Our Best Students Prove That the GMAT Is Meaningless

Do GMAT scores predict success in business? In my experience, not very well. When I lined up the 20 most talented students I’ve ever worked with and sorted them by GMAT score, I found almost no relationship between the number on the score report and what I would consider real business acumen.

On a snowy Denver afternoon, I decided to conduct an odd GMAT-related thought experiment, just for the hell of it. Purely for entertainment, I imagined that an all-powerful being forced me to choose any 20 of my former GMAT students to run a business. If the business failed, I would die a miserable death.

In a life-or-death business situation, which of my former students would I choose?

The catch was that I had no idea what the business actually was. I just had to select the 20 former students who would be the most intelligent, nimble, well-rounded, and effective managers. The business would be named later.

So I dug through my old spreadsheets and made a list of the most broadly talented GMAT students I’d worked with. Then I selected the 20 former students I thought would be most likely to contribute to the success of an unnamed business. I didn’t try to balance the list by industry or function, and I didn’t care about their résumés at all. I was simply looking for the 20 most impressive people.

After I’d chosen my team, I sorted them by GMAT score. The result may or may not surprise you: among this admittedly small group of students, there was almost no relationship between GMAT scores and the qualities I associate with outstanding business leaders.

Creating My GMAT Student Dream Team

Out of my 20 most brilliant students ever, only half scored a 645 or above, and seven of those ten had to work their asses off to get there. Every one of those 10 students studied for at least two months, five improved by 100 points or more, and one completed more than 4,000 Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension practice questions. 

Only a very select few of my best students are naturally gifted at taking the GMAT. The rest just worked incredibly hard. 

The other half of the list is even more interesting. Five of my top 20 students were stuck around the 545 range, even after herculean efforts on the GMAT. One is still going through the application process, but the other four are currently kicking all sorts of butt at super-elite, top-ten business schools. Admissions committees, it seems, are definitely willing to look past a GMAT score when a candidate is truly special. (More on that in: How Low GMAT Scores Might Help Your MBA Application.

The other five students got absolutely clobbered by the GMAT. Three scored between 495 and 555, and all three now work for prestigious, household-name companies. The other two gave up before they even took the GMAT. One is a ludicrously talented woman with an unusual form of ADHD, and another has a learning disability that made GMAT math especially difficult. 

Out of respect for their privacy, all I’ll say is that both have been featured in The New York Times, and one became a C-level executive before turning 30. Neither needed an MBA. They’re that awesome. 

Keep in mind that the majority of my students start somewhere between 525 and 605, and most ultimately finish higher than that. I just don’t get many calls from students who are already happy with their scores. Even so, it’s striking how many of my lowest-scoring students have gone on to become remarkably successful.

Do GMAT Scores Actually Predict Success?

Let’s face it: the GMAT is a fantastic measure of how well you fill in little bubbles, and it’s a reasonable predictor of how well you’ll do in, say, a graduate-level microeconomics class. But it’s a terrible predictor of almost every other kind of success. We dig into the research behind that in: Does the GMAT Matter?

As I look at my “dream team” of 20 former GMAT students, I see a few people who were naturally great at filling in bubbles, a lot of people who worked incredibly hard and improved dramatically, and a handful who never really clicked with the GMAT. And that shouldn’t surprise us at all. 

In a guest post for another MBA blog, I once argued that the most successful people are “grinders.” They may or may not be naturally brilliant at standardized tests, but they’ll work like hell to achieve their goals. They’ll succeed in their professional and personal lives, even if it takes a lifetime of all-nighters to get there. 

Fortunately, I’ve had the privilege of working with some incredible grinders, and I’ve probably learned more from them than they’ve learned from me. These are the students who make teaching worthwhile. I can teach them number properties and an elegant approach to assumption questions, but they’ve taught me a lot about what it really takes to kick ass in this world. 

So if somebody wants to invest $100 million in a business without telling me what kind of business it is, I’ve already got a young, energetic management team ready to go. I just wouldn’t recommend asking them about their GMAT scores.

MBA admissions consulting. Your GMAT score isn’t a predictor of your success, nor an indicator of what schools you’ll get into. GMAT Ninja’s admissions consultants can help you build an application around what makes you exceptional and communicate that to adcoms.