Average GRE Scores at the Top US B-Schools

The popularity of the GRE keeps growing. An increasing number of students are taking the GRE instead of the GMAT, which understandably leads to a rise in the number of candidates who are getting into business schools by submitting GRE scores.

The ranking had been compiled by Poets&Quants, using data provided by the schools. Here are the top 10 schools ranked according to their average GRE scores. The full ranking is available here.

Not all major schools report GRE scores

It should be noted that not all schools report GRE scores. Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management are among the schools that don’t report GRE scores to protect themselves from the repercussions of admitting students with lower scores. If no GRE scores are reported, then those scores can’t impact a school’s ranking. It’s a practice that may soon end.

What kind of scores would a prestige B-school be proud to report? Once again in 2016, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business has the answer. The school led all elite programmes with a 165 Quant score and a 329 total score, and was third on the writing score (4.9) behind the only two schools to score a 5.0: the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and Penn State University’s Smeal College of Business. Stanford edged out Yale School of Management by 1 total point, though Yale topped all schools with a 165 Verbal score. Rounding out the top five in total GRE score were the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business (326), New York University’s Stern School of Business (324), and Georgia Tech University’s Scheller College of Business (324).

On the other end of the spectrum, the top school with the lowest scores was the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business, with a 153 Verbal and 152 Quant. Katz also had the second-lowest score in the writing portion of the test, at 3.8. The University of Texas-Dallas Jindal School of Management ranked the lowest in writing with a 3.7.

Eight schools surpass 30% in admissions with GRE scores

Eleven schools saw a drop in GRE admissions between 2015 and 2016, although of those declines, six were of just 1 percentage point. On the other hand, 24 schools saw increases, ranging from 1 percentage point to 24 points in a single year. While nine schools continue to have GRE admissions in the single-digit percentages, 18 have eclipsed 20% and eight have surpassed 30%, led by Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, where a remarkable 42% of the 2016 intake was admitted with GRE scores.

Stigma around ‘non-GMAT’ option disappearing

Dan Bauer, chairman and founder of academic and career counselling consultancy The MBA Exchange, told Poets&Quants that:

MBA applicants are finally comfortable with the notion of taking the GRE instead of the GMAT. In prior years, most candidates found it difficult — or even embarrassing — to accept the fact that they simply couldn’t crack the GMAT, even after multiple attempts. Those individuals felt that opting for the GRE would confirm their ‘weakness’ and thus constrain their chances for admission. However, as more B-school websites and blogs have confirmed that adcoms are now officially indifferent between the two tests, more MBA candidates have overcome their reluctance to go with the GRE. The stigma surrounding the ‘non-GMAT’ option is disappearing by the day.

Source: Poets&Quants