Tag Archives: GPA

Kellogg Acceptance Rate Analysis

Kellogg’s acceptance rate is on the higher side for a top 10 MBA program at over 20%. But don’t be fooled, getting into Kellogg is still very difficult. In addition to high expectations for GMAT and GPA, Kellogg allows all applicants to interview. This allows Kellogg to find candidates with the best interpersonal skills even if they don’t have high scores. Since I don’t have information on candidates’ interpersonal skills, I’ll stick to GMAT and GPA. I built a model that can estimate an applicants chance of admissions to Kellogg based on a few key pieces of data . I am posting the insights I found in the model here until I am able to build the admissions calculator over winter break.

Kellogg Acceptance Rate by GMAT

Kellogg Acceptance Rate by GMAT MBA Admissions Business School

The average GMAT score for Kellogg’s 2 year MBA program is 717, however the average GMAT for applicants is lower, coming in at 709. The graph above shows the relationship between GMAT and Kellogg acceptance rate for the average applicant, who has a GPA of 3.38. You can see there is a strong relationship between GMAT and Kellogg acceptance rate. An applicant to Northwestern has twice the chance of getting in with a 750 compared to a 650.

Kellogg Acceptance Rate by GPA

Kellogg Acceptance Rate by GPA MBA Business School Admissions

Similar to GMAT, having a higher GPA increases your chance of admission at Kellogg. Even with a low GPA of 3.0, the admission rate is still over 20%. The graph above shows Kellogg acceptance rate by GPA for the average candidate, who has a GMAT of 709 (yes I know that it is not a possible score).

Kellogg prefers GMAT over GPA

Kellogg Acceptance Rate GMAT vs GPA MBA Admission Business School

By comparing admissions for candidates with a high GMAT score vs high GPA, I found that Kellogg prefers a high GMAT over a high GPA.* This is good news for candidates who are willing to put in the hard work to get a high GMAT score. Having a high GPA only increases your chance of admission by 2% to 25%. On the other hand, having a high GMAT increases the Kellogg acceptance rate to 29%. On the flip side, if you have a low GMAT then it will harm your chance of admission more than a low GPA.

Kellogg Acceptance Rate by Round

Kellogg Acceptance Rate by Round MBA Admissions

Round 1 applicants had the highest acceptance rate, with round 3 acceptance rate the lowest. These numbers are a little misleading because they don’t take into account difference in the average candidate quality for the different rounds.

Kellogg MBA Applicant Statistics by Round AdmissionsThe lower acceptance rate for Kellogg applicants in later rounds is explained by lower GMAT and GPA. This is why application round is not a factor in my admission model. Applying in a later round does not appear to harm your chance of admission at Kellogg significantly, especially if you can use that time to raise your GMAT or improve your essay.

Other Admissions Factors

The last two factors that had an impact on admission rate were country and industry. Applicants who were living in India had a roughly 6% chance of admission. Candidates who worked in computer software while applying had a 5% chance of admission. Both of these factors were statistically significant, meaning that there was enough data to verify the effect.

Good luck with your applications! Let me know if you have any questions.

*A high score on GMAT or GPA is defined by one standard deviation above average.

Stern Interview Acceptance Rate Analysis

I know that the final decisions for applicants who were interviewed for New York University’s business school are expected soon. I decided to perform a Stern interview acceptance rate analysis to see if I could predict the chance of acceptance for applicants who were invited to interview. From my data sample 74% of applicants who were invited to interview were ultimately accepted.

Stern Interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT

Stern Interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT NYU MBA School AdmissionsNot only is the slope of the regression line very flat, but also the the R-squared is only 3%. These two pieces of information suggest that once a candidate is invited to interview, their GMAT has no impact on acceptance rate.

Stern Interview Acceptance Rate by GPA

Stern Interview Acceptance Rate by GPA NYU Business School AdmissionThe slope of the GPA graph is a little steeper than the GMAT graph slope. The R-squared is also higher, coming in at 10%. Once again, this indicates that GPA has a little more impact on your chance of admission after being invited to interview compared to GMAT.

The low R-squared of the GPA and GMAT compared to admissions for interviewed applicants suggest that NYU treats all applicants as equal once they are invited to interview. If interviewed you are on equal footing compared to all other candidates invited to interview. This is different compared to Ross, which has a much higher correlation between GMAT / GPA and acceptance rate. The GMAT & GPA acceptance rate R-squared ranged from 30% to 75% for Ross, which is much higher than the 3% to 10% for Stern.

The data used for this post comes from GMAT Club.

