The GMAT Average Cheat

I wanted to mention something I remembered last week about GMAT scores. 5 months ago, I went to a ManhattanGMAT test prep. They marketed it as "GMAT Prep Bootcamp". It provided some good info. The last part however was wrapped up with sales and why you need our help kind of talks. I must admit, I really felt that I needed to really consider them. They took us through 2 verbal reading and 2 sentence correction questions and explained them to a point where I realized I might really need help. Although, going through the sample questions helped perk up my motivation to get going on my studies, there was something else they mentioned that shocked, angered and put me at a bit of ease regarding the state of GMAT score averages in the top Business Schools of our nation.

They are based out of New York where Ivy league and other top schools are. The mind blowing thing they mentioned was that quite a few schools actually use their services to help their students do better on the GMAT that have already been accepted. Maybe you guys/gals knew this, but this came as a shock to me.

Basically, they let people in and then pay ManhattanGMAT to bootcamp some of their students to retake the GMAT to up their schools overall average GMAT scores. So basically, this tells me that when schools report GMAT scores of their students, they are not reporting acceptance GMAT scores. Rather, they are submitting students average scores when they are already attending. They named schools like, Harvard and NYU. I don't think they would lie about this. I don't see a reason why they would. Now, I'm not attacking ManhattanGMAT at all. They really know their stuff. But what they mentioned just made me think that they are probably not the only GMAT prep school being used by the top Business Schools to up the published average.

Anyway, my point is that perhaps we ought not to kill ourselves and cause undo stress upon ourselves about GMAT scores as much as we previously thought. Don't get me wrong, I'm shooting for 700+. In every GMAT book I've seen there is always a significant section on managing stress. This is a highly emphasized topic by every professional consultant, GMAT book and GMAT test prep school. Perhaps knowing how schools cheat the published average will ease your tension a bit as it has mine. I'm studying for my GMAT now and I really don't need any sort of unnecessary stress.

DaveforMBA

Comments

[aejaz]

hi dave

i read this post on your blog. its very surprising indeed. great post!

thanks
aejaz

[answer.1000.sc]

please use the site

[Shashi]

Hi Dave,

I did not know this. I am shocked too. I took my GMAT again to improve my score from 640 to 730. I revisited my efforts after my first attempt and came up with some strategy that worked for me the second time. Anyway, here is my blog.
http://gmatbeeline.blogspot.com/