Business School Admissions Criteria

Rank	Business School	Applicants Accepted	Average GMAT	Average Years of Work Exp.	Average Age
1	U. of Pennsylvania (Wharton)	14%	700	6	29
2	Northwestern (Kellogg)	18%	690	4	27
3	Stanford	8%	727	4	27
4	Harvard	13%	701	4	27
5	Columbia	12%	704	4	27
6	Duke (Fuqua)	19%	690	5	28
7	MIT (Sloan)	17%	703	5	28
8	Chicago	25%	684	5	28
9	Cornell (Johnson)	25%	673	5	29
10	Dartmouth (Tuck)	14%	692	5	28
11	Michigan	21%	677	5	29
12	NYU (Stern)	22%	686	5	27
13	UC -- Berkeley (Haas)	14%	684	6	28
14	Virginia (Darden)	19%	676	4	27
15	Yale	17%	687	5	28
16	UCLA (Anderson)	15%	698	4	28
17	Carnegie Mellon	31%	660	5	28
18	UNC -- Chapel Hill	22%	667	5	27
19	Texas -- Austin (McCombs)	25%	687	5	29
20	Indiana (Kelley)	32%	646	5	28
21	USC (Marshall)	27%	670	5	28
22	Purdue (Krannert)	23%	644	5	28
23	Rochester (Simon)	30%	646	6	29
24	Georgetown (McDonough)	19%	657	5	28
25	Washington U. (Olin)	29%	661	5	28

Applicants Accepted

Certain business schools such as University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon have rather self-selecting applicant pools and, therefore, it is not necessarily accurate to judge these particular MBA programs as being "easier to get into".

Average GMAT Score

This admissions criteria does serve as a fairly good indicator of the school's selectivity. When the average score is below 650, such as it is with Indiana (Kelley), Rochester (Simon) and Purdue (Krannert), you can safely assume that these schools are materially more likely to extend you an admission offer.

Don't assume though that a good GMAT will get you in or even give you a significant advantage. It just isn't given that much weight. Kellogg reports for its 2003 entering class that 18% of applicants who scored 700 or greater were offered admission but that more than 13% of applicants who scored between 650-690 were also admitted.

Average Years of Work Experience and Average Age

These criteria are nearly uniform across all the top business schools. The difference between the successful applicant at Stanford or Harvard and the applicant who is only successful at the bottom 5 of these MBA schools is that the "stereotypical" student at Stanford or Harvard has a remarkable resume with many accomplishments and rapid promotions whereas the "stereotypical" business student at USC (Marshall) or Vanderbilt (Owen) has achieved one or maybe two promotions in his or her 4 to 5 years of work experience and had nothing exciting or dramatic to report in the application essays to the top schools.