GMAT® Superscore - What It Means For You

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Transcript

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Welcome to the G Mat Strategy Podcast. You're here because you believe there's a better way to study for the G Mat, and so do we. We created the GMAT Strategy to maximize your results and minimize your efforts so you can get to the fun parts about business school and life as quickly as possible. My name is Isaac Poulia, and I've been teaching G MAT classes and tutoring privately for the GMAT for over a decade, and I've helped thousands of students get into the business schools of their choice. I'm excited to be a part of your MBA journey since we all at TGS believe that our world can benefit from the best possible business leaders that we can find. If this show is bringing you value, please share it with your friends and family who are studying so that together we can make this process as easy and as painless as it can possibly be. Let's go. Today, let's talk about the recently introduced G Mat super scoring feature and what it means for you. I'm going to keep today pretty brief and pretty light because I honestly think this is a bit of a non-event for most G Mat test takers. It's going to get a lot of clicks, and uh, we're not here to debate whether that's good or bad, or right or wrong. You're playing a game right now called the GMAT and getting into an MBA program, and this is a change to the rules of that game. And so you should be familiar with the rules of any game that you're playing. And so that's what I'm gonna focus on today, and then I'll I'll give a little bit of light strategic commentary. Probably we're going to have to wait and see exactly how this plays out on the school admission side more than anything else. But I think there are some things that are fairly safe to predict. And so I'll give my honest thoughts on that, but I will also be very clear when I'm making predictions versus when I'm giving you advice that's based on real data. Um, well, I guess my predictions are always based on real data, but I guess I'll be honest about when I'm making a prediction that may or may not happen versus what I can confidently say is for sure happening right now. Let's let's put it that way. So first things first, I do think super score is is great news. And I I'm actually happy that GMAC did it. I think GMAC is operating with really positive intentions here. GMAC, the the people who write the exam and and administer the GMAT, a lot of people don't know they're basically a consortium of business schools. A lot of business schools got together a long time ago and said, hey, we need a test to help us out with application filtering. And so that's that's when GMAC was created. And then they they sort of gave birth to the GMAT as a result of that intention from business schools. So like when GMAC does something in a way, it's it's an expression of what business schools already want. And then GMAC is just like the operating vehicle that they use to implement that stuff in the layer between uh raw applications and um like people who are actually already in the program. So I think that's worth knowing that like there's there's generally strong incentive alignment. Um and GMAC, like they've really made a huge push to try to be more student centric centric and test taker centric, especially over the last five to ten years. And and I think it's I think it's a really good thing for everyone. Like the shorter GMAT is is definitely a great thing, in my opinion. It's it's more positive than negative. And like back in the day when I took the GMAT, I I had to walk up uh to uphill both ways to school, so to speak. I've now officially reached that phase of my life, everybody. Uh, but but the G Mat was super long when I took it. I think it was like four hours. There was an essay section, the integrated reasoning had just been introduced, so like nobody really knew much about it. Uh the quant section, I think, was like 37 questions, and the verbal was like 41 questions, so like basically twice as long uh as it is now. And it it was an absolute grind fest. I mean, it just it just wore you down. By hour three, I mean, man, you I was going on fumes. I'll just speak for myself. So a lot of positive changes. Like you couldn't change, you couldn't choose the order of the sections back then. You couldn't um you couldn't choose if schools saw your score or not. It's just the score was automatically reported. Uh, what else what was was kind of crazy back in the day to think about? Um yeah, I mean, just it it's gotten a lot better. It's it has gotten a lot better. Now, because you have so many options, that can create some stress. Um, that's that's nobody's intention in the situation. That's just a product of thing things being optional. So I think the question is like, would you rather be stressed by having too many options, or would you rather be stressed by having not enough options? And for me personally, I would rather have too many options. That would be the favorable position. So that that preamble is is really why I part of why I think super score is good. So back to the whole GMAC as a consortium of business schools, like some business schools were already super scoring. And just to be clear, what SuperScore is, is it takes your best quant, your best verbal, and your best EI across all the focus edition GMAT attempts that you've made. And it combines them into a uh on the score report, it shows the school the highest quant, highest verbal, and highest EI. And then it combines it into a three-digit score on the 205 to 805 scale that would have resulted if you had actually gotten all of those section highs, those all those section all-time highs on a single exam sitting. So it does make you look better. It does make you look better. And all of that goes