What GRE Score Do You Need for a Top MBA Program?

What GRE score do top MBA programs actually admit?

There's no universal cutoff — each school sets its own bar — but the most recent class profiles from top programs cluster tightly. Each GRE section (Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning) is scored on a 130–170 scale. Harvard Business School's Class of 2027 posted a median GRE score of 164 Verbal and 164 Quantitative. Yale School of Management's Class of 2027 median was 163 Verbal and 166 Quantitative. NYU Stern's Class of 2027 averaged 163 Verbal and 164 Quantitative. If you're scoring in the low-to-mid 160s on both sections, you're in the range top programs are actually admitting.

Sources: Harvard Business School class profile, Yale SOM class profile, NYU Stern class profile, London Business School FAQs.

Two things worth noting about that table. First, Harvard's GRE submitters (44%) now outnumber both its GMAT Focus submitters (34%) and legacy GMAT submitters (28%) — the GRE isn't a niche alternative at the top of the market anymore. Second, London Business School — included here because most other top programs are US-based and CoPilot Prep works with a large share of London-based applicants — publishes no GRE class average at all, only the qualitative guidance above; don't treat a third-party blog's invented LBS average as official.

Why does a 164 Quant rank lower than a 164 Verbal?

Because the two sections aren't graded against the same population shape. ETS's own interpretive data (based on everyone who tested between July 2022 and June 2025) shows a 164 lands at the 93rd percentile on Verbal Reasoning but only the 63rd percentile on Quantitative Reasoning:

Source: ETS GRE General Test Interpretive Data, Table 1A/1B (all test-takers, July 2022–June 2025).

Scores bunch up near the top of the Quant scale — even a perfect 170 only reaches the 89th percentile, because so many test-takers also land at or near 170 — while Verbal scores are more spread out at the same range. The practical effect: it takes more raw ability to climb from the 60th to the 90th percentile on Quant than on Verbal (Verbal reaches 90th at a score of 163; Quant doesn't reach 90th even at a perfect 170). A school's published Quant median will look "lower" in percentile terms than its Verbal median even when the school weighs the two sections equally. Don't read a 63rd-percentile Quant score at Harvard as a weak result — it's exactly what the median admit posted.

Is there an official "good" total GRE score for MBA?

No — and this trips people up constantly. Unlike the GMAT, which reports one Total score, ETS explicitly does not calculate or endorse a combined GRE score. Its own documentation states the GRE program "recommends keeping the GRE Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning scores separate when making admissions decisions and, therefore, does not provide a total score." When you see a blog claim that "320 is a good GRE score for MBA," that 320 is someone informally adding V+Q — a number ETS itself doesn't produce.

If you want to sanity-check an informal total, split it back into sections and use the percentile table above. A 320 split evenly as 160V/160Q sits at the 82nd percentile in Verbal but only the 50th in Quant — below every school median in the table. The section-level numbers, not the total, are what schools actually see on your score report.

Do top programs set a minimum GRE score?

Not at the schools with public policies. Stanford GSB states plainly: "There is no minimum GMAT or GRE score requirement for graduate study at Stanford, and we accept students with a wide range of scores." London Business School says the same in substance, adding only a soft guideline (160+ on both sections) rather than a hard floor.

No minimum doesn't mean the score doesn't matter. A score at or above your target schools' published median measurably strengthens an application — it's one less thing an admissions committee has to explain away, it widens which of your target schools you're realistically competitive at, and it can factor into merit-scholarship decisions. Treat the medians in the table above as a floor to aim above, not a bar to just clear.

Can you convert a GRE score to a GMAT equivalent?

Only approximately, and ETS is explicit about the limits. Its own Comparison Tool for Business Schools produces a predicted GMAT score from your GRE Verbal and Quant scores using a regression model — not a concordance table — because, in ETS's own words, "it was not appropriate to produce concordance tables stating that a total score on one measure is directly equivalent to a total score on the other." ETS reports a standard error of 54.8 points on the predicted GMAT Total score, and roughly 6 points on each predicted section score — and that's a one-standard-error band, meaning the true score falls within it only about 68% of the time, not a hard limit. A GRE score that predicts a 600 GMAT Total could plausibly reflect anywhere from roughly 545 to 655 on an actual GMAT attempt two-thirds of the time — wider outside that band the rest of the time.

Source: ETS GRE Comparison Tool for Business Schools FAQ.

That margin is too wide to use for picking which test to take based on a "better" predicted score. Decide on format fit instead: schools in the table above state no preference between the two tests, so there's no admissions penalty either way.

How do you set a realistic GRE target and get there?

This is the same process Simon Flynn — see his background advising GMAT and GRE applicants — uses when working backward from a specific school's median rather than a generic score goal:

1. Pull your target schools' most recent class-profile numbers — not a three-year-old blog post — the same way this article did, directly from each school's admissions page.
2. Set section-specific targets, not a total. Aim at or slightly above your target schools' published Verbal and Quant medians individually.
3. Convert your practice scores to percentile using the ETS table above, not a round "total," so you know exactly how far you are from each section target.
4. Weight your prep time toward the section with the bigger percentile gap, not the bigger raw-point gap. Convert both your diagnostic score and your target to percentile using the table above before comparing — as section two showed, an identical scaled score (164) sits 30 percentile points apart between Verbal and Quant, so a "5-point gap" can mean very different amounts of ground to cover depending on which section it's in.
5. Re-test with the 21-day minimum gap in mind if your diagnostic score sits below your section targets — ETS allows retakes once every 21 days, up to five times in a rolling 12-month period, so a single early diagnostic doesn't have to be your only data point.

A diagnostic on the CoPilot Prep platform benchmarks your current Verbal and Quant scores against these percentile targets before you commit to a study timeline, so you're prepping toward your actual schools' medians rather than a generic "good score."