Ross Interview Acceptance Rate Analysis

Earlier today I posted the Ross acceptance rate analysis which shows how GPA and GMAT scores affect your chance of admission at University of Michigan’s MBA program. I received a request to see if GMAT and GPA can still predict acceptance rate out of the applicants who were selected to interview. I would never want to disappoint a reader, so here is my Ross interview acceptance rate analysis. While reading this analysis, keep in mind that around 62% of interviewed applicants are accepted, which is higher than schools like Harvard and Wharton but lower than Stern.

Ross Interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT

Ross Interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT Michigan MBA Business School AdmissionsIn the graph above you can see that there is a clear relationship between Ross acceptance rate even among the applicants selected to interview. The R-squared is 74% which is fairly high, so GMAT is an accurate predictor of admissions post interview. The slope of the line suggests that for every 10 points higher your GMAT is, you have a 2% higher chance of admissions. Unfortunately for those with a low GMAT score, you are not on an equal playing field even after being selected for an interview at Ross.

Ross Interview Acceptance Rate by GPA

Ross Interview Acceptance Rate by GPA Michigan MBA Business School AdmissionsThere is also a relationship between Ross interview acceptance rate and GPA, but the correlation is much weaker. Just from looking at the graph you can see that the data is more spread out from the regression line. The R-squared of 32% is much lower than the R-squared for GMAT of 74%. All else equal, it would help your chance of admission if you have a high GPA, but it does not seem to matter as much as GMAT.

When I analyzed Harvard Business School acceptance rate, I found that GMAT and GPA could not predict acceptance rate from the pool of applicants selected to interview. Which means everyone who was interviewed were on a level playing field once invited to interview. That does not seem to be the case for Ross. In the end, even with a low GMAT or GPA, you still have a 50% of being accepted after your interview. All you can do is prepare for your Ross MBA interview as much as possible and hope for the best.

Ross Acceptance Rate Analysis

I plan to post the Ross admission calculator online as soon as I have time to build that portion of the website, probably over Christmas break. In the mean time I will share some of the insights I got from building the predictive model.

Ross Acceptance Rate by GMAT

Obviously your chance of admission to Ross School of Business increases if you score higher on the GMAT. The good news is that Ross’s acceptance rate of 34% is significantly higher than almost all other business schools in the top 20. The Ross class of 2016 profile shows that the average GMAT and GPA are 702 and 3.4 respectively. The data used to create this analysis comes from GMAT Club. Of the applicants in my data set, 84% had GMAT of 700 or higher, which means that I am fairly confident about the relationship between GMAT and admissions in the 700’s but not as confident in the 600’s.

Ross Acceptance Rate by GMAT MBA Admissions Michigan School of Business To create the graph above, I used the average GPA from my data set which is 3.42 and then shifted the GMAT score in my model. The model takes into account the interaction of GMAT, GPA, years of work experience, undergraduate major and the industry you worked in.

Ross Acceptance Rate by GPA

Next I looked at how GPA affects Ross acceptance rate. I’m sure it is not a surprised to hear that a higher GPA increases your chance of admissions at Michigan school of business. Ross Acceptance Rate by GPA MBA Admissions Michigan School of Business

Ross Acceptance Rate: GMAT vs. GPA

The real question is which is more important for raising your Ross acceptance rate, GPA or GMAT? In the graph below I compare how much the admissions rate changes if I alter the GMAT or GPA by a standard deviation. A standard deviation is a measure of variance in a population or sample. Since I can’t compare the absolute variance because GMAT and GPA are on different scales, I compare how the shift of one standard deviation impacts the Ross MBA acceptance rate.

Ross Acceptance Rate GMAT vs. GPA Admision Michigan School of BusinessAs you can see the slope is steeper for the GMAT line. This means that Ross prefers applicants with a high GMAT over applicants with a high GPA. One standard deviation higher in GMAT increases acceptance rate by 22% while a standard deviation in GPA only increases chances of admission by 14%.

Other Ross Acceptance Rate Insights

similar to Harvard and Wharton, at Michigan the acceptance rate is noticeably lower for Indian applicants vs. non-Indian applicants, 17% vs. 41% respectively. Engineering majors have a lower chance of admission while liberal arts majors have a higher chance. Many schools are trying to increase the number of women in their program. The higher acceptance rate for liberal arts majors may reflect Ross trying to attract more women, however my data set is missing gender information. More years of work experience increases the chance of admission by around 2.5% per year. Also military applicants have a higher chance of admissions.

For those of you who have already been invited to interview at Ross, your acceptance rate is higher at around 62%. Check out my Ross Interview Acceptance Rate Analysis to see what your chance of getting admitted is.

Good luck with your applications!

