Whether or Not to Cancel Your GMAT Score

If you’re preparing for the GMAT, at some point the question will probably run through your head: “If I finish the GMAT and feel that I did terribly, should I just cancel my score on the spot?” Of course, on test day you will be faced with this question before you see your score (I write “of course,” but many applicants actually don’t realize this!), so your decision about whether or not to cancel will be a blind bet on how well you think you did.

Our advice is this: Unless you’re certain that you bombed the test and scored well below your intended score, you should NOT cancel your score. Why not? Well, for one, you won’t know how you did if you cancel your score. Many applicants have finished the test and felt certain that they did poorly, only to find out (after deciding to report their scores) that they did even better than their target score! This is entirely possible because of the computer-adaptive nature of the test, and its ability to home in on your true level of ability — getting lots of questions that you couldn’t easily solve may simply mean that test test had taken you to the edge of your ability, and so you were struggling with the questions more than you ever did on practice tests. Even if you got more wrong than usual, you may end up with a good score.

In terms of knowing your score, the score report won’t give you a detailed diagnosis of how you did, but you will be able to see your quantitative and verbal score breakdown, so you will at least know (or confirm, if you already knew) where you need to focus your time and energy when you hit the books again.

Also, if you cancel your score, business schools will see this on your official report. This isn’t a horrible “black mark” on your report, but it’s there, and doesn’t necessarily look any better than a low score. So, keeping a possibly low score away from MBA admissions officers won’t keep them completely in the dark — they’ll still know that you took the test and probably didn’t do very well.

If you’re worried about how a low score will look on your record, know that admissions officers are forgiving of low scores, and will generally only look at your highest score. If you don’t believe that, consider this: When submitting data to the major publications for their annual business school rankings, it’s in each school’s best interest to only submit its students’ highest scores (to keep the school’s mean/median GMAT score as high as possible). Even with a low score or two on your report, admissions officers will look at your best one.

So, as much as it may pain you to click “submit” and risk sending a terrible score to your target business schools, the pros heavily outweigh the cons. You’re not gaining much by withholding your score, and you’re missing out on a shot that your score was better than you thought!

For more GMAT prep news and analysis, be sure to follow us on Twitter to get up-to-the minute news and advice about the GMAT!

HBS Round 1 Interview Update

On Thursday Harvard Business School’s Director of Admissions, Dee Leopold, posted an update to her blog letting applicants know that there are still a “significant number” of Round 1 interview invitations that have not yet been sent. And, she reminded applicants that the timing of one’s interview invite is not an indication of the strength of that person’s candidacy.

She went on to describe the interaction between this year’s Round 1 waitlist and the coming wave of Round 2 applicants:

A note about the waitlist – remember, this year we are making Round 1 decisions before we see Round 2 applications. On December 15, I expect there will be a significant number – maybe 100 or so – of invitations to join the waitlist to candidates who have NOT been interviewed. As we review Round 2 applications, we may be inviting some of these candidates to interview in the Round 2 interview timeline.

Fore more help in preparing your HBS application and prepping for your HBS admissions interview, take a look at Veritas Prep’s free Annual Reports.

How Much Do Corporate Recruiters Rely on the GMAT?

Earlier this week BusinessWeek ran an article about corporate recruiters using business school students’ GMAT scores as a way to select candidates for job interviews. While this is nothing new, the article included some interesting quotes from business school career office administrators who have advised some students to retake the GMAT to improve their chances of landing job interviews with top-tier consulting firms and investment banks.

In this tough job climate, especially, no MBA student wants to give recruiters any reason to drop his resume into the discard pile. While they may have ignored the advice to retake the GMAT a few years ago, now they’re much more willing to listen when someone suggests they should retake the GMAT, particularly when it comes from the career services office. And some schools, particularly those that may struggle to keep top-tier firms coming back to campus in this economy, have even offered their students school-run GMAT courses to help their students boost their scores.

Balancing out the seemingly increased importance of the GMAT in the hiring process, the article quotes a director of recruiting at Bain & Co., who explains that most candidates that the company would consider tend to have high GMAT scores, anyway, so the test itself doesn’t end up being a big differentiating factor in the hiring process. He even went on to say that Bain’s own research shows that there’s virtually no correlation between a new hire’s GMAT score and that person’s success on the job at Bain.

One interesting notion is that business schools’ own pass-fail systems and grade non-disclosure policies may contribute to companies’ tendency to rely more on the GMAT. These policies are in place to discourage cut-throat competition and to encourage students to focus on learning, but they also take away what is an important hiring criterion for some companies. As a result, these companies grab for the next best data they can find, which are a student’s GMAT score and undergraduate GPA. In this way, schools have shifted some of the competitiveness from the classroom to things that students must do before they even set foot in a classroom.

What does this mean for you? Honestly, if you’re going to a top-ten business school, hiring companies are more likely to assume you “have what it takes,” and will rely less on your GMAT score (although they will still ask for it) in deciding whether or not to interview you. If you’re at a lower-ranked school where top-tier firms only hire a handful of students each year, you’re more likely to need every advantage you can get to stand out vs. your peers. In this case, if your score isn’t high enough, you may want to consider retaking the GMAT.

If you’re in business school and are considering retaking the GMAT to help your chances of landing a lucrative job, consider the GMAT prep classes that Veritas Prep offers. And, as always, be sure to follow MBA Game Plan on Twitter!