you probably can’t trust the accuracy of these acceptance rates. On the other hand, Ross has a sample size of 45, so I trust the 40% acceptance rate for Michigan much more than Mendoza and Foster.

MBA Acceptance Rate for Applicants with GPA Below 3.0

School
Acceptance Rate
Sample Size
Tepper
57%
30
Foster
56%
9
Mendoza
50%
8
Cornell
49%
37
Georgetown
45%
29
Kelley
43%
21
Ross
40%
45
Kenan-Flagler
38%
29
McCombs
24%
33
Duke
23%
48
Kellogg
19%
59
Emory
18%
17
Booth
16%
38
Darden
15%
34
Olin
11%
9
Anderson
10%
31
Tuck
5%
40
Yale
4%
24
Haas
4%
25
NYU
3%
29
Sloan
3%
30
Stanford
3%
32
Wharton
3%
36
Columbia
0%
22
Harvard
0%
38

 

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis

Kenan-Flagler is University of North Carolina’s business school. UNC has five programs including a full-time MBA, various executive MBAs and an online MBA program. UNC’s MBA program is currently ranked 18th by US News and World Report. The UNC MBA class of 2017 has an average GMAT of 710 and GPA of 3.4. I built a logistic regression to predict an applicant’s chance of admission to UNC, here are the insights I gained from it.

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT

Kenan-Flagler UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT AdmissionGMAT has a very high impact on acceptance rate at UNC. Increasing your GMAT by just 50 points from 650 to 700 increases your chance of being accepted by 56%.

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA

Kenan-Flagler UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA AdmissionUndergraduate GPA has little to no impact on UNC MBA acceptance rate. Surprisingly, applicants with a 4.0 actually had a lower acceptance rate than those with a GPA below 3.0. Applicants with a low GPA should certainly consider applying to Kenan-Flagler.

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by Application Round

Kenan-Flagler UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by Application Round AdmissionI was very shocked to see that acceptance rate was so much higher for round 3 than for round 1 and 2. I looked at the GMAT and GPA to see if that explained the difference and it did not. Round 3 applicants had the lowest average GMAT and GPA.

Round
GMAT
GPA
Round 1
710
3.42
Round 2
710
3.38
Round 3
707
3.35

Other Factors

Applicants that majored in science, math and computer science tended to have high acceptance rates. On the other hand applicants who worked in computer software tended to have a lower acceptance rate. Indian citizens have a much lower chance of admission. US applicants have a 50% acceptance rate, but Indian applicants have an 18% chance of getting admitted.

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT and GPA

The interview is a crucial component of the MBA admission process. All top full-time MBA programs interview applicants before admitting them. Generally the MBA admissions committee is looking for two things during the interview, that you fit the culture of the school and that you have the emotional intelligence to succeed at business school. I have already looked at MBA Interview acceptance rate by itself. However, I always wondered when applying to business school if all applicants are considered equal after they have been invited to interview or does the rest of the application, like the GMAT and GPA, still matter. It turns out that it matters at some schools and not at others.

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate: High vs. Low GMAT

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate by GMATThe graph above shows the average acceptance rate for applicants who were invited to interview, separated into GMAT below 720 and GMAT 720 and higher. Two thirds of the schools have a higher acceptance rate for applicants with high GMATs. This suggests that being invited to interview does not put everyone on an even playing field, other components of the application still matter. Booth, UNC, Stanford and Columbia have the largest disadvantage for applicants with low GMAT during interviews. At the other end of the spectrum, MIT, Tepper, Emory and McCombs all have a higher acceptance rate for applicants who were invited to interview but have a lower GMAT score. I don’t think that a lower GMAT actually helped these candidates, but that these schools consider the interview to be more important than other schools, which gives low GMAT applicants the opportunity to stand out.

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate: High vs. Low GPA

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate by GPA Business School AdmissionsUnlike GMAT, half the schools seem to care about GPA after interviewing candidates while the other half do not. Similar to the GMAT table, MIT, Tepper and McCombs have a higher acceptance rate for applicants with lower GPAs. The only exception is Emory, which still doesn’t have that much of a disadvantage for low GPA. GPA does not seem to be as important as GMAT to admissions committees after interviews given that the average disadvantage for low GMAT is -10% and the average disadvantage for low GPA is -1%.

Most of the schools cut applicants with low GPA and low GMAT before interviews. I excluded Tuck and Kellogg because they will interview all applicants who want to interview. So it is not fair to compare them to the other schools who have already cut applicants with low scores. I included their tables at the end of this article for reference.

My take away from this analysis is that some schools place a lower weight on interviews while other schools place a higher weight on interviews. If you are applying to Booth with a high GMAT and GPA then you probably don’t need to stress the interview too much. On the other hand if you have a low GPA and GMAT and are applying to Sloan, you should prepare as much as possible for your MIT MBA interview because they take their interviews much more seriously than other schools.

If you are preparing for business school interviews, check out my MBA interview preparation guide.

Kellogg and Tuck MBA interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT Tuck Kellogg

Kellogg and Tuck MBA interview Acceptance Rate by GPA

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate by GPA Tuck KelloggThe data for this article came from GMAT Club, one of the best websites for GMAT preparation.