Stern Acceptance Rate Analysis

I just finished building the Stern acceptance rate prediction model. I will post the admissions calculator as soon as I have time to finish learning PHP and then build that portion of the website. I’ll probably have time to work on it over Christmas break, but right now I am too busy applying for interviews for summer internships. In the mean time I will share some of the insights I got from building the model.

Stern Acceptance Rate by GMAT

The first thing that jumped out at me was that the acceptance rates I came up with are noticeably higher than the published acceptance rate of 15%. I believe that this is because the average candidate who applies and posts their data on GMAT Club, where I get my data, is more competitive than the average candidate. The average GMAT Club applicant to Stern has a GPA or 3.45 and GMAT of 709, which is not too far from the scores listed on the class profile for Sterns class of 2016 of 3.52 and 721.

Stern Acceptance Rate by GMAT MBA Admissions Business School NYUIf you are applying to Stern, it is pretty obvious that having a higher GMAT is important and will significantly raise your chances of being admitted. To create the graph above, I used my model with the average GPA of 3.45.

Stern Acceptance Rate by GPA

Next I looked at how GPA affects Stern acceptance rate. Once again there is a clear relationship between GPA and admission rate for NYU. In the graph below I used the average GPA score of 709 in my admissions model.Stern Acceptance Rate by GPA NYU Admissions Business School

Stern Acceptance Rate by Round

Many candidates want to know if it matters in which round you apply. I took a look at the raw acceptance rate by round for NYU. As you can see the acceptance rate for round 2 is slightly lower and for round 3 it is noticeably lower.

Stern Acceptance Rate by Round MBA NYU Admissions Business SchoolThe acceptance rates above are raw numbers, not the predicted values from my admissions model. Why you ask? Because when I took into account all of the other factors, the round you apply in is not statistically significant. The reason the acceptance rate is lower in round 2 and 3 is not because the schools are more selective but because on average lower quality candidates apply in those rounds. If you are a qualified candidate, do not worry about applying to Stern in round 3, you still have a good chance of getting in.

Stern Prefers GMAT over GPA

In the past I tried to figure out if Stern prefers a high GMAT or GPA and didn’t come up with anything conclusive. Now that I have built the Stern admissions model I can see how a similar change in GMAT or GPA impact acceptance rate at Stern. In the graph below I compare how much the admissions rate changes if I alter the GMAT or GPA by a standard deviation. If you are applying to business school then you should probably know what a standard deviation is, however if you don’t it is a standard measure of variance in a population or sample. Since I can’t compare an absolute variance because GMAT and GPA are on different scales, I compare how the shift of one standard deviation impacts the Stern acceptance rate.

Stern Acceptance Rate GPA vs GMAT MBA NYU Admissions Business SchoolIn the graph above, you can see that increasing the GPA by one standard deviation (.28) increase acceptance rate by 29%, but raising the GMAT score by one standard deviation (39) leads to a 45% higher chance of admissions. It is clear that Stern prefers candidates with high GMAT score over ones with a high GPA. This is good news for candidates with a low GPA because with enough hard work, you can increase your odds significantly by raising your GMAT.

Other NYU Admissions Insights

I also found that NYU prefers candidates with an average age of 27 to 28, the further you are from this average age, the lower your chance of getting in. Stern really likes candidates that come from consulting. Applicants from consulting had a acceptance rate of 42% vs. 21% for non-consultants. Having more work experience also increased your odds of admissions. Acceptance rate increased by about 2% for each year of work experience. However, once you pass 28, the age deviation factor is significantly stronger than the work experience factor so you shouldn’t wait until after 28 to apply.

I noticed that candidates that majored in business or engineering had a lower chance of admission. Business majors with average scores had a 8% chance of admission compared to 24% for non-business majors. Engineers had a 13% chance of getting in compared to a 26% chance for non-engineers. These differences are statistically significant even after taking into account all other factors. That being said, I majored in engineering and I got into Stern. I also know many other business and engineering majors who are currently attending Stern with me.

Follow Up on Wharton Acceptance Rate for Indian Applicants

Last week I posted an article discussing the Indian application disadvantage at Wharton. I received a request to go into more detail about how GMAT impacts the Wharton acceptance rate for Indian applicants. Given that only 5% of applicants identified as Indian and the acceptance rate is low, I don’t have enough data to look at that relationship in isolation. However, I have built a model that can predict what that relationship would be for Indian applicants based off of data from other Wharton applicants.

