GMAT or GRE?
For those who are applying to business school, the question arises: should I take the GMAT or GRE?
Or if you’ve already taken one or the other, you may be wondering if you should have taken a different test.
In all honesty, I think the answer is either, but it’s not entirely black and white. These days, just about every top US business school accepts the GRE. But read the fine print. Not all schools value it equally (UCLA for example) and some even have quirks (Columbia).
You’ll see a list at the end of this article that indicates, at least of this writing, which do and which do not. I’ve also put links to the school websites for further explanation. Things change all the time. The most recent data shows about 10% of students are using the GRE, and the numbers are growing.
Why do schools even take the GRE? Because they are casting a wider net to get more interesting students, and because they realize that lots of students think about joint degree programs.
Harvard Business School was one of the first schools to accept the GRE, because, as Dee Leopold said in 2009
HBS: Since many HBS applicants are also considering graduate programs besides the MBA, there is now no need for them to take the GMAT if they have already taken the GRE. We believe that the GMAT and the GRE meet our expectations of what a standardized test can tell us about a candidate’s ability to thrive in our MBA Program.
The Rumor Mill
Face it, both tests are standardized, and both are computer adaptive. They are both annoying and require more studying than you want. Most, but not all schools are perfectly happy to take either. For example, this line is from Michigan Ross’s application instructions:
ROSS:Your performance on either exam will be used as part of our assessment of your academic ability, and you are at no advantage or disadvantage by taking one exam instead of the other.
But other schools, such as UCLA Anderson, strongly prefer the GMAT
ANDERSON: We prefer GMAT scores as the common denominator by which we have historically compared candidates, but we accept the GRE now as well.
That means you have to check carefully and rely on what you read and hear from admissions officers, beyond what is on chat boards, and even blogs like mine.
I thought the next few lines were hearsay, but they were just confirmed, May 30, 2014, in person, by senior members of the admissions office at Columbia.
COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL: If we have a GMAT score, we are going to use that. We will disregard the GRE.
I had a student who took the GRE for Columbia, did well, but felt he wanted to take the GMAT to prove his quant mettle. He didn’t do well because he had an off day, but because he HAD taken the test, Columbia took his GMAT instead of the GRE. What would have happened if he didn’t report the GMAT? Who ever knows? (He went to Yale SOM anyway, his first choice).
Other schools are much more relaxed. At a May 2014 conference, Isser Gallogly, Assistant Dean of Admissions at NYU Stern, suggested that students try the GRE if they are sub-par in the GMAT.
NYU STERN: If someone is struggling with one test, try the other, the GRE”
Your Quant Score
Most admissions officers admit that they want to see a balanced score on both verbal and quant. The general buzz is that around 80% on both is about right, but there’s definitely some give on both sides. So don’t fear if you get a 47 on the quant, which is turning out to be a 78% these days. As for the GRE, the population on the quant side is a bit less numbers oriented, so if you get an 80% in that pool, it’s pretty well known that you are being measured against a different population, usually not as quant-oriented as GMAT test takers. So shoot for a higher percentage, say about 85% on quant.
If you are worried about how you look by taking one test vs. another, I say, don’t worry unless they really make a point of it (like UCLA). All you need to do is get it over the net, and they pretty much tell you what a normal distribution looks like. Get within one standard deviation of the average, and you are fine.
Having said all that, if test taking is not your forte, you really should take a GRE or GMAT course. You don’t know what you don’t know about your own study habits. It’s worth the investment.
Future Employer Preference on GMAT vs GRE
One more thing–and perhaps this deserves a blog post all to itself, employers will take any statistics you throw that them. At least that’s what representatives of the Career Development Office at Yale SOM stated on May 27, 2014, “Employers love points of data wherever they can find it. So gre or gmat doesn’t matter. They do like the numbers!”
MBA Programs: GRE in addition to GMAT
| School | GRE? | Link |
| Cambridge | YES | Cambridge Judge |
| Chicago | YES | Chicago Booth |
| Columbia | YES | Columbia Business School |
| Cornell | YES | Cornell Johnson |
| Darden | YES | UVA Darden |
| Duke | YES | Duke Fuqua |
| HBS | YES | Harvard Business School |
| INSEAD | YES | INSEAD |
| Kellogg | YES | Kellogg MBA |
| Mich Ross | YES | University of Michigan Ross |
| MIT Sloan | YES | MIT Sloan |
| NYU Stern | YES | NYU Stern |
| Stanford | YES | Stanford GSB |
| Tepper | YES | Carnegie Mellon Tepper |
| Texas | YES | Texas McCombs |
| Tuck | YES | Dartmouth Tuck |
| UCLA | YES | UCLA Anderson (GMAT Preferred) |
| Wharton | YES | Wharton MBA |
| Yale | YES | Yale School of Management |
| Haas | YES | UC Berkeley Haas (Part-time YES) |
| LBS | NO | London Business School |
| Oxford | NO | Oxford Said |
If you are looking for more schools the ETS link has a full list of MBA programs which accept the GRE. Further, to confuse, or perhaps clarify you, ETS also has a GRE-to-GMAT converter.
UPDATED: June 5, 2014.
Interested in admissions consulting? Email me at betsy@masteradmissions.com
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