<p>Interesting ranking. </p>
<p>Which</a> College Scores Best on the GMAT? - BusinessWeek</p>
<p>Note that the top five schools are Harvard Yale, MIT, Rice and Brandeis. As the story suggests: "... for high school juniors and seniors who see an MBA in their futures, this list might be something to take into consideration."</p>
<p>This is a very interesting list. I’m somewhat shocked to see Rice and Brandeis over Princeton or Stanford to be honest. CMU (top 10), Wesleyan (top 15) and UDub (top 25) are pretty big surprises as well. I’m a little surprised to see Columbia and Penn so far down on the top 20 and Cornell out of the top 25. I’m also surprised to see Pomona, Swat, UVA and Michigan not on the top 30 list.</p>
<p>It just goes to show you that LACs offer terrific educations and are extremely under appreciated in this country while the Ivies are somewhat overrated when one considers their high reputation in the United States.</p>
<p>Unless the GMAT has changed a lot in the decades since I took it, I wouldn’t give the school much credit. I would expect a student’s score to correlate to their SAT score. It tests similar skills and is not based on any specific business training.</p>
<p>^Agreed, but there are a few outliers, like UWashington. And if SAT score is the best indicator of GMAT success, where the heck is Wash U (in St. Louis)? I’m very surprised they’re not in the top 30. The students there always point out they’re ranked in the top 10 in selectivity according to US News and have among the highest SAT scores…I think having an undergrad business program is a detriment in this system (which Wash U does have) since the majority of those students don’t get an MBA. The highest ranked school with an undergrad business program is UPenn at #18 and then Berkeley at #20 unless I’m missing one. Still, I’d think Penn CAS would have higher scores as well as Wash U’s Arts & Sciences. Usually, schools with prominent engineering programs fare well in MBA admissions as well, so I’m a bit surprised that Cornell is so low and that Cal Tech isn’t even on the list (but Cal Tech attracts a specific type of student and is so small that perhaps the sample wasn’t large enough to qualify).</p>
<p>I hated the GMAT computer adaptive testing format. Not being able to skip questions, having a countdown clock right in your face, and having to transfer some math problems over to paper made it a higher stress test taking environment. </p>
<p>I liked the instant scores though…</p>
<p>It may partly be a function of differing student cultures at various schools, and who takes the GMAT. Schools like Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, and Columbia punch below their weight on this measure, while schools like Rice, Brandeis, Brown, Carnegie Mellon, and Wesleyan punch above theirs.</p>
<p>Here are some prominent research university no-shows on the top 30 GMAT list:
Caltech
WUSTL
Vanderbilt
Emory
Georgetown
UVA
Wake Forest
Tufts
Michigan
UNC Chapel Hill</p>
<p>And some top 25 LACs that don’t make the list:
Swarthmore
Wellesley
Pomona
Haverford
Vassar
Smith
Washington & Lee
Grinnell
Hamilton
Harvey Mudd
Colgate
Bates
Colby
Oberlin
Scripps</p>
<p>The careers that CIT grads point towards would obviously be more towards science and tech. It undoubtedly produces many who’ll head their own firms because of their studies in STEM, but it isn’t really geared towards producing those who point towards careers that an MBA might help foster. </p>
<p>CIT also has ~ 250 grads per year. I don’t think it produces the requisite 12 to make the survey, even if the number is funneled from prior years’ bac-earning grads, eg, 10 years ago to say three years to a specific year of b-school graduation and is consistent from year to year with this funneling.</p>
<p>On general terms, this is just a one-year snapshot. Expect some motion up or down. The usual suspects … Harvard, Harvard, Harvard … will be at the top, but the list might change lower on, partly obvoiusly dependent on how many each school produces of MBA’s.</p>
<p>And one can generally argue that there’s not much difference in a 730+ and a 700-ish GMAT. For large numbers, that would be a material, large diff – a grouping of 10,000 with 735 average versus 15,000, with 700, but for 40-60 in one snapshot yera, it’s not that significant, and wouldn’t and shouldn’t reflect well or badly on the undergrad inst. Generally…</p>