Is the GMAT alone good enough to enter a B-School?

I was thinking about getting a MSc Finance, if possible at a top Business School. However, my profile as it is right now is hardly great (Economics major at a B-Tier University, good grades but no honours, 1 year of work experience - not in the finances, though).

Can I make it up with a really good grade in the GMAT?

15 Comments
 
reformedYou guys may have missed it, but he/she did say masters in finance, not an mba. Princeton/MIT are obviously not going to happen, but wouldn't Villanova, Vanderbilt and the likes be possible?

No dude, not at all man you need to have a complete profile. I have a buddy that got dinged at BC, Duke, and 'Nova w/ a stellar GMAT b/c his w.e. was wishy-washy and his UG performance was so-so.

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Best Response
BepBep12
reformedYou guys may have missed it, but he/she did say masters in finance, not an mba. Princeton/MIT are obviously not going to happen, but wouldn't Villanova, Vanderbilt and the likes be possible?

No dude, not at all man you need to have a complete profile. I have a buddy that got dinged at BC, Duke, and 'Nova w/ a stellar GMAT b/c his w.e. was wishy-washy and his UG performance was so-so.

There's no chance they just wrote a shitty essay or didn't seem to have a good reason to do a msf?

Boston college for example has an average gpa 3.44. Duke has an average gpa of a 3.4 and 70% of the class has less than 6months of work experience.

Something tells me that there were other reasons as to why your friend was rejected.

 

I was looking into a lot of MSF program and two friends of mine got into Fuqua and Brandeis. GMAT plays a big part in it since both of them had over a 700++ and wrote stellar essays. Just write stellar essays and get a great GMAT should be good then. Sometimes a high GMAT offsets a bad grade or whatever, but that's just one component of it. Good luck.

 

GMAT in and of itself isn't going to get you in anywhere. With that said, 1 year experience, decent grades (above a 3.0) and good EC's should be fine. Assume you get a 600 or better and you will get into a handful of good schools.

Focus on actually getting the GMAT and then we can give better advice.

 

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