Why I’m Not Talking About the 700 GMAT Score Anymore

That’s it. I’m fed up with having to explain that 700 is no longer the bar.

Not only is this not my job, it’s becoming a drain on my mental health.

Just recently, I had a 685 scorer tell me that she was disappointed in the score and wanted to do the GRE because she could get “a higher score.” But consider that the 685 is roughly a 740 on the old exam. That’s 96th-ish percentile.

Now remember that GRE and GMAT scores aren’t actually directly comparable, although people love to try. If you follow the shaky comparisons available–and bear in mind that GMAC (publishers of the GMAT exam) don’t even endorse these–this would be 334-336 on the GRE.

Either way, it’s a staggering score that would be well-placed at even the most competitive M7 schools.

So the question is where people get this absurd idea that it’s somehow not a good score?

Momentum: 700 is the Old Bar

Given that 700 has been the minimum bar for “a good GMAT score” for over 30 years, there’s a lot of cultural momentum behind looking at this as the target score.

Then with its full rollout complete in Q2 2024, the new “700 GMAT score” was all of a sudden a 645.

Now over the years, there used to be some discussion about whether a 700 was getting easier or harder. That was sort of debatable, but one thing is not debatable at this point–it’s vastly harder to break 700 than it was on the previous exam.

A 705 on the current GMAT is equivalent to approximately a 760 on the old exam. This is a score that very few people are even capable of getting without literal (not figurative) years of study.

There’s no point in aiming for such a bar. This is well beyond what anyone would expect even at HSB or Stanford. Even at such schools, it makes no material difference whether you have a 685 or a 705. At that point you’re hot shit and all they care about is the rest of your application.

The GMAT Score is Simply a Foot in the Door

The brain-on-a-stick who got the extra 20 points–which is, in any case, one standard deviation on the GMAT so it’s effectively the same score–is quite often, let’s be honest, more likely to lack social skills or other human features that comprise a good B-school cohort.

Once you get past a certain level–think within 10-20 points of the average for your target school–it’s really not going to make a difference if you add another 10, 20, or 30 points. Consider this: it might actually make the adcom look sideways at you.

Social skills FTW, people. Prep for your interview FFS.

The GMAT Score Change Faceplant

So back to the scores themselves.

Not to throw anyone under the bus here–but it’s pretty clear that the rollout of the GMAT score changes has not been as effective as could be. There are a lot of reasons for this, and I hesitate to put blame on anyone specific given that I simply don’t know what is responsible.

It could be:

>a less-than-effective information rollout by the publishers of the exam

>the fact that the changes are subtle and difficult for noobs to grasp

>the obvious historical momentum behind the “700 GMAT score” metric

>the amount of blatant misinformation spouted by AI on the topic (because it’s reading old sources that haven’t been taken down)

>malicious whispers by parties that have an interest in reducing GMAT market share (which obviously would never happen (obviously))

>or any number of other things.

One thing that is fundamentally true:

Now you have to work harder to get a score that looks lower.

(Hat tip to my colleague Mike who suggested simply adding a zero to all the scores so that “at least they’d look bigger.”)

What are the options if you want to get a 705+?

You can accept the fact that the 700 GMAT score doesn’t fucking matter any more, which would be my sage advice.

Otherwise, you can plan on spending significantly more time preparing than you would have done previously. For many people, this might take prep time from the old median of three months up to 12, 18, or 24 months.

Quite frankly, that’s a bit of a stretch just to satisfy your belief in a fiction, but given the world today, have at it. I won’t judge. Just don’t come to me for help.

You could of course take the GRE…

“GRE is easier than GMAT”

Says the person who is bound to get a shit score on either exam.

This discussion makes me want to slap someone with a dead fish.

The above proposition is misinformed (because GRE is not in fact easier than the GMAT), speaks poorly of the basic grit of the person speaking it, and if a school were to find out this was how you made the choice about which exam to take, good fucking luck with your application.

The only good thing about the “I want a 700” discussion becoming the new idiot filter is that I hear less about the GRE being easier than the GMAT.

Now, practically speaking there are many differences between GRE and GMAT, and there may be particular cases–rare though they may be–where the GRE is a better option for you as a testtaker.

That is covered in this article.

“My Target Score is a 700+ on the GMAT”

So, in short, if you come to me and tell me your goal is a 700 on the GMAT, my new policy is to ignore you.

It’s a waste of my time trying to convince you that you need to readjust your numbers. Feel free to come back when you’ve done a bit of homework. Here are some places to start:

https://www.mba.com/exams/gmat-exam/scores/understanding-your-score

If you want to spend years on the process, factor that in. Make a good case. Otherwise go somewhere else. Surely there will be some creepy weirdo on a tutor aggregator site who is willing to stroke your fantasies for cash.

Good luck with that.