Snapshot: GMAT Ranges Outside The U.S.

Last fall, for the second year in a row, the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management took in at least one MBA applicant who scored a 500 on the Graduate Management Admission Test. Meanwhile, at Oxford University's Said Business School, someone with a 510 — 70 points lower than the lowest score admitted in 2017 — gained admission.

• The elite school GMAT range is typically 530-780, or 580-790. Sometimes the first number can be quite low: In 2017, someone got into Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business with a 510 score. 
• The average low for the 12 schools for which we have the full range: 540.77. The average high: 781.67. In terms of average scores, most top schools have seen their average rise in the last three years; click here for a complete picture of the top 50 U.S. schools.
• In 2018, for example, we know that Wharton admitted someone with a 500 — which, if nothing else, sends the message that anything is possible.
• Between 2017 and last fall, schools opting not to publicly release the very lowest and the very highest scores on the spectrum of admits — preferring instead to release the “80% range,” or all scores between the 10th and 90th percentiles — tripled from four to 12. 
• Now, more than half (13 schools, including the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, which publishes neither number), won’t tell the public, or inquiring reporters, the full range of GMAT scores for each admitted class.

• GMAC, the Graduate Management Admission Council, administered a total of 242,714 GMAT exams around the world in testing year 2018, which ran from July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018. 
• These examinees sent a total of 493,101 score reports to graduate-level management programs across the globe. The average of all scores was 565, up from 558 in 2016.
• Many test takers scored perfect 800s on the test in 2018, as they do every year; far fewer were so unprepared as to score lower than 400: the lowest score anyone had last year was 220 (200 is the absolute lowest it is possible to score on the exam). GMAC further reports that the middle 80% range of GMAT scores in test year 2018 was 400 to 700.

Outside the U.S., as usual, the picture is mixed. Three of seven schools we studied randomly have seen their mean GMAT scores rise; five of the seven publicized their most recent cohorts’ full GMAT range. That’s how we know someone with a 500 got into the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, and someone with a 510 gained admission to Oxford University’s Said Business School. Oxford also was the only school out of seven to report admitting an 800.

School	2018 GMAT Range	2018 GMAT Mean	2017 GMAT Range	2017 GMAT Mean	2016 GMAT Mean	3-Year Mean Change
INSEAD	NA	711	600-780	712	708	+3
London Business School	600-790	707	600-780	708	709	-2
Cambridge (Judge)	NA	693	NA	696	690	+3
HEC Paris	590-780	691	640-740	690	689	+2
Oxford Said	510-800	681	580-780	685	692	-11
IE	600-770	677	600-770	670	680	-3
Toronto (Rotman)	500-780	658	500-760	665	663	-5