GMAT or GRE for MBA: Which Test Should You Take?

In your MBA application, your academic grades from undergrad and most of your professional accomplishments are already set in stone. And your letters of recommendation are (somewhat) out of your control. So, the main factors you can still strengthen are your essays and your GMAT or GRE score.

Schools use the standardized GMAT or the GRE exams to impartially evaluate applicants' problem-solving skills in mathematics (quantitative) and their proficiency in English language (verbal). Research suggests that these two metrics are highly indicative of a candidate's performance during their MBA and their career. This evidence may be debatable, but it definitely matters to the business school AdCom! 

In addition, AdComs at top business schools highly value their MBA program’s position on global ranking lists like the US News ranking, and these rankings consider both the average GMAT and GRE score of the cohort while evaluating MBA programs. That means that the AdCom will compare your score against other applicants and consider how it affects the school’s average GMAT or GRE score for that year.

Here's everything you need to know about taking the GMAT vs the GRE for your MBA application, with input from our in-house GMAT/GRE tutor, Rowan Hand.

GMAT vs the GRE

	GMAT (Focus)	GRE
Eligible for	Most business schools	Most graduate schools including business schools
Validity	5 years	5 years
Fees	USD 275  (Test Center) or USD 300 (Online)	USD 220 or USD 232 (China only)
Length of test	2 hours 15 minutes	1 hour 58 minutes
Sections	Quantitative Reasoning Verbal Reasoning Data Insights	Analytical Writing (One section) Verbal Reasoning (Two sections) Quantitative Reasoning (Two sections)
Score range	205 - 805	130 - 170 (in one-point increments)0 - 6 for Analytical Writing (in half-point increments)
Average score for intended Business/MBA graduates	553.35	315.7
What it tests	Critical thinking and reasoning skills	Quantitative and verbal content knowledge

How many students apply for the GMAT as compared to the GRE?

Statistically, more MBA applicants have taken the GMAT in the past. That’s not surprising: the GMAT exam was created specifically for business schools and designed to predict an applicant’s success in the first year of their business degree. It tests skills that are very particular to the MBA classroom: critical thinking and reasoning, counterintuitive thinking, decision-making, and communication. On the other hand, the GRE is a more generalist test designed for a variety of graduate school programs, including mathematics, sociology, physics, law, and others. 

But the number of applicants who successfully apply to business school with a GRE score has been steadily increasing, rising from 7.6% of total accepted students in 2016 to approximately 30% in 2022. So, while it doesn’t look like the GRE will surpass the GMAT’s popularity any time soon, many b-school applicants decide to take the GRE.

Officially, business schools state that they are test-neutral. They have no preference for one test over the other. But given the GMAT’s historic connection to business school admissions and its popularity, it has long been a trusted measure of an applicant’s academic readiness, while the GRE has been looked at as “Option 2”. Now, with more MBA candidates applying with a GRE score, it’s likely that MBA programs may start to give more weightage to higher GRE scores and evaluate applicants more competitively on this front. 

Should I take the GMAT or the GRE for MBA? 

So, which test should you take? Is the GRE easier than the GMAT?

If you’re planning on applying to non-business Masters programs as well as MBA programs, you should take the GRE, because the GRE is accepted for both types of programs.

However, for MBA applications, neither test is necessarily better than the other. You should take the test which suits your skills and you’re likely to perform better, which depends on your strengths as a test-taker. Let’s explore what we mean by that.

If you're good at math and you’re less strong with reading comprehension, we recommend leaning towards the GMAT. That's not to say that GMAT math is harder! GRE math covers more topics than the GMAT, so there's more content to learn. It's the different adaptivity of the two exams that makes the GMAT seem trickier. The GMAT is question adaptive, which means that the better you perform on the GMAT, the more its difficulty increases with each question.

The GRE, on the other hand, is section adaptive. The better you perform in each section, the more difficult the next section is. But you can return to questions in a section after you've already answered it, so a good strategy is to answer the easy questions in a section first before moving on to the next.

Another factor is the “breadth” of your profile. We find that nontraditional applicants often gain relatively higher scores in the GRE, because the GRE is typically more “content-driven” than the GMAT. That means that you would expect to draw from your general verbal and math knowledge, more than your ability to critically analyze abstract questions and high-level concepts, like the GMAT does. 

For example, in the verbal section, the GRE would require more memorized knowledge like vocabulary and potentially more culturally-specific reasoning in Sentence Completion questions in particular. In Reading Comprehension, the GRE asks more questions about an author's intentions in a certain passage, which are notoriously subjective.

In short, GRE’s Verbal section can be a dice-roll: maybe you get easy questions or ones that make sense to you, but you might just as likely get questions that are less sharply defined and have to make a guess. Anecdotally, at least, that seems to be its nature. - Rowan Hand

In contrast, the GMAT has tightened down on this because its culturally specific section, Sentence Correction, no longer exists. GMAT Verbal is not necessarily “easier” because the reasoning can be extremely tricky, but you'll have all the information you need to answer the question right in front of you.

Note that many top schools use conversion tools to convert GRE scores into their GMAT equivalent, and focus more on your quant score in either test. In other words, they don’t care which one you submit! They’re going to look at the percentage breakdown of your quant and verbal performance in both tests and admit you based on that.

Here's how our client increased his GMAT score by 70 points in under 3 months and got admitted to Yale SOM MBA:

First, take the GMAT

Our advice: sit the GMAT first.

Like we mentioned earlier, the GMAT was designed specifically for business schools, and AdComs trust what it says about your likelihood of success in the MBA classroom. 

The GMAT requires ample preparation, time, and many applicants benefit from hiring a GMAT tutor. But if you've studied consistently and sought expert help but still haven't improved your GMAT score, you might consider switching to the GRE.

That’s not to discount the GRE! If you’re unsure of where to start, take mock tests for both the GMAT and GRE to see where you stand. According to Rowan, many people find that they prefer one test over the other when they try both. He suggests looking at different practice exam scores. Look at which of the two gave a better score, but if they’re close, see which exam feels more comfortable. You’ll spend 100+ hours studying, so make sure it’s the one you think would be more realistic to devote that much time to. 

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We can offer diagnostic tests that will help you predict which test you’ll score more highly on. Book a chat with our in-house GMAT/GRE tutor, Rowan Hand.