Need expert advice.

[Miss B]

Hi all, I took my first attempt at GMAT today and ended up with an imbalanced score across sections.
My scores are as follows
Overall score 740;
Q- 47 (70 percentile) V-46 (99 percentile) and IR 4 (37 percentile).
Could the low IR score affect my admission chances? I intend to apply in 2014/2015 .Should I retake my GMAT for IR / more balanced Q & V score? Please advice.

Thanks.
-B

[StaceyKoprince]

The best person to ask is an admissions consultant - these are really admissions questions (and this folder is a GMAT-expert folder, not an admissions-expert folder). :)

I'll give you my 2 cents, but my first piece of advice is to talk to an admissions consultant. We've got a folder here where you can ask; you can also contact some admissions consulting firms directly (my favorite is mbaMission).

It's true that schools can be concerned about "unbalanced" scores, but if both scores are above the 70th percentile, then I believe they're not really concerned about this (confirm with an admissions consultant!).

Right now, the schools still don't seem to be using IR, but that could change next year. We believe that, for at least the next few years, IR will not be as important as Q and V (because they have decades of data on the latter, so they're more confident in basing admissions decisions on that). There's no way, of course, to predict the future, so we could be wrong, but that's the most likely scenario.

One other wrinkle to consider: today, banks and consulting firms ask MBA job candidates for their GMAT scores, so presumably they will also start to use IR scores at some point. When? Again, we can't know, though we expect it will be a few years out (if they start to use these at all). And, again, it's unlikely that they will drop the "regular" scores or consider them less important than IR.

In short, congratulations on your 740! I think you're probably fine but you should talk to an admissions consultant. :)