on the score report. It's it's free, it's automatic, uh, and it's it's retroactive. So if you've already taken the exam a couple times and then you're gonna retake, it still applies. Uh and you cannot opt out. I don't I don't know if that's good or bad, uh, but but that just is what it is. So um sorry, I didn't just jump right into that first. But back to the whole GMAC preamble and why it matters that it's a consortium of business schools, is business schools were some business schools were already doing this. And so they actually asked a GMAC to be like, hey, can you just put this on the score report? It'll make our jobs a little bit easier. And then GMAC debated it and was like, is this good for students? Is it bad for students? And they decided it's good for everybody. So it's it's a genuine attempt to just make things better. It's a genuine attempt to make things better for everybody. And I think it probably will make things better for everybody. I think the question is how much better? How much better does it really make things? And and that's that I think is is um probably the most important question to ask. And let's let's let's put it this way. I've thought about it a lot, and I think it changes almost nothing about how you study for the exam. Your your job is the same as it's always been, which is just do the best you possibly can every single time you take the exam. During your practice time, focus on your skills. Your skills are what creates the score. And if you don't have good skills, you're probably not going to get a great score. If you have great skills, you're highly likely to get a great score. And then the super score thing is just a little icing on the cake. I think the best analogy I've come up with is it's kind of like a filter on Instagram, uh, where, like, okay, maybe, maybe I don't look that good all the time. But maybe it's cool if I look that good some of the time or in a very specific context, you know. It just uh a good filter, you know, just it brings out the best in me. Let's let's put it that way. So it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. It feels good, it's kind of nice, you know. You get to put your best foot forward, even if even if you don't send every time you've taken the GMAT, it's kind of an interesting thing about how they're implementing it. So even if if I've taken the GMAT three times and I only choose to send one of those scores, which you can do now. So back in the day when I took it, you couldn't choose which scores you send, and now you can choose which scores. So the schools will only see the full scores that you send. But if you happened to do better on quant on another test that you did not send, now the school sees that with super score, which they did not see before. Okay, so it's kind of interesting. It's kind of interesting. Um, so that's that's why I've come back to the Instagram filter analogy. I think it's I think it's nice. Uh, but does it change who you are as a person? Probably not. I mean, we could have the like deep Descartes level philosophical debate about whether Instagram filters change me as a person. Don't think now is the time or the place to have that debate. But I mean, if if you're on that level, man, I am uh I am interested in your take. Uh, but we're probably not thinking on that level really at all. We're just trying to get into a really good MBA program and have an awesome career and make the world better. So, so let's stay focused on that for the moment. Um, never thought I'd drop some day card on the GMAP pod, everybody, but there we go. There we go. So, again, just really want to hammer this point. It's good news, it's a it's an interesting policy. I think it's a nice gesture on the part of schools and on the part of GMAC towards students. I think it's a very like a lot of goodwill. And I just don't think it changes that much for you personally in terms of your prep process. Okay, so let's dive in a little bit more to that. Again, I'm gonna keep things kind of light here, but I think you probably got the the nuts and bolts of what I'm gonna say from just that. Okay, so it launches in August of 2026. Right now it's June of 2026. So, what that means is if you are applying earlier than August, which is unlikely but possible, then super score may not be implemented yet or may not be available. But most of the first round deadlines are in September. And so Super Score should affect this application round. So if you want to check out the blog, we'll uh we'll put a link to that in the description. And we've got a nice visual of some different situations of like, if you took the test three times but only sent two, here's what your superscore would look like with these individual scores. Uh we may be able to put some of that on some slides. Uh, but we're we're kind of going for a quick turnaround here because uh this policy is just a couple days old, and I'm already seeing a lot of weird disinformation on the internet. And so we're just trying to get ahead of that and just trying to bring you the real real. Um but if you've already taken the GMAT, like I said, it's retroactive, so you don't need to do anything different. You don't need to change any exams you're registered for. Basically, super score is a thing now, whether we whether we like it or not. So, kind of some some interesting calculus to consider. Uh, previous to super score, retaking was like all or nothing. And that was kind of stressful, I think, for a lot of people. Like if one section dipped and the total score was higher, it was kind of like a difficult moment as a student. You're kind of like, shoot, do I submit with this lower quant score, but this higher overall score? And that was like a lot of times in an admissions consulting conversation. There's a lot of debate in the admissions committee about virtually everything, but the