Chances of MBA summer internship for IB with 640 GMAT

Hi all,

I was admitted to a few programs and will be attending a top full-time MBA program at an Elite Finance Target MBA program (think CBS, Cornell Johnson, Duke, NYU Stern) and want to pivot into investment banking, however, I am coming in with a lower gmat score. What are the chances I can land a summer internship ? I'm worried about getting turned away from every bank because of this. What are your thoughts? Do IBs take the GMAT score less seriously if candidate is coming from a top finance MBA program?

 

If I were you (and knowing what I know), I'd retake the GMAT and get my score to 700+.

GMAT is an easy way to compare candidates' since many schools don't disclose grades. 640 feels pretty low and almost has a sticker shock quality. Recruiting will be competitive and a 640 could introduce serious doubts that would place you near the bottom of the list. You have a good background (banks like accountants), so don't give them a reason to discount your background. Get that score up. They care about getting smart people who are likeable, and a 640 brings doubt to the "smart" part.

Study Manhattan GMAT and the guides they publish with actual questions (save those for when you're ready), get that score above 700, and you'll be fine.

 

You should be fine. There's one bank, from my experience, that will care (they asked for my SAT scores from 8 years before I recruited for God's sakes) but for the most part you should be fine. As you said, don't put your score on there--it will be assumed that it is less than 720 if it's not on there, but frankly they'll assume it's in the low 7s or upper 6s so it will net help you.

Given your other experience (accounting, CPA, etc...) it's even less of a big deal than if you did say TFA or military, where the GMAT can be a proxy for your ability to do the math needed for the job. Your work experience should answer that.

You may get asked about it in an interview, but it may be more to see how you handle the question / test if they can get under your skin, so think about how to spin it, without sounding defensive.

A good GMAT can help you more than a bad GMAT can hurt you at most banks. If I see someone that has a 750 on their resume, I may be more inclined to move them on if they are borderilne elsewhere, but if someone checks all the other boxes, I don't really care that they have a bad GMAT.

That being said, I would also state that your grades (should your school have grade disclosure--some of the ones you listed do) will be slightly more important. If you don't have good grades coupled with a low GMAT, could raise flags. If you have steller class performance coupled with your solid work experience and good MBA program, the GMAT can easily be overlooked as you not performing well at a test that to be honest doesn't measure B school or finance success potential at all (and I say this as someone that scored very well on it--I wish it mattered more, ha).

One final caveat, if the reason you didn't do better on the GMAT is you didn't really have time to study and you think you could do better, it may be worth the extra time and effort just to remove the variable altogether. If you think you've peaked there, I wouldn't sweat it too much though.

 

CBS leads the pack (by a negligible margin between other top programs) but generally speaking ALL IBs recruit heavily at the top 10 listed below. P&Q's latest rankings for I-Banking US MBA programs:

  1. CBS
  2. Wharton
  3. Cornell
  4. HBS
  5. NYU
  6. Stanford
  7. Yale
  8. MIT
  9. Booth
  10. Duke

"The ranking is based on the percentage of MBAs at each school who landed front office work (i.e. corporate finance, sales, and trading and equity research) in top tier firms. In particular, the ranking focuses on tying MBA programs to specially-tiered institutions. We’ve allocated a greater weighting to those working for investment banks we’ve deemed ‘tier one’ than ‘tier two’ or ‘tier three’. In our ranking, tier one banks include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Tier two banks include Barclays, Credit Suisse and UBS, and tier three banks include BNP Paribas, HSBC, Nomura, Royal Bank of Scotland and SocGen."

 
Best Response
Redacted:

In what world is DB tier 1 while CS is tier 2?

'

The same world that NYU is on par with the aforementioned schools...

 

I would take this ranking with a grain of salt. I think a more important metric is % of students that got front office jobs out of those that recruited for it. Comparing % of students that go FO out of the total student body will always skew hard towards more traditional finance schools, whereas I know of schools with higher hit rates (again for those actually recruiting for the FO) than you would see at some of (clearly not all, however) the traditional finance schools.

 
lyons123:

CBS leads the pack (by a negligible margin between other top programs) but generally speaking ALL IBs recruit heavily at the top 10 listed below. P&Q's latest rankings for I-Banking US MBA programs:

  1. CBS
  2. Wharton
  3. Cornell
  4. HBS
  5. NYU
  6. Stanford
  7. Yale
  8. MIT
  9. Booth
  10. Duke

"The ranking is based on the percentage of MBAs at each school who landed front office work (i.e. corporate finance, sales, and trading and equity research) in top tier firms. In particular, the ranking focuses on tying MBA programs to specially-tiered institutions. We've allocated a greater weighting to those working for investment banks we've deemed 'tier one' than 'tier two' or 'tier three'. In our ranking, tier one banks include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Tier two banks include Barclays, Credit Suisse and UBS, and tier three banks include BNP Paribas, HSBC, Nomura, Royal Bank of Scotland and SocGen."

I think there was one person in my class of 55 from Cornell, Stanford and MIT combined. Granted Stanford may place more in California. MIT on this list shocks me.

 
HFFBALLfan123:

So those are CBS's peers for i banking these days? Assumed they were ahead of all the other mentioned schools.

CBS is pretty significantly above those other schools in terms of ease of getting top banks. The thing that people misrepresent on here all the time is "it's easy to get a BB job from a top 15 "... which isn't quite true (but has some truth), but also doesn't take into account how much easier it is to slide into better groups at better banks and especially how schools are viewed at EBs as you move into the CBS/Booth/Wharton tier of IB recruiting.

 

OP, I had mine listed on my resume, but from what I was told the only banks that asked were GS and the EBs. Since you'll leave it off people may ask, but the mid tier BBs likely wont. But, if you are at a school that has grade disclosure, you will need to do well enough to show that 640 is an aberration, because it's definitely going to be seen as a legitimately bad score.

It's not ideal, but you can definitely do fine with that score.

 

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