Why You Should (Almost) Never Cancel Your GMAT Score
We’ll start with the punchline: there’s no good reason to cancel your GMAT score.
Hm, you’re still reading this? Then you’re probably already thinking about the issue too much. Failing to cancel a low GMAT score will almost certainly do no harm to your odds of admission to top MBA programs.
Want to learn more about WHY canceling your GMAT score is almost never worthwhile? Keep reading, or check out this video, which features the same conclusions:
Don’t Cancel Your GMAT Score, Since MBA Programs Only Consider Your Best Result
In the old days, MBA programs looked at all of your GMAT scores. Some would take the average of these scores; others would take the lower ones into consideration without specifying the impact of those scores on the admissions process.
To complicate matters, when you took the GMAT back in the day, you had just a few minutes to decide whether to cancel your score before actually seeing it. For years, anxious test-takers would agonize for several terrible minutes, trying to guess how well they’d scored and wondering whether a poor result would doom their MBA candidacies. Not fun.
Fortunately, those days are long gone. Basically, every MBA program has publicly stated that they’ll only consider your top GMAT score. If you take the test twice, earning a 650 on attempt #1 and a 750 on attempt #2, guess what? You’re officially a candidate applying with a 750 GMAT. That’s it. The 650 will show up on the score report sent to the school, but no MBA admissions committee will use it against you. So the lower score can’t hurt you.
Also, now you get to see your GMAT score first, and then decide whether you want to keep it. Why does GMAC offer you the opportunity to hide a suboptimal score that we know nobody will care about? Probably so that they can charge you if you change your mind later. (More on this in a bit.)
Don’t Cancel a Bad GMAT Score That Offers a Good MBA Admissions Story
Imagine that you’re on an MBA admissions committee, and you’re considering one candidate who cruised to a 730 on the GMAT, and another who scratched and clawed and fought her way from a 580 to a 730 after several attempts at the exam. Wouldn’t you be more impressed by the second student? Aren’t perseverance and resilience the kind of attributes you’d want in the members of your incoming MBA class?
“Hang on,” you may be thinking. “Didn’t you just say that schools only consider your top GMAT score?” Yup, we did.
But MBA programs also consider your personal story – things that make you unique, or allow you to stand out from the teeming masses of impressive MBA applicants. Part of that personal story could, in theory, be your harrowing – but ultimately victorious – GMAT journey.
For more, check out this story about a hard-working, toilet-scrubbing GMAT student who improved from a 580 to a 660 to a 710, reinforcing his MBA application message about grit and perseverance. He wisely chose not to cancel any of his GMAT scores, and earned a spot at an Ivy League MBA program.
What if That Canceled GMAT Score is Actually Your Best Score?
Imagine that you’re shooting for a 750 on the GMAT, and the first time you take the exam, you end up with a 710. That’s an excellent result, but maybe it’s a little bit lower than your practice GMAT scores, and lower than the median scores at your target MBA programs.
So you cancel your GMAT score, thinking that when you retake the exam, you’ll earn the 750 you’d been hitting on practice tests. But then it doesn’t work out that way. For whatever reason, your next attempts all come in below 700 and your MBA application deadlines are fast approaching.
Wouldn’t it have been nice to have kept that 710 as a “backup” score for your applications, instead of canceling it? If you have a strong MBA profile, maybe the 710 would have been good enough for top schools.
If this happens to you, the good news is that you’ll be OK, even if you ignored the first 90% of this article and canceled your GMAT score anyway. As we hinted earlier, GMAC gives you the right to reinstate a canceled GMAT score. The only problem is that they’re going to charge you for doing so. And why pay for something if you don’t have to?
The Takeaway: You’re Probably Overthinking the Decision to Cancel Your GMAT Score
Keeping your GMAT score has quite a few potential benefits. It could save you money you’d have to spend to reinstate a canceled score. It could be part of a compelling MBA application story that demonstrates unusual determination. And keeping your GMAT score has no potential downsides: MBA programs won’t take your previous scores into account if you don’t want them to. Decisions that contain potential benefits and no potential costs are, well, good.
So please stop worrying, and please don’t bother canceling your GMAT scores.