A 7 min read

Wharton, one of the most selective of all business schools had an acceptance rate of 19.2% and a yield rate of 67.1% for 2020 admissions. A high GMAT score, an impressive profile, and how well one aces the interviews are all contributing factors towards ensuring one’s admission to Wharton. However, once a good GMAT score is obtained, the job is still not over, and you must start focusing on essays, letters of recommendation, and other requirements of the application process.

With such a high competition, presenting your application with a high GMAT score becomes essential. This article speaks about one big filtering criterion for Wharton – the GMAT score. GMAT holds a 22% weightage in your application and is the first step towards securing admission from your dream business school.

So, what is a good GMAT score for Wharton?

With thorough trend analysis, we can certainly figure out a good range in which one’s GMAT score should belong, to ensure a higher chance of getting an interview call from Wharton and eventually getting through.

In order to figure this out, we will analyze data from credible sources and base our evaluation on past trends and numbers.

5-year GMAT score trend of Wharton

Here’s a summary of the average GMAT scores of the incoming class of Wharton MBA from 2014 to 2018.

Year	2019	2018	2017	2016	2015
Wharton GMAT score	732	732	730	730	732

As evident from the above table, the average GMAT score for the incoming class has been between 730 and 732 from 2015 to 2019.

To find out what is a good GMAT score, you’d want to refer to a 5-step process of arriving at the answer explained in one of our previous articles.

According to the article, adding 20 points to the average GMAT score of a business school can help you arrive at a safe bet. Hence, a good GMAT score for Wharton would be 20+ points more than the average GMAT score of the latest class. So 750+ should be a good GMAT score for Wharton. An applicant scoring 750 or higher can start focussing on other aspects of the application process.

If you are looking at applying to other business schools as well here is 5-year GMAT score trend report of 50 top US and European business schools

However, this article far from being just a superficial analysis of data. It is rather an attempt to evaluate and scrutinize past trends to bring to you a deeper insight for figuring out a good GMAT score for Wharton. Let’s take a closer look at data of actual students who were invited for an interview and candidates who finally made it to the coveted list.

We’ll also look at the GMAT scores of applicants who were waitlisted by the Wharton admissions committee to get a comprehensive view and to be able to conclude what is a good GMAT score for Wharton MBA program.

Wharton decision tracker on gmatclub

The Wharton decision tracker page on gmatclub is where applicants post their MBA application status of different business schools. This data has been collated for candidates who have applied for admission to Wharton full-time MBA class of 2021.

Methodology

Since our analysis is data-centric, we will be considering only the GMAT scores of the applicants for our analysis. After categorizing the applicants by their GMAT scores, we’ll analyze how many applicants corresponding to each score secured an interview invite and how many of those finally received the green flag from Wharton.

GMAT Score	Applications	Interview Invite	Admitted
780	10	9	3
770	28	21	15
760	28	16	9
750	37	21	13
740	27	16	12
730	23	11	5
720	26	14	8
710	27	11	7
700	13	4	2
690	2	1	1
680	2	2	1
670	2	0	0
660	1	0	0
640	1	1	1
610	1	1	1

Observations

• We can see that 9 out of 10 applicants with a score of 780 received an interview invite. However, only 3 of these 9 were finally admitted to Wharton.
• Again, for a score of 770, the invite rate is quite high with 21 out of 28 candidates receiving an interview invite.
• The invitation rate lies in the range of 57% to 60% for a score between 740 and 760
• The invitation rate further drops to approximately 40% to 50% for applicants with scores 710, 720 and 730
• Below GMAT 700, the number of interview invites drops drastically.
• The admission to interview invite ratio is exceptional for the GMAT score of 770 standing at 71%.
• For scores from 700 to 760, the admission to invite ratio is between 45% to 60%

Inference

We can infer that a good GMAT score for Wharton ranges from 720 to 770. A score of 770 or more remarkably increases the chances of an applicant getting an interview call from Wharton.

However, as we can see only 3 out of 9 applicants with a score of 780 received the final admit, which signifies that the profile of candidates has a big role to play when it comes to securing admissions at Wharton.

The fact that a good GMAT score for Wharton falls in a wide range (710 to 770), with the conversion to interview ratio not varying much, also supports the importance of other important parameters of the admission process.

Here are 10 ways you can boost your MBA profile

While we have already looked at the scores of candidates who received an admission, let’s also take a closer look at data from waitlisted candidates:

GMAT Score Wharton	Waitlisted
780	2
770	4
760	2
750	3
740	3
730	1
720	4
710	0
700	0
690	0
680	0
670	0
660	0
640	0
610	0

However, none of the waitlisted candidates got the final admission call. But we can see that no one below a score of 720 was even waitlisted. For the batch of 2020, the cut-off for waitlisting candidates was 710.

Here are some interesting ways to get off the MBA waitlist

 

What is a good GMAT score for Wharton

A good GMAT score for Wharton is what can take you from the large applicant pool to interview stage. While a score of 710 to 720 can help you make the cut, a score of 750 and above is a safe bet and good enough for you to start gearing up seriously for the next round by focussing on requirements such as essays, letters of recommendations, resume, etc.

Here are 2 of our students who received an admit from the Wharton School. Click on the images to read their success stories:

If you want to try out the e-GMAT course that helped Leonardo and Victor score a 750 and 770 respectively, sign up for our Free Trial. 

We can also help you with a personalized study plan and give you access to quality online content to prepare. Write to us at acethegmat@e-gmat.com. We are the most reviewed GMAT prep company on gmatclub with more than 1950 reviews.

What is a good GMAT score for Indians applying to Wharton

While the highly competitive pool of Indian applicants fights it through some of the best B-schools in the world, at Wharton apart from having a good GMAT score, a great profile can make a huge difference. Given below are the details of GMAT scores of Indian applicants who applied to Wharton for admission to the incoming class of 2021.

Wharton GMAT Score	No. of Indian applicants
780	1
770	2
760	4
750	8
740	4
730	3
720	3
710	0
700	0
690	0
680	0
670	0
660	0
640	0
610	1

• 26 Indians applied to Wharton MBA
• 5 received an interview invite (GMAT scores of 760,750,740,720,610)
• 3 received admits (GMAT scores of 760, 720, and 610)

Let’s also take an interesting data point from the class of 2020 into account- 5 Indians received admits (GMAT scores of 770, 760, 750, 750, 560)

This goes to show that to be on a safer side it’s important to score 760 and higher if you belong to the Indian applicant pool.

One of the candidates, Mansi Dhiman, who scored 770 on the GMAT was an e-GMAT student and went on to receive admits from 5 top business schools viz. Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, and INSEAD. She joined the Harvard MBA class of 2020.

If you want to try out the e-GMAT course that helped Mansi score a 770, sign up for our Free Trial. 

We can also help you with a personalized study plan and give you access to quality online content to prepare. Write to us at acethegmat@e-gmat.com. We are the most reviewed GMAT prep company on gmatclub with more than 1950 reviews.