How many are too many ?

[Guest101]

Hi

I want to know about how a B school thinks of the number of attempts a person has taken for GMAT.

My situation is as follows

Attempt 1 - 640
Attempt 2 - Canceled score (panicked in the verbal section and guessed a lot of questions to finish the test in time)
Attempt 3 - 680

I feel like going for another attempt as I feel I deserve a high score(as my practice test results show) and also one particular B school which I am targeting (whose deadline is in a week's time) has an average GMAT admit score above 700.

1- Will this attempt be considered my 4th attempt ? I mean whether B schools will consider my canceled score as a regular attempt or will just ignore it ?

2 - God forbid, If I have to go for a 5th attempt in future , how will B schools perceive that ?

I know these are very specific questions for a Admission Dept of a B school , but what I really want to know from your experience is how B schools evaluate a candidate in light of his attempts at GMAT ?

[Guest101]

One more thing

When ever I request GMAC to report my score to a B school , are all my scores reported or only last 2 or 3 reported ?

Also, whether GMAC reports about any canceled attempt too ?

[StaceyKoprince]

Go over to the Admissions Consultant folder and ask your question there; also, tell them the names of the specific schools to which you're applying. Schools are all different in terms of whether they care about how many times you took the test. Most schools don't care at all about up to 3 tests. Some care after that; some don't. Some schools don't have an official policy and it's up to the individual who's looking at your application, in which case, there's no way to tell what that person thinks.

Whenever you give a school permission to access your score report (that's really what happens nowadays - they just access the scores via an online database), they will see all "active" test administrations. "Active" means "within the last 5 years" - after that, scores expire and are dropped from your record. So whether they will see a score just depends upon how long ago you took the test.

They will see that you cancelled a test as long as that test is still within the past 5 years; after 5 years, cancelled tests will also expire.

Because one of your three is a cancelled test, you may be able to tell the school that you became ill that day or something (a panic attack is a form of illness...), and so they may view your 4th attempt as your 3rd "real" attempt. I don't know though - ask the admissions consultants what they think.