Wharton Acceptance Rate by GMAT

As you can see, my model predicts that there is a relationship between GMAT and the Wharton acceptance rate. This acceptance rates in the graph assumes a GPA of 3.54, which is the average for Wharton applicants. As you would expect, the higher the GMAT score, the higher the chance of getting in. Unfortunately, even with an 800, the forecast acceptance rate is still less than 10% for Indian applicants. Wharton Acceptance Rate GMAT India MBA Application

Wharton Acceptance Rate by GPA

I decided to also look at the relation ship between GPA and acceptance rate as well. Similar to GMAT, higher GPAs increase your chance of acceptance. For the graph below I used the average Wharton GMAT score of 728 to calculate the acceptance rate. Even for candidates with a 4.0 GPA, they only have an acceptance rate of 6%.

Wharton Acceptance Rate GPA India MBA Application

After that I made a graph displaying the relationship between GMAT and GPA on acceptance rate for Indian applicants. With a 4.0 GPA and 800 GMAT, the acceptance rate increased to 12%, but that is still very low for such a qualified candidate.

Wharton_GMAT_vs_GPA_12-4-14

The final question to answer is which is more important to Wharton, GMAT or GPA. I already had suspicions that Wharton cared more about GMAT than GPA, and this analysis confirmed it. I looked at the average candidate (both Indian and non-Indian) then compared the average acceptance rate to the acceptance rate one standard deviation above and below for both GMAT and GPA.

Wharton Acceptance Rate GPA vs GMAT MBA AdmissionsAs you can see the slope for the line is steeper for the GMAT than for GPA. What this means is that a candidate who score one standard deviation above average for GMAT will be rewarded more than a candidate who has a GPA one standard deviation above average. Similarly a candidate will be punished more for having a low GMAT. This suggests that GMAT is more important to Wharton than GPA.

The data used to make this post came from GMAT Club and included applicants from 2012 through 2014.

Stanford GPA Impact on Acceptance

stanford gpa MBA business school acceptance rate

Stanford is the most select MBA program in the country. If you hope to be accepted, then you need to put together a very strong application. It is important to understand how at Stanford GPA will impact your chance of admission before deciding if you want to apply.

Unfortunately, once you finish your undergraduate degree, you GPA is set in stone. At this point the only metric you can improve is your GMAT. However, knowing where you stand with GPA can help you to set your GMAT goal so that you still have a competitive chance of being admitted by Stanford.

Stanford GPA by Acceptance Rate

Stanford GPA MBA Acceptance Rate Business School

As you can see, at Stanford GPA has little impact on acceptance rate until it increases over 3.6. Above 3.6, acceptance rate increases by almost 50% compared to below 3.6. Applicants who have a GPA that is higher than 3.9 have a 200% higher chance of being admitted compared to students below 3.6. Although the below 3.0 applicants do not seem to suffer from a lower acceptance rate than applicants with a 3.0 to 3.6, the data for that population is very thin and is likely to have significant error. It is reasonable to assume that it will be difficult to be admitted at Stanford with a GPA below 3.0.

If you are luck enough to be invited by Stanford for an interview. It is important to work hard during interview preparation to maximize your chance of admission. Top MBA programs put a lot of weight on interpersonal skills, so you don’t want to slack off when it comes to the interview.

To create this Stanford GPA analysis, I used data from GMAT Club. The data included applicants for the class of 2014, 2015 and round 1 of 2016.

More recent analysis on the impact of GPA on Stanford admission rate shows that GPA is not an important factor, but GMAT is.

Tuck Admissions Analysis

Tuck Admissions Analysis MBA Business SchoolThe final decision for the Tuck MBA January round applications is being released tomorrow. Tuck calls the students who have been accepted either the day of or the day before the decision is released. Today, mostly international acceptance calls were made, and I have not been called yet. I am based in the US so I am not super nervous yet, but I am finding it difficult to think of anything other than the Tuck decision. I was incredibly unproductive at work today because I spent the entire time hoping my phone would ring. To help ease my worries I created this elaborate Tuck admissions analysis to try to figure out my chances of getting in. Each of the following graphs are only acceptance rate vs. one variable. In reality there are probably interaction effects between different variables, so this is by no means especially accurate, but my final conclusion is that I have a 53% chance of being admitted. I was hoping the number would come out higher, but it is a lot better than the 20.8% acceptance rate overall at Tuck.

Tuck Admissions Analysis

Tuck Admissions Analysis GMAT Acceptance Rate MBA

The first variable I looked at was GMAT. I did a scatter-plot by acceptance rate and found the best trendline for fitting the trendline. This line has an R squared of .82, which is a fairly strong correlation. I then created the smoothed out graph below, which probably does a better job of estimating the impact of GMAT on your application odds.

Tuck Admissions Analysis GMAT Acceptance Rate MBA

My 770 on the GMAT really helped to boost my Tuck admissions chances since it is significantly higher than the 718 average. However, I know my GPA is below the average Tuck GPA of 3.5. So next I looked at how GPA impacts acceptance rate.

