retest strategy

($) When to update the adcom after they have your app

January 15, 2020 by EssaySnark

You got your app in. Yay! You did your best to report everything about your background thoroughly and accurately. Double yay! Now you wander back to that app to admire your amazing work and… you discover an error. OMG NO! Or: You weren’t looking for a new job, but one falls into your lap. Lickety-split,...

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($) Taking the GMAT: How many times is too many? 2019 edition

November 5, 2019 by EssaySnark

This post first went up about a year and a half ago, and has been refreshed for reposting in Fall 2019. We wrote about this way back in 2014 but times have changed. The most important change is one that you probably haven’t given much thought to at all: The GMAT lets you cancel...

($) If you don’t think you can do better on the GMAT

March 19, 2018 by EssaySnark

When talking about what score is “good enough” for getting into a top MBA program, we said this: If your score is somewhere in between a 700 and a 770 and if you think you can score higher on the GMAT… then we strongly encourage you to suck it up and make it happen. If...

($) How many times taking the GMAT is too many?

July 5, 2017 by EssaySnark

This is a less critical question for a small subset of the test-taker population this days. The GMAC (GMAT test people) announced a policy last year that actually prevents some wayward testers from shooting themselves in the foot with their own overenthusiasm for testing. (Is that the first time in recorded history that the word...

($) Multiple GMAT attempts. All of them low.

November 10, 2015 by EssaySnark

There is no school in the world with a strict cut-off on GMAT score. They read each and every app, regardless of how high or how low your test results came out. But if the score is too low, then you’re saying one of these things: A) I don’t have the intellectual capacity to easily...

($) Taking the GMAT: How many times is too many?

October 6, 2014 by EssaySnark

We had someone come to us recently who’d taken the GMAT more than 10 times. We’d never seen a score report like that before. While we learned what was behind this testing history, and it was quasi-understandable (somewhat related to a health issue) it still gave us pause. Lots of adcoms will claim that you...

Should you retake the GMAT?

June 18, 2014 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

If you even have that thought, you’re in one of two camps: You know that your score is low and you’re (rightly) worried that it’s going to keep you out. You have a decent score but you’re a worrier – and perhaps a little uneducated. We handle the latter case in this post and in […]

(Re)taking the GMAT? Be as prepared as possible – in every way

November 21, 2013 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

We have told a bunch of you Brave Supplicants that you really need to take the GMAT again, and some of you are actually doing it. We know that it’s a stressful proposition. That test is no fun, and if you didn’t do too great on it the first time through, then your nerves may […]

($) “Should I retake the GMAT as a reapplicant?”

April 10, 2013 by EssaySnark

In many cases, taking the GMAT again can help your chances in reapplying to business school. The obvious situation when you want to retake the GMAT is when your current score is below the school’s average. As a rule of thumb, if you scored under 700 on the GMAT test, then YES, it can help...