the sort of standard advice that I always give folks when I'm coaching them on admissions is uh you just want to send the school any data that helps you look good that fits in the application. That if if there's data that they allow you to put in there that makes you look more compelling as a candidate, you want it in there. And so what's nice about super score is now you don't have to necessarily extend any additional effort or pay to send more score reports to the school. And that's kind of nice. Um, so so for example, just to be specific there, like if I took the GMAT yesterday and they send me my score today, I have 48 hours to send it to, I believe as of today, up to five schools, included in the price of me taking the exam. But after that 48-hour period, and this policy can change, so definitely look this up online in the in the future. Um and sorry to everybody at GMAC if I'm butchering this. Uh, but I believe this is correct as of today. Um if I would then want to send my score after that 48-hour period, it costs money for each score send that that I want to make. So if I took the GMAT two months ago and I got a really killer quant score, but a bad verbal and a bad DI, and then I retake today and I get a decent quant score and a great verbal and a great DI, now I don't have to pay any extra money to send that previous score. It's just they're automatically gonna include that higher quant score in the superscore. And then I get credit for my higher uh verbal and DI. So I think that's a really, really, really nice thing and a major upside, major potential upside if you're gonna retake. So interesting data, GMAC is projecting about a 20 to 50 point increase just of superscores versus what people were already getting. So GMAC obviously has a lot of data on all of our scores. Um so and that's just because like section variance is just normal from test to test. So like the GMAT scoring algorithm itself has a 20-point margin of error in the scoring system. So like the exact same performance on two different days uh could be a 675, a 685, or a 665. So um those those smaller variants are probably not making a meaningful difference in your admissions decisions, but they can feel very, very meaningful as a student. And so I think that's kind of again the Instagram filter analogy. It's like feels good, where it's like, oh, maybe I'm a little better than I thought I was. And I think that helps in the application process to just boost people's confidence. Um, of course, that brings us to like how our school's gonna see it. And I seriously doubt most policies in schools are actually gonna change as a result of this. I think schools that were already super scoring are gonna have an easier time doing that now. That's nice. Students are gonna just have to be more transparent about their highest scores. So if if you didn't have any admissions advice previously and you were like, oh, my higher quant score, but lower overall score makes me look bad, then you might not have submitted that at all. Well, that's good for students who are in that situation because now they're actually getting the benefit of submitting their best foot forward on the quant section. Uh and they don't have any choice to like self-edit in a negative way. And and like if you've looked at um job application data, a lot of job applicants self-edit in negative ways, like, oh, if I don't fit every single qualification they're looking for, then I won't apply for the job. Like there's some really interesting data on that. So I think this is kind of like a similar effect where we're just sort of like trying to delete that, which probably is a good thing if you think about it. Um, so that's really nice too. Um I've seen some people talking about gaming the system. Oh, oh, sorry. Going back to like schools that were not previously super scoring, I just don't see schools being like, oh, we're now gonna adopt super scoring. I just find that really hard to wrap my head around. I could be wrong about that. Obviously, there's psychological bias effects of like people see the higher number and and get anchored, and then they see, and then they see uh like, did they look at my my uh individual score first, or did they look at the superscore first? Here's why that's probably not going to be a big deal. Um, the way I understand it, and of course I'm I'm not on the other side of admission committee discussions at every business school in the world, but the way I understand it is for most schools, when you self-report your GMAT score on the application, they take you at your word. And then if they decide to admit you, that's when they check the score report to actually see like, is this score they're giving us legit? Before they send the offer letter. So that might not be true across the board. In fact, it's probably not, but I think by and large, it's true. And maybe if you're an admissions officer and you're listening to this, if you can comment and let us know, that would be really nice. But obviously understand if you're busy. But that's that's how I understand the general approach. And and by and large, that is what I have heard from people on the other side. So I think that if schools are gonna ask to see your superscore in the application, if they're gonna ask you to self-report the superscore, that's kind of interesting. And they they're probably doing it already. But I think most schools that were already looking at individual test sittings and not super scoring, they're just gonna ask you for your best sitting in the app. And that's probably gonna be it. So I don't think this really changes the admission decision. I just don't, I just, again, the Instagram filter thing, it's like, if I meet you in real life, I'm gonna know what you look like. And same for me, right? So it's like, okay, so maybe, maybe, you know, maybe the Instagram thing's