Tuck Admissions Analysis MBA GPA Acceptance Business School

For Dartmouth, GPA is highly correlated with chance of acceptance, as one would expect. The GPA scatter-plot has a .89 R squared, which is very high. However, the line is not nearly as steep as it is for GMAT. Similar to GMAT, I smoothed out the curve to account for noise and came up with the graph below.

Tuck Admissions Analysis GPA Acceptance MBA Business School Dartmouth

After GPA, I looked at how your industry impacts your chances of getting into Tuck. I only included an industry if it either had a high number of applicants or had a very high acceptance rate, like Venture Capital and Commercial Banking. I lumped all other industries into “other”. The trends for Dartmouth are similar to what I saw in my Wharton industry analysis. Manufacturing fared better with Tuck, but it is still significantly below average.

Tuck Admissions Analysis Industry Acceptance Rate Dartmouth MBA

Finally, I looked at Dartmouth acceptance rate by years of work experience. The results of this graph do not seem to be as conclusive as other variables. The acceptance rate kind of jumps around. My interpretation is that in general the more years of work experience, the higher your chance of admissions is, until you reach 9+ years. Then the admissions committee starts to wonder why you are even applying for an MBA.

Tuck Admissions Analysis Dartmouth MBA Acceptance Rate

All in all, my predicted chance of getting into Dartmouth is pretty decent at 53%. My chance is theoretically a little better than a flip of a coin. I know that very few people who don’t do a applicant initiated interview are invited to a Tuck interview. An admissions committee member told me that roughly 55% of applicants self-initiate interviews, and I am going to guess that only 5% of total applicants are invited. If this is correct, then the fact that I already interviewed means that I have a pretty good chance of getting in. On top of that, I had one recommender who wrote an amazing recommendation for me. I sent it to NYU, Wharton and Tuck. I was admitted to NYU and I have been interviewed at Wharton and am waiting for my final decision. I was rejected from every school that he didn’t recommend me at. I am hoping the trend continues that I get into every school that my super recommender submitted to.

For those of you who are still waiting for the Tuck admissions decision, I hope that this article is able to distract you for a little while while you wait for the decision tomorrow. I wish everyone the best of luck.

The data used to create this Tuck admissions analysis is from GMAT Club. I used the data from the class of 2014, 2015 and the first two rounds of the class of 2016.

Stanford GMAT vs. GPA: Which is more important?

stanford gmat gpa MBA business school acceptance rateStanford is tied currently tied with Harvard and Wharton as the #1 MBA program in the world. Stanford’s acceptance rate is extremely low, at 6.8%. With such a low acceptance rate, it is important to understand how at Stanford GMAT and GPA affect your chance of admissions. Every school weighs the importance of GMAT and GPA differently. Today I will look at how Stanford compares the two metrics. For this analysis, I only included applicants who were accepted and are on the margin. We don’t learn much by seeing that Stanford accepted a student with a 3.98 GPA and a 790 GMAT, but we do learn a lot by analyzing the profile of applicants who were just barely accepted. Top MBA schools prefer candidates with high GPA and GMAT, but they are often willing to accept an applicant with low GPA if that applicant has a high GMAT. The same is true for applicants with low GMAT and high GPA.

Stanford GMAT vs. GPA

Stanford GMAT vs. GPA GSB MBA Admissions Acceptance

Unfortunately, Stanford data is a little thin because their acceptance rate is so low, but we get a reasonable idea of the GMAT vs. GPA tradeoff. At Stanford GMAT vs. GPA slope is -.005, which means that 100 GMAT points are roughly worth .5 GPA points. So a 680 GMAT with a 3.87 GPA would be viewed roughly similar to a 780 GMAT with a 3.37 GPA. This slope is less steep than most other schools, which means that, compared to other schools, Stanford prefers high GPA over high GMAT. The only school with a lower slope is Stern, which had a -.0043.

Check out how some of the other schools weigh GMAT vs. GPA:

Upenn / Wharton GMAT vs. GPA

Harvard GMAT vs. GPA

MIT / Sloan GMAT vs. GPA

Dartmouth / Tuck GMAT vs. GPA

NYU / Stern GMAT vs. GPA

The data for this post is from GMAT Club. I used the admissions data from the class of 2014, 2015, and R1 admits for 2016.

I have published a more recent Stanford business school acceptance rate analysis which has more accurate findings on GMAT and GPA at GBS.

Wharton GPA Impact on MBA Acceptance Rate

I posted an updated Wharton acceptance rate analysis which is more accurate than this article. It shows how GPA and GMAT affect your odds of admissions.

