Judging B-School Admissions Chances

I'm thinking of applying to a couple of name-brand business schools that I'm competitive for.

I assess that I'm competitive because my scores are well within the range of the schools' class profiles.  However, what would really help me out in assessing my chances would be knowing the characteristics of the applicant pool.  I am particularly interested in correlation of GMAT scores with admit rates.

For instance, say School A has an applicant pool of 10000, and admits 1000.  The admit rate is 10%.  Then the school comes out and says its admit profile has a middle 50% GMAT range of (for instance) 690-750.  This is wonderful, and with the 80% spread can give a pretty good picture of what the normalized curve for the entering class looks like.  But that tells me nothing about my chances before I get in; it merely says how I'll fit in once I get there.

If I had the applicant pool profile, then I could match up the normal curve of the applicant pool with that of the admit pool--overlay them, almost-- and see if the left end of the Applicant GMAT curve significantly overlaps the left end of the Admit GMAT curve significantly enough to rule out most of the low-end of the applicant pool.

Note that schools do not release profiles of their applicant pools.  This must be to increase the number of people applying by preventing people from seeing that they don't have a very good chance of getting in.  They can claim to be a) not basing admissions on test scores, and b) getting lots of applicants to get their admit ratios low and keep exclusivity up.  In other words, they are having their cake and eating it too.

I assess that the 10% admit rate in the example is actually closer to 40%, maybe 50%, of qualified candidates, i.e. those that  match the general class profile.  Now, to be truthful, I do not have any statistics to back that up, other than to say that the mean GMAT score nationwide is around 530, and that a lot of people apply to exclusive schools just because they are exclusive.  Assuming that 2/3 of the GMAT test-takers do actually get scores between 400 and 600, as the test is designed, and standard deviation is about 100 points... well, I would be very interested to see the applicant pool stats vs admit pool stats.  I think we'd be very surprised what the admit rate is for people who fit the class admit pool.

While the applicant pool is probably skewed high based on the caliber of school, I don't think that solely geniuses are all applying to Harvard.  Why?  There aren't enough of them for the top-20 schools.  See the next bit..

The applicant pool we're interested in are about 2 standard deviations above the mean--actually, with a 690 and above, we're talking about 1.5 STDEVs above, or in roughly the 94th percentile.  The number of GMAT test-takers last year was 267000.  We'll assume all single, unique testers for this little exercise.

With a total pool of 267000 GMAT test takers, we look at what a score of 690 means percentage-wise (set the mean to 538 and stdev to 100, then move the cursor to 690), multiply by the total GMAT population, and end up with a total of... 16000 people with a minimum 690 GMAT score.  With a 730 GMAT, it becomes 8000 people.  Are all those people applying to the same schools?  There may be some overlap, but let's posit that that all the smart people (690 GMAT and above) apply to the top 10 schools. With average class sizes being about 560, we're talking a total of 5600 top-program slots available.  Assuming that only this year's GMAT takers apply, this means that if everybody with a 690 or above--throughout the world--applied to these top 10 B-schools, we'd see a 30% admit rate.  


This isn't even counting the next 10 ranked b-schools, or other top-ranked international schools, etc.  Wow, the odds just get better and better for scores in that top 6%, don't they?  This tells me that there are a lot of people applying with sub-super GMAT scores, and that those people comprise the majority of the exclusive schools' rejects.

Now, I could be totally off base and all the normal people could be scared off by the high mean GMAT of the schools.  However, this doesn't pass the sniff test.  If I'm average Joe, I might not apply to the exclusive school... but the cost of the application (in time and money) might be worth the return, especially because I know the school admits at least a few low-end scores.  Might be my lucky day, or something.

What we do know then is that a lot of folks apply to multiple schools, and we have a lot of lower-tier GMAT applicants as well.  We also know that top schools admit mostly top GMAT performers.

Keep in mind that the GMAT takers number includes International students as well, which are taking the GMAT in equal or greater numbers to US takers.  What I am leaving out of my analysis is the folks who have legacy GMAT scores (like who keep scores on file for a couple of years and then apply) because 1) not all of the top GMAT takers apply to the exclusive schools, 2) not all GMAT takers apply to schools period, and 3) it's a rolling process, so I assume that the carry-overs from last year replace the ones who wait this year.

So what is the takeaway?  If you're applying to a top B-School or other school that requires the GMAT, and you're facing great odds... like the 10000 apps vs 1000 slots crunch... and you have a high GMAT, you probably don't have to worry about quite as much as you thought you did.  And you can still tell people you got into a really selective school.

If you had an average GMAT, then you need to be really really special, because you're competing with the high scores that comprise the majority of slots, and the low-scores are relatively rare at the selective schools.

I still want to see the applicant pool profile.  But I suspect we never will, because it would mean too much in prestige and applications revenue.

Feedback and help with my math would be greatly appreciated.