nice. Um, but like, does it change who I really am? Again, not really. So I think that's kind of how superscores gonna go. But I could be wrong about that. So that is a prediction, and I'm not 100% sure about that. Maybe every business school in the world is gonna bank only on superscores going forward, and maybe all U.S. news rankings are gonna be superscores only in the future, and that's what every school is gonna be judged on. I don't know. I think the incentive structure works against that for sure. I think that US news is already losing ground to AI, and I think they're gonna want to maintain whatever journalistic integrity they they still have in the public eye. And I think playing into the whole like letting schools report superscores thing kind of works against that. And we already just went through the GMAP focus uh score um system change where they had to downgrade scores because people were scoring too high um and there wasn't enough differentiation at the top range. That's why GMAT focus scores are now 45 points lower than the old score scale. So I yeah, I just I'm not seeing the incentive structure line up there, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing, and yeah, so so just take that with a grain of salt. But that's my guess. That's my guess after doing this for a really long time. Okay, so back to gaming. I mean, I've seen people talk about this, and I just I just really don't think gaming this is gonna work. I've I've talked, I've seen people be like, oh, I'm just gonna go in and only focus on quant for my next attempt. Um I mean that could that could work if you know the score the school's superscores, but like if your if your score if your total score that you're submitting is already good enough to get you into the school, like it's hard to know how much a higher quant or a higher verbal is is going to uh to help that. And it's expensive to try to game it that way. So that definitely does introduce some doubt about like does this favor people who can afford to retake the test many, many times? I think we probably would say that it does. But the process has always favored people who can afford to take the re retake the exam many times. So I think in in that's kind of why I'm saying, like, I just I think it's a bit of a non-event. Like it's it's helpful, it's nice, but I don't think it's as big of a deal as people will probably believe it is. Uh but again, could be wrong about that, but that's that's my current perspective. Um and I would encourage you to adopt that too, because again, if you just study well and do a good job in it with your skill building, uh you're gonna have great odds of of getting into the school you want to go to. That's that's like positive character traits work basically. Now back to the gaming thing, like I think schools are gonna see through that, man. I like some schools are already asking people to report every sitting of the G MAT they've taken, even if they're not putting it on their school report. Um, and and I've seen that trend widen a little bit in the last few years. So for example, I won't name any names, but like last year, uh that there was at least one school that I worked with someone on where the school was asking for every single GMAT sitting the person had, but the person was only choosing to send one score. Um, and so they kind of had an like a a little bit of doubt and like an ethical dilemma or whatever. And and of course, always tell the truth in your applications, everybody. I mean, it's we all know that, but it's sometimes you just need to be reminded. Um But uh yeah, so so the so that kind of introduced some doubt for the client that that I had to sort of tell them is not a big deal. Like the schools are asking for stuff because they want you, they want to get you in. That's why they're asking for for all the scores. They're not trying to like ding you because it's like, oh, did you just get the good score once and and and then we're gonna play this gotcha thing where you didn't get a good score the first three times? So if you get a perfect score in quant and then a terrible score on verbal NDI, and then you submit this full test where you did great on all three sections, yeah. I just like I think they're gonna see through that. That's that's my guess. Um, and these are trained professionals on the admission side. People try to game the admissions process all the time just because great business schools are super desirable, as we all know. So I just I just think the system is gonna reject that kind of thing. Um, are there people who will probably get away with some kind of cheating or gaming scheme? Probably. I mean, great cheaters probably do get away with that stuff sometimes, but I think it's gonna be like less than 1% of cases. Uh that would be my guess. And and and like the both the business schools and GMAC are really good at counteracting cheating. So I just don't think that's gonna be a thing, and and I wouldn't encourage any of you to adopt that mentality. Having said that, if you're like, man, I didn't do as well as my practice tests on quant, let me just go in and and like do quant first, even though I did quant last on my old exam, and I'm okay if my verbal NDI dips a little bit because of fatigue. That's that's definitely some good reasoning. That might not have applied quite to the same extent before superscore. It still would have applied. It's just a little more helpful now, if that makes sense. So again, that's why I'm saying I just don't think it changes that much as far as what you should do in your prep process and in the admissions process. Okay. So a little bit of interesting data that we pulled. Uh the ACT did did something. That's a test you take in the US to get into undergraduate school programs. Um, and super scoring increased uh demographic gaps by point one seven points on a 36 