Wharton GPA MBA Admissions Acceptance Business School

When applying to a top MBA program, GMAT and GPA are important parts of the application. As one would expect from a top MBA program, at Wharton GPA has a large impact on your chances of admission. The question is how much does your undergraduate GPA affect your chance of admission. I analyzed the acceptance data from the past two and half years at GMAT Club to see how much GPA impacts acceptance rate. Unlike Harvard where there is little benefit from GPA until 3.8 or higher, at Wharton the acceptance rate generally increases as the undergraduate GPA rises.

At Wharton GPA Increases Chance of Admission

Wharton GPA vs. Acceptance rate MBA Business School You can clearly see that acceptance rate is lowest below 3.0 and highest in the 3.8 to 4.0 range. There is a slight dip in the 3.6 to 3.79 GPA range. I took a closer look and it appears to be because more applicants in this GPA range worked in industries that Wharton does not value. There are more applicants in the 3.6 to 3.79 range that work in Government and Mutual Funds and fewer in Military and Venture Capital, which are industries that Wharton seems to prefer.

Higher GPA does appear to increase the chance of an applicant being admitted to Wharton, but the slope is not as steep as I would have expected. Unfortunately for some, GPA is stuck in stone. Applicants who hope to increase their chance of admissions need to focus on GMAT to increase their odds. Luckily, data suggests that very high GMAT scores significantly increase the odds that Wharton will accept an applicant. If an applicant studies hard for the GMAT, then a high GMAT score is highly likely achievable. There are many companies that offer GMAT preparation which will increase your chance of admission.

Wharton does not publish statistics on GPA for us to analyze. However, we can look at what the average GPA is in my data set. The mean GPA for accepts at Wharton in my dataset is 3.61 GPA with a middle 80% GPA in the range of 3.23 to 3.94. The mean Wharton GPA of 3.61 is lower than the mean Harvard GPA of 3.66.

Harvard GPA Impact on Acceptance Rate

Harvard business school is ranked first and it is incredibly difficult for applicants to get admitted. If you are applying, then you might wonder what is the minimum Harvard GPA requires in order to have a decent chance of acceptance. I analyzed the data from GMAT Club application data to discover the relationship between Harvard GPA and acceptance rate.

Harvard GPA MBA Acceptance Rate Business SchoolUpdate: I have posted a more up to date analysis of Harvard Business School acceptance rate which looks at how GPA, GMAT and application round impacts your chance of admission.

At Harvard GPA is Not Important Unless it is Very High or Very Low

As you can see, the acceptance rate between 3.0 and 3.79 is relatively flat. GPA only seems to have any impact if you are above 3.8 or below 3.0. The acceptance rate for Harvard is higher in the 3.0 to 3.39 range than 3.4 to 3.79. This is likely due to low sample size in the lower GPA range. Although the acceptance rate is 0% below 3.0 in my dataset, I don’t think there is no chance of getting in, it is just very challenging.

At Harvard GPA only starts to help you when your GPA is 3.8 or higher. The average acceptance rate at Harvard is 12%, but it is 20% for applicants with a 3.8 or higher. I could not find any data published by Harvard on average GPA or GPA range. In my dataset, the average GPA of an applicant was 3.55, but the average GPA for someone who was accepted was 3.66. The middle 80% for Harvard GPA was 3.2 to 3.98, which means that 10% of those applicants that Harvard accepts have a GPA of 3.98 or higher.

In summary, if you are applying to Harvard, don’t stress out too much about your GPA as long as it is at least 3.0. Having a somewhat low GPA isn’t going to hurt your chances very much. Harvard only seems to care about how high your GPA is if you have a low GMAT score.

For this analysis, I used data from September 2011 through February 2014. There were 774 applicants in my data set.

Harvard GMAT vs. GPA Comparison

I have posted a more up to date Harvard Business School acceptance rate analysis which is based on GPA, GMAT and application round.

Word is that Harvard will take a chance on applicants who have low scores, but impressive accomplishments. Lets see if Harvard lives up to its reputation.

Harvard GMAT vs. GPA Admissions Accepted MBA Business School
As you can see the slope for Harvard is much steeper than for the other schools. The slope of -.0093 means that Harvard would look at an application with a 750 GMAT and 3.0 GPA similarly to a 650 and 3.93. This result is interesting, it shows that on the margin Harvard is weighs GMAT very strongly, however, the marginal Harvard GMAT scores are lower than other schools. Harvard is willing to take a chance on a low GMAT, but you better have a damn high GPA to make up for it.

