A 7 min read

Located in the melting pot of the US – New York, Columbia Business School has upheld its legacy of being one of the most popular and sought-after B-schools since 1916. One of the six ivy-league schools, CBS receives a huge number of applications every year.

Columbia MBA has an acceptance rate of 16.5% and a significantly high yield rate of 73.9%. With brilliant track-records, diverse backgrounds and noteworthy intellectual capabilities, every class of Columbia is a rich fusion of the best talents in the world.

Along with a remarkable profile, a high GMAT score plays a crucial role in Columbia Business School’s admission process, as we will see in the next sections of this article. We have also talked about the weightage of GMAT scores in an application in one of our previous articles.

In this article, we will be analyzing past trends and latest applicant-data available to us to find out a good GMAT score for Columbia Business School.  Make sure that you thoroughly go through the application checklist for applying to Columbia, as you plan your next steps for making it to your dream B-school.

Here’s what you will read next:

• 5-year GMAT score trend of Columbia Business School
  • Methodology
  • Observations
  • Inference
• What is a good GMAT score for Columbia Business School
• What is a good GMAT score for Indians applying to Columbia Business School

5-year GMAT score trend of Columbia Business School

Let’s first analyze the 5-year trend report of average GMAT scores of the incoming class of Columbia from 2014 to 2018.   Here’s a quick summary:

With increasing competition and growing popularity of Columbia business school, the candidates have to fight it out in a stiff battle to make it to this prestigious institution. Evidently, the average score of the incoming classes has consistently increased from 2015 to 2018. A significant jump in scores has been registered every year and hence we will have to keep this trend in mind while trying to figure out a good GMAT score for Columbia.

A simple 5-step process can be used to determine a good score for securing admission in your target B-school.

As per this technique, we add 20 points to the average GMAT score of the latest batch. This makes 750+ a good score for Columbia. However, for a thorough analysis, we will dig deeper into the available data from the class of 2021 to be able to understand some visible patterns which will help us further in arriving at a sound decision.

For those wanting to apply to other business schools as well here is 5-year GMAT score trend report of 50 top US and European business schools

Let’s now move to our methodology, where we take a closer look at the raw data of applicants, interviewees and finally admitted students who applied to Columbia Business School.

How to decide on a GMAT score for Columbia?

Here’s how you can decide on a good GMAT score for Columbia Business School. The CBS decision tracker page gives a comprehensive overview of details of the GMAT scores of all applicants who have updated their status on gmatclub. This data has been collated for candidates who have applied to Columbia Business School’s MBA class of 2021.

In this article, we will be considering the scores of the complete applicant pool including shortlisted, waitlisted and admitted candidates for our analysis.

Here are our observations on GMAT score for Columbia

• Maximum interview invites have been sent to candidates scoring in the range of 730 to 770
• For a score of 780, 3 out of 5 applicants received an interview invite. However, only 1 was finally admitted to Columbia
• The invite rate for interviews lies in the range of 52% to 65% for a score between 730 and 770, with the highest number of interview invites (15) for a score of 740
• The highest admission to application ratio is for GMAT scores 740 (65%) and 750 (63%)
• The conversion ratio (Admission to Interview ratio) is an astounding 100% for GMAT score 730 with all 13 interviewees being granted admission to Columbia
• The number of interview invites drops drastically below a score of 730
• While no one in the range of 650 to 680 received an invite, 3 applicants with a score of 690 were called for interviews and all three were finally admitted. Also, as an exception, 1 person with a score of 640 received an interview invite and successfully secured admission.

 

Inference

• With the above observations, we can conclude that a score in the range of 730 to 770 is a good GMAT score for getting an interview call from Columbia- the interview rate being more than 50% for scores in this range
• The conversion ratio is also remarkably high for this range which shows that GMAT scores hold a lot of significance when it comes to securing admissions in Columbia
• The anomalies for scores 690 and 640 show that these candidates have been selected due to exceptional profiles and applications (which could include a leverage for diversity as well)

If you are able to score in the range of 730 to 770, it becomes extremely important to polish your profile further. To ease this process for you,  here are 10 ways to boost your MBA profile

Let’s go a mile further by also analyzing the GMAT scores of waitlisted candidates and see if some candidates were lucky enough to be able to get off the waitlist and make it through.

No candidate below a score of 710 was waitlisted for Columbia. Out of the 8 candidates who were waitlisted (as per the sample available to us), 4 were able to receive the green light from Columbia, which is quite an optimistic sign considering the bleak conversion chances for waitlisted candidates at some other top B-schools with higher yield rates. Scores of admitted candidates – 730 (2), 740 (1), 770 (1).

To be or not to be on a MBA waitlist? Answer in this article

 What is a good GMAT score for Columbia Business School

While a score of 750 is a brilliant score for making it to CBS, a score of 740 or higher is just as good and will certainly boost your chances of receiving an interview invite from Columbia.  With a trend of increasing average scores for every next incoming class at Columbia, one has to aim for a GMAT Score 740 or higher for increasing one’s probability of being noticed by the admissions committee and to be considered for the next rounds.

What is a good GMAT score for Indians applying to Columbia Business School

Being a part of an over-represented candidate pool, Indian applicants have to face a tough battle to find their way into most of the top business schools.  Hence, we have also analyzed the GMAT scores of Indian candidates who applied to Columbia for the incoming class of 2021.

• 24 Indians applied to Columbia Business School with GMAT scores of 2 Indians not accessible to us
• 8 received an interview invite with GMAT scores of 770, 760, 760, 760, 760, 740, 720 (GMAT score of 1 applicant not known)
• 7 received admits with GMAT scores of 760, 760, 760, 760, 740, and 720 (GMAT score of 1 applicant not known)

This clearly shows that for Indians wanting to get into this distinguished B-school, the benchmarks are quite high. A good GMAT score for Indians applying to Columbia is hence a formidable score of 760. As we can see, majority of Indian candidates applying to Columbia have a high GMAT score of 760, which later also converts to a higher number of invites and conversions (4 out of 7 accepted candidates have a score of 760)

Aayush, one of our students was waitlisted with a 710. After improving to 750 he received an admit from Columbia Business School.

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