point scale. So um so that's kind of interesting. When they controlled for retesting access, those gaps often reversed. And so the real issue is the retesting thing, not the scoring method. The super scoring thing actually made things more fair for the ACT. But unsurprisingly, it heavily favored people who could afford to retake the exam multiple times. So that just is what it is. Um, I think GMAC is doing their best. They probably debated that kind of thing heavily internally and were like, do we roll it out or not roll it out? And I personally think it's probably the right thing to roll it out because again, these exams have always favored people who can afford to retake it multiple times. That's just how that's that's how it is. And we're all trying to work on how we can fix that. It's a huge reason why we put out so much content for free for all of you. Um, but that's gonna be a thing. That's gonna be a thing still. Um, back to to what it means for you. Probably not much. Again, you were already optimizing for trying to get the best score you can every time you take the exam. I still think that's good advice, even if you were gonna do the thing where you take quant first to try to get a higher quant score because you your energy dipped on the previous exam and your quant score wasn't as good as your practice exams. I still think you should try really hard on verbal NDI. Like you never really know how things are gonna go. And sometimes luck can be on your side, and luck definitely matters on an adaptive test where things are fully randomized. Um, that's why I always encourage all of you to plan to take the exam more than once because you just never know if luck's gonna be on your side or against you on any given day. Now, of course, the more the better your skills are, the less of a role luck will play, but it's hard to delete luck completely. Okay, as of today, the GRE doesn't really have anything comparable to super score, so you'll have to make your own choice about that. Um, but my guess is GRE is probably gonna come out with something comparable relatively soon. They've shown to be fast followers of GMAT policies. Uh, like when the GMAT shortened the GMAT for focus, GRE fell into suit fairly quickly. So we'll see what happens with that. I haven't talked to anybody at uh ETS, the company that makes the GRE. That's not confirmed at all. Just to be really clear and fulfill on my commitment from the top of the map. Um but that's that. So for the retake framework and how you can capitalize on SuperScore, I already kind of talked about that a little bit, but I think if one of the sections came through meaningfully below your practice exams, that's always been a good reason to retake. And it's it's just a better reason to retake now. It's an even better reason if you can identify why, like if you had a timing issue or a content gap or nerves, um, you know, again, that's always been a good reason to retake. Now it's just a better reason to retake. And uh if you have time to actually prepare well before uh the deadline and before the next test, again, always been a good reason to retake. And now that's just better. It's a better reason. Um so here's the thing. I think GMAC's been criticized for like just trying to boost retakes. And I think it's a little bit unclear how that's gonna play out, honestly, because yes, the policy does favor people who can afford to retake, like we've talked about, but so far I have seen fewer people retaking because they're already happy with their superscore because they've taken the exam two or three times. So rather than going for that fourth retake or that fifth retake, I think people are not gonna do that. So my guess is it does not change how many total retakes there are at all. That would be my guess, but we'll see. That's total speculation. I could be wrong about that. But based on what I'm seeing in student feedback over the past few days and how people are legitimately acting, not just talking about superscore, that's been the trend I've seen. So I think it's gonna be totally net neutral. I don't think it's gonna improve anyone's odds of success, except the psychological part. Like if you just feel better about yourself as the result of super score, you might write more confident essays, you might be more confident in your interviews, you might just submit more applications to schools that you felt might have been out of your reach without superscore. And I think that's great. I think that's absolutely great. I think we should not be the limiting factor on ourselves. I think we should let the laws of physics be the limiting factor, and we should go for the things that we want with the maximum optimism that's that's reasonable. And I think that's what's great about super score, and I'm really glad that they did it, even if it's just for that, like placebo effect kind of thing for GMAT scores. If you look into the placebo effect, the placebo, the craziest thing about the placebo effect is how well it works. It's nuts, absolutely nuts. So hopefully this will be that. If you have questions, feel free to reach us anytime. You can get us, uh, you can get in touch with us at the contact page linked in the description here. You can DM us on current social channels at the GMAT Strategy. And you can email us our public email addresses, contact C O N T A C T at the G Mass Strategy.com. As always, my greatest hope is that this material will make your studies as easy and as painless as they can possibly be. If you want more tips and strategies for maximizing your performance on the exam, just head to our website, thegmathstrategy.com, and check out our free webinar on how you can reach your dream G Math score in half the normal time. And if nothing else, everybody, please just stay positive and stay consistent with your studies. You can do this. Talk to you all soon.