Harvard GMAT vs. GPA All Accepts

It is interesting to look at the total accepts instead of just the accepts on the margin. As you can see below, Harvard seems to be completely missing the population of students with low GPA and really high GMAT. I guess the admissions committee isn’t interested in students who slacked in undergrad and tried to make up for it with GMAT. I find that odd given Harvard’s reputation for grade inflation. They say that the hardest part of Harvard is getting in.

Harvard GMAT vs. GPA (all accepts)

The median Harvard GMAT score is 730. It is interesting that Harvard posts the median GMAT score instead of mean score like other schools. You can hide some very low GMAT scores by only posting a median. I would venture a guess that Wharton’s mean GMAT score, at 725, is higher than Harvard’s GMAT mean. After all, Harvard did accept a person with a 550 GMAT score last year. That has to be bringing down the average.

Check out how some of the other schools weigh GMAT vs. GPA:

Upenn / Wharton GMAT vs. GPA

MIT / Sloan GMAT vs. GPA

Dartmouth / Tuck GMAT vs. GPA

NYU / Stern GMAT vs. GPA

Methodology: The scatterplot represents the 50% of applicants who are accepted with the lowest GMAT and GPA. It isn’t helpful to look at the top 50% of applicants because those are not the marginal candidates who barely got in. I occasionally will remove very low outliers because those candidates may have been admitted due to very strong connections that most applicants don’t have. I never remove more than 5% of the total accepted students as outliers. The slope of the scatterplot demonstrates the point at which the school is indifferent to GMAT vs. GPA. The data for this analysis comes from GMAT Club.

Stern: How Important is the GMAT vs. GPA

I posted an updated analysis of Stern Acceptance rate for GPA vs. GMAT on this page.

NYU is currently ranked 10th by US News and World Report for full-time MBA programs and is tied for the 3rd highest average GMAT score. I expected to see Stern prefer GMAT over GPA, but that is not what I found.

Stern NYU GMAT GPA Admissions MBA Business School

It turns out that Stern has by far the smallest slope of any of the other schools I have looked at so far. The .0043 slope means that Stern would view a candidate with a 800 GMAT and 3.00 GPA similarly to one with a 700 GMAT and 3.43 GPA.

Other Schools:

Sloan

Wharton

Tuck

Columbia Business School

Methodology: The scatterplot represents the 50% of applicants who are accepted with the lowest GMAT and GPA. It isn’t helpful to look at the top 50% of applicants because those are not the marginal candidates who barely got in. I occasionally will remove very low outliers because those candidates may have been admitted due to very strong connections that most applicants don’t have. I never remove more than 5% of the total accepted students as outliers. The slope of the scatterplot demonstrates the point at which the school is indifferent to GMAT vs. GPA.

Sloan: How Important is the GMAT vs. GPA

MIT is well known for highly intelligent students who are gifted in math. The rumor is that Sloan cares a lot more about your GMAT score than other schools. Do you think that this is true?

In the graph below you can see that Sloan has a slope of .0057. This means that MIT would consider a 800 GMAT with 3.0 GPA roughly similarly to a 700 GMAT with a 3.57 GPA.

Sloan GMAT GPA MBA Business MIT Score

Sloan is tied with Tuck (so far) for the lowest reliance on GMAT score. So far in my analysis Columbia cares the most about GMAT score. Sloans GMAT vs. GPA slope is relatively similar to the other schools, so  you should still take the GMAT seriously when applying to Sloan, but clearly it is not the singular most important component of the application.

Methodology: The scatterplot represents the 50% of applicants who are accepted with the lowest GMAT and GPA. It isn’t helpful to look at the top 50% of applicants because those are not the marginal candidates who barely got in. I occasionally will remove very low outliers because those candidates may have been admitted due to very strong connections that most applicants don’t have. I never remove more than 5% of the total accepted students as outliers. The slope of the scatterplot demonstrates the point at which the school is indifferent to GMAT vs. GPA.

How important is the GMAT to Tuck

Tuck is a school that is well known for its close-knit friendly community. During my interview, the second year student told me that the admissions committee specifically selects for people with terrific people skills who know how to collaborate in a team environment. Given that Tuck is looking for team players, does this mean that they put less of an emphasis on the GMAT? Lets find out.

In the chart below you can see that the slope the GMAT vs GPA scatter-plot is .0057. This means that for admissions purposes, Tuck would view a person with 800 GMAT and 3.00 GPA the same as someone with 700 GMAT and 3.57.

Tuck Dartmouth GMAT GPA Admissions MBA Business

 

The slope of .0057 is slightly lower than Wharton and Columbia who have slopes of .0061 and .0063 respectively. This supports Tucks claim that they weight interpersonal skills higher than they do test scores.

