Every year, the Graduate Management Admission Council updates the percentile rankings associated with different GMAT scores. Although your actual scores don’t change, the percentiles on your score reports are updated to reflect the latest three-years of data from live GMAT administrations. The GMAC recently released its latest percentile rankings, reflecting data from July 2012 through June 2015.
Percentile rankings indicate the percent of test-takers who score below a given score. In the tables below, we show data for the three-years ending June 2015 and the prior data for the three-years ending June 2014. For your convenience, we have highlighted the specific changes. Read more about the meaning of percentile rankings on our About the GMAT page. You can access the latest full percentile ranking tables at MBA.com.
Overview of Changes in Percentile Rankings
As expected, there are no drastic changes to the percentile rankings, only minor shifts. The AWA percentile rankings are completely unchanged. There are just minor shifts in the Integrated Reasoning and Verbal percentile rankings.
The most noticeable change is the slightly higher mean average overall GMAT score accompanied by a slight shift downward in percentile rankings corresponding to a given score. This is driven by similar changes in the Quantitative percentile rankings. As test-takers from math-proficient countries such as China and India continue to make up a larger proportion of the test-taking population, it becomes harder to achieve a high-ranking in the Quantitative section. To illustrate, consider that a Quant score of 50 (out of 51 for all practical purposes) translates only into an 87% ranking.
Data from 2015 GMAT Percentile Rankings
| Scores | Halfway | Mean | Median | 70th %ile | 90th %ile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWA | 3.0 = 6% | 4.34 = 30% | 4.5 = 44% | 5.0 = 60% | 6.0 = 92% |
| IR | 5 = 53% | 4.32 = 43% | 5 = 53% | 6 = 67% | 8 = 92% |
| Verbal | 30 = 58% | 27.1 = 46% | 28 = 50% | 34 = 71% | 40 = 91% |
| Quantitative | 30 = 22% | 38.3 = 39% | 42 = 50% | 47 = 67% | 50 = 87% |
| Overall | 500 = 30% | 550.1 = 44% | 570 = 50% | 630 = 70% | 700 = 89% |
Note: Percentiles for mean scores are estimates.
Data from 2014 GMAT Percentile Rankings
| Scores | Halfway | Mean | Median | 70th %ile | 90th %ile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWA | 3.0 = 6% | 4.34 = 30% | 4.5 = 44% | 5.0 = 60% | 6.0 = 92% |
| IR | 5 = 52% | 4.33 = 42% | 5 = 52% | 6 = 67% | 8 = 92% |
| Verbal | 30 = 58% | 27.0 = 46% | 28 = 51% | 34 = 71% | 40 = 91% |
| Quantitative | 30 = 22% | 38.0 = 41% | 42 = 51% | 47 = 68% | 50 = 88% |
| Overall | 500 = 31% | 547.4 = 44% | 570 = 51% | 630 = 71% | 700 = 89% |
Note: Percentiles for mean scores are estimates.