GMAT: The MBA Job Seeker's Best Friend

Elite corporate recruiters use GMAT scores to narrow the field of applicants. Some schools are advising low scorers to retake the test

By Anne VanderMey

The primary purpose of the Graduate Management Admissions Test may be winning the favor of B-school admissions committees, but that's not all those four hours of geometry and critical reasoning questions are good for. For many students, the scores they get on the GMAT will reach an audience that might be even more important—job recruiters.

For a select group of companies, mostly top consulting, finance, and banking firms, employers routinely look to MBA graduates' GMAT scores as a reliable standard measurement of academic prowess—a fact that may be well-known to MBA students in the thick of the job search, but is relatively unknown among applicants when they're taking the test. Particularly when jobs are tight, and every element of each résumé takes on added weight, test scores can be the difference between an interview and the dustbin.

Of course, the chief use of GMAT scores are, and almost certainly will always be, admissions. But what happens when your score is good enough to get you into the MBA program of your dreams, but not the job of your dreams? For some ambitious students, and some career-focused programs, the answer is simple: You take it again.

For students with strong applications but lackluster scores, some career services directors will advise admitted students to retake the exam. New admits who go that route typically take the test after they have put down a deposit but before they start classes, says Stacey Rudnick, director of MBA career services at the University of Texas's McCombs School of Business (McCombs Full-Time MBA Profile). At McCombs, Rudnick says she's advised a few recent admits with mediocre GMATs and C-suite ambitions that it might be worth retaking the test if they think they can score higher. She says she's given that advice to more students than usual this year, thanks to the tough recruiting climate.

small piece of a big puzzle

At the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business (Mendoza Full-Time MBA Profile), university staff went one step further. Mendoza sent a letter to its 2011 class informing it of the test's importance in prestigious firms' recruiting processes and offered a four-day course for students wishing to retake the test. Five did, at their own expense, and increased their scores by an average of 19 points. "We see a large number of consulting companies, some investment banks, and a couple of corporations all looking at both GMAT and undergrad and MBA GPAs." says Patrick Perrella, Mendoza's director of MBA career development. "These companies are looking for a sustained record of academic excellence."

For any firm, particularly those with the most clout, a 19-point difference hardly guarantees a spot, however. At Bain & Co., senior director of global recruiting Mark Howorth says that most serious applicants get good scores, meaning that it's typically not a key differentiating factor. "Plenty of people here don't get interviewed who have an exceptionally high GMAT," he says. "It's easy to look at a score like a GPA or a GMAT, but in fact, what we teach our people is not to focus on those. Those scores don't capture the type of problem solving we do in our job." As proof, Howorth cited internal Bain research that shows there's "almost zero" correlation between GMAT scores and employee performance within the company.

Still, a person's quantitative GMAT score does seem to be linked to salary, while verbal GMAT scores appear to be linked to managerial status, says Andrew Hussey, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Memphis.

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