Methodology: The scatterplot represents the 50% of applicants who are accepted with the lowest GMAT and GPA. It isn’t helpful to look at the top 50% of applicants because those are not the marginal candidates who barely got in. I occasionally will remove very low outliers because those candidates may have been admitted due to very strong connections that most applicants don’t have. I never remove more than 5% of the total accepted students as outliers. The slope of the scatterplot demonstrates the point at which the school is indifferent to GMAT vs. GPA.

How Important is the GMAT to Wharton

I posted an updated Wharton acceptance rate analysis which is more accurate than this article. It shows how GPA and GMAT affect your odds of admissions.

Continuing the series on GMAT vs. GPA, here is the article on how much Wharton values the GMAT. Wharton is the 3rd ranked school according to US News and World Report.

Over the past year, both the director of MBA admissions Ankur Kumar and dean Dean Thomas S. Robertson have left Wharton. Many people have suggested that the quality of a Wharton MBA is declining due to dropping application numbers and prominent staff quitting. I personally think that Wharton is just as strong as it has ever been, and that it has just had an unlucky streak of staff quitting.

Some experts have suggested that because Wharton has seen a drop in applications and has had high level staff quit recently, Wharton will have a very conservative year for admissions and will focus on raising the measurable statistics such as GPA and GMAT. Lets see how recent events have shaped Wharton’s weighting for the GMAT.

The first graph was created using the admissions data from the past three years. The slope is .0036 for accepts. This means that over the past 3 years Wharton values 10 GPAT points the same as it values .036 GPA points. An application with an 800 and 3.00 would be viewed similarly to a 700 and 3.36.

Wharton MBA GMAT vs. GPA Admissions StatisticsThe interesting question is how have recent events shaped Wharton’s admissions decisions. In the graph below you can see that slope of the accepted students has increased from .0036 to .0061, suggesting that this recruiting cycle Wharton has been weighting GMAT more heavily than GPA compared to previous years. The slope is now .0061, which means that 10 GMAT points are considered similarly to .061 GPA points.  An application with an 800 and 3.00 would be viewed similarly to a 700 and 3.61.

Wharton GMAT vs. GPA Admissions MBAAlthough recent data suggests that Wharton has decided to weight GMAT as more important than GPA, this conclusion is premature. This recent data is very thin (it is based on only 14 accepts) and should not be considered completely accurate.

Methodology: The scatterplot represents the 50% of applicants who are accepted with the lowest GMAT and GPA. It isn’t helpful to look at the top 50% of applicants because those are not the marginal candidates who barely got in. I occasionally will remove very low outliers because those candidates may have been admitted due to very strong connections that most applicants don’t have. I never remove more than 5% of the total accepted students as outliers. The slope of the scatterplot demonstrates the point at which the school is indifferent to GMAT vs. GPA.

How Important is the GMAT to Columbia Business School

Every person who has ever considered applying to business school has considered how important the GMAT is to the admissions committee. It could be because that person did well and is hoping that their GMAT score will get them in or it could be that the person is trying to overcome a low GMAT score. I used the admissions data from GMAT Club to come up with actual data to answer this question.

Here is my analysis of how much important to Columbia GMAT is. I looked at everyone who was admitted to CBS and also provided both GMAT and GPA. I found the slope of the admitted students with the lowest score to find out how much the CBS values the GMAT scores.

I used this methodology because it is obvious that most schools will accept someone who has a 4.0 and an 800; it is the people who are on the border who matter. I also removed a few outlier data points on the low side because they probably had very influential connections to get in with their low scores, and that information isn’t relevant to the average applicant.

Columbia GMAT vs. GPA

Columbia GMAT Business School Admissions Application GPA You can see that the slope of the line for accepted students is .0063. This means that for every 10 points higher you score on the GMAT, it is the equivalent of having a GPA that is .063 points higher. So Columbia would roughly consider an applicant with a 800 GMAT and 3.00 GPA as similar to an applicant with a 700 and a 3.63 GPA. The value of .063 is higher than most schools other than Harvard, which is at .093.

Columbia GMAT and GPA. It isn’t helpful to look at the top 50% of applicants because those are not the marginal candidates who barely got in. I occasionally will remove very low outliers because those candidates may have been admitted due to very strong connections that most applicants don’t have. I never remove more than 5% of the total accepted students as outliers. The slope of the scatterplot demonstrates the point at which the school is indifferent to GMAT vs. GPA. The data for this analysis comes from Columbia GMAT Club.

How Important is GMAT vs. GPA for MBA Admissions

Almost all MBA applicants stress over their GMAT score. This series will demystify how different schools weight GMAT vs. GPA. I will be adding additional schools to this post as I complete the analysis. For this analysis, I use GMAT Club application data.

Columbia Business School

Wharton

Tuck