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Last Updated on November 23, 2023
The business school INSEAD is known for its high-quality MBA program with a dynamic and diverse student body. The Financial Times has ranked INSEAD “Number 1 Global MBA” for several years running. So, you may be interested in attending INSEAD to take advantage of all this international MBA program offers. If so, you’re likely wondering about the GMAT score required for INSEAD.
In this article, I’ll discuss how the INSEAD MBA admissions committee views the GMAT and provide insights you can use to determine what GMAT score makes sense for your INSEAD application. To be clear, this article is about the INSEAD MBA program, as opposed to the INSEAD Executive MBA program, which has its own test requirements involving the EA and the INSEAD Assessment. So, if it’s the INSEAD MBA program you’re interested in, let’s begin by discussing the fact that submitting a GMAT or GRE score is mandatory for applying to INSEAD.
- Is the GMAT Mandatory for an INSEAD MBA Application?
- Three Key Factors Underlying How INSEAD Views GMAT Scores
- The Bare Minimum INSEAD MBA GMAT Score
- The Minimum GMAT Score INSEAD Recommends for Applicants
- The GMAT Score INSEAD Would Prefer to See From Applicants
- INSEAD-Accepted Applicants GMAT Score Statistics
- Takeaways From What We Know About INSEAD GMAT Scores
Is the GMAT Mandatory for an INSEAD MBA Application?
The first thing you may be wondering about INSEAD with regard to the GMAT is whether the GMAT is a mandatory part of an INSEAD MBA application. The answer is that INSEAD does require that all applicants to the MBA program submit a GMAT or GRE score with their applications. Also good to know is that INSEAD accepts GMAT scores from both the in-person and online GMAT.
KEY FACT:
INSEAD requires that all applicants to the MBA program submit a GMAT or GRE score with their applications.
Let’s now begin to better understand what GMAT score you need for INSEAD by considering some key factors that underlie how INSEAD views GMAT scores.
Three Key Factors Underlying How INSEAD Views GMAT Scores
For determining what GMAT score makes sense for your INSEAD application, it helps to understand the following three factors, each of which affects how INSEAD admissions views GMAT scores.
First, to some degree, the INSEAD MBA admissions committee sees an applicant’s GMAT exam score as a sign of the applicant’s caliber. In other words, like any other business school, all else equal, INSEAD prefers higher GMAT scores to lower ones.
However, that’s not the whole story, because another factor affecting how INSEAD views GMAT scores is that INSEAD’s admissions process is truly holistic. In other words, the admissions committee strongly considers applicant qualities other than GMAT scores, such as international outlook or ability to contribute to the INSEAD learning experience. In fact, INSEAD makes a point of encouraging people to apply to the MBA program regardless of whether they have scored high on the GMAT. So, clearly, INSEAD admissions is not looking only for candidates with high GMAT scores.
However, the third factor that must be taken into consideration by the admissions committee is that the INSEAD MBA program is a one-year program. Of course, a program designed to deliver an MBA degree in one year is intense. To do well in such a program, MBA students have to have strong academic capacity. So, INSEAD admissions can deemphasize GMAT scores only so much, because they need confirmation that a candidate can thrive in such an intense program. GMAT scores are good indicators of the readiness of candidates to do so.
KEY FACT:
INSEAD’s admissions committee uses GMAT scores to confirm that candidates can handle the school’s intense, one-year MBA program.
Now that we have a better understanding of how INSEAD admissions views the GMAT, let’s look at some numbers to get a clearer picture of INSEAD GMAT score requirements.
The Bare Minimum INSEAD MBA GMAT Score
From what I found by considering INSEAD class profile information and statements made by INSEAD admissions officials, the absolute bare minimum GMAT score you’d need in order to be admitted to INSEAD is 600. During the height of the pandemic, INSEAD admitted a few people with GMAT scores below 600, but those admissions were exceptions. So, now that the pandemic is winding down, 600 is once again basically the bottom of the INSEAD GMAT score range.
Of course, there could be other exceptions. After all, as we discussed, the INSEAD admissions process is holistic. Furthermore, there is no stated minimum GMAT score for admission to INSEAD. All the same, unless there is something amazingly interesting about your work experience or some other aspect of your application, if your GMAT score is below 600 and you want to attend INSEAD, then you better dust off your GMAT course and get a higher score.
KEY FACT:
600 is essentially the bare minimum GMAT score necessary for admission to INSEAD.
Of course, using the bare minimum GMAT score in the application process isn’t a great plan for getting into INSEAD. So, let’s now discuss some GMAT scores INSEAD recommends.
The Minimum GMAT Score INSEAD Recommends for Applicants
As we discussed, INSEAD encourages people to apply even if they don’t have high GMAT scores. In fact, INSEAD’s website says the following:
“All applicants are required to take a GMAT test as it provides us with a standardised way of evaluating candidates. While we do not have a minimum score required for admission, we advise candidates to aim for a score as close as possible or above 640. For the Integrated Reasoning section, we recommend achieving a score of 6 or above.”
So, we can see that the minimum GMAT score INSEAD hopes to see from a candidate is 640. Of course, in comparison with the GMAT scores we commonly think of when we think of top-ranked business schools, 640 is relatively low. So, once again, it appears that high GMAT scores are not an absolute must-have for admittance to INSEAD.
However, 640 is a bit on the low side even for INSEAD. In fact, if you want to apply to INSEAD without a question mark on your application because of your GMAT score, you have to achieve a score that is higher than the minimum recommended. Let’s discuss that score now.
KEY FACT:
INSEAD recommends aiming for a total GMAT score that is no lower than 640 and an IR score no lower than 6.
The GMAT Score INSEAD Would Prefer to See From Applicants
If you want to be sure that you are checking the box with your GMAT score when applying to INSEAD, you should score in at least the 70th percentile on both the Quant section and the Verbal section of the GMAT. Why? Because INSEAD has been saying the following for years:
“… we strongly encourage candidates to target the 70th – 75th percentile or above for both the verbal and quantitative parts of the test. We have found through past experience that students with a relatively low score or an imbalance in these two percentiles have had difficulties following our MBA Programme.”
As we discussed earlier, INSEAD uses GMAT scores to determine candidates’ readiness to handle the intense INSEAD one-year MBA program. The scores that indicate that a candidate is ready to handle the program are 70th to 75th percentile Quant and Verbal scores.
KEY FACT:
INSEAD would prefer to see at least 70th to 75th percentile GMAT Quant and Verbal scores from applicants.
The GMAT Section Scores That Fit INSEAD’s 70th Percentile Criterion
Currently, the 70th percentile GMAT section scores are 49 on the Quant section and 34 on the Verbal section. By the way, if you get those section scores, your GMAT total score will likely be 680. So, in a sense, 680 is