GMAC Says You Probably Won’t Improve Your GMAT Focus Score
UPDATED FOR THE NEW GMAT IN 2024
If you’re like many people who stumble into our little corner of the internet, the GMAT might have punched you in the gut once or twice already, and you’re probably preparing to retake the test. Odds are good that you’re looking for a significant GMAT score improvement of 50 points or 100 points or more.
But just how likely are you to improve your score significantly? According to the researchers at the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) – the organization that creates and administers the GMAT – most GMAT repeat test-takers don’t improve by much at all, unfortunately.
large GMAT score improvements are rare
Note: this section is based on data from the “old” (pre-2024) version of the GMAT, so the scores mentioned in this section are still on the old 200-800 scale. On the new GMAT Focus Edition, scores are on a very similar scale (205-805), and an improvement of, say, 30 points, is roughly as hard to achieve on either version of the test. So even though GMAT scores look slightly different now, the data mentioned here is still applicable to the new version of the GMAT.
If you’re starting at a 600 or above (on the “old”, pre-2024 GMAT score scale, which is roughly equivalent to a 555 on the GMAT Focus Edition), the researchers at GMAC have a message for you: you’ll probably fail in your quest to improve your score.
In a brief article published in 2011 and an accompanying GMAT blog post (which has since vanished from the internet), the GMAT’s then-chief psychometrician, Lawrence Rudner, tallied up some numbers on repeat GMAT test-takers, and came up with some interesting data:
Nearly 25% of repeat testers actually score lower on their second GMAT test.
The overall average gain on the second test is 33 points, but the vast majority of these gains are enjoyed by test-takers who scored below 600 (equivalent to 545 on the GMAT Focus Edition) on their initial exam.
GMAT test-takers who score between 700 and 790 (equivalent to 645 to 795 on the GMAT Focus Edition) gain an average of only 8 points on their second exam — and their scores actually decline slightly on the third and fourth attempts.
Test-takers who score between 600 and 690 (equivalent to 555 to 645 on the GMAT Focus Edition) on their first GMAT exam gain an average of only 20 points on their second exam, and their scores barely improve at all on the third and fourth attempts.
Here’s all of that in graphical form:
So basically, the people who produce the GMAT are saying that you probably won’t achieve a meaningful score improvement, especially if you’re already starting in the 600s or 700s (the equivalent of 555+ on the GMAT Focus Edition).
Why most repeat test-takers don’t improve their GMAT score
In a way, GMAC’s data makes sense: the GMAT isn’t a content-based test, and the reasoning skills required for success can be difficult and time-consuming to develop. To make things worse, the test’s creators specifically engineer the GMAT to maximize its “reliability,” meaning that test-takers should be expected to perform similarly on repeated attempts at the exam.
So it’s definitely tough to achieve GMAT score improvements, but we can introduce you to hundreds of successful test-takers who have enjoyed huge gains on the GMAT. Nearly all of them worked their butts off for the privilege, and that’s exactly why large score improvements are so rare: according to GMAC’s own data, most test-takers spend merely dozens of hours preparing for the GMAT, and only a fraction of that study time is spent by repeat test-takers.
In other words: if you’re an “average” test-taker, the odds of improving your GMAT score aren’t great. But the best way to beat the odds is to out-work the average test-taker.
Still, GMAC’s statistics suggest that a large percentage of repeat test-takers are wasting their time, and the data is telling you that you’re likely to fail. Now please go out and prove them wrong.