First, I was very pleased with my overall score and I'm grateful to all the Manhattan GMAT folks, especially my instructor Ron Purewal. I could not have done it with his aid and guidance!

I am pretty sure I'll be taking the test once again. Although my overall score was a 640, my math was only 42% percentile and my verbal was 89% percentile. To be very honest, I probably could not have done zero studying for the verbal part and still have achieved the same result. The math really threw me off and didn't seem close to what I was studying. I am going to grind it out in the coming month and retake asap in early October.

So my overall profile is: I graduated from Stanford with average grades; I've worked in the investment industry in an analyst role for about 6 year; and my score was 640. My ideal schools would be NYU or Berkeley but I also wish to apply to Chicago Booth; Wharton; and Columbia.

A friend who starts at HBS this month advised me to apply to schools right now where I am competitive with the score I achieved. I am thinking this may be schools such as Dartmouth; Duke; or USC. She told me to retake the test in the hopes of applying with a better profile to Berkeley or NYU.

Does this strategy make sense? Based on my profile, at which schools am I already competitive?

Any and all advice is appreciated.

-Ricardo

Hi Ricardo,

Thanks for writing in. The strategy is entirely up to you -- if it's important that you attend business school in the fall then you can apply for R1 for schools where you will be more competitive, while also preparing to take the test again and apply to more schools if your score goes up. Right now you are below the median GMAT at all of those schools, and with the minimal information I have I could only see rating USC as "competitive." But that doesn't rule the other schools out -- you just need to shift the focus from GMAT to work experience, extracurricular, etc.

Best of luck,

Daniel Richards
http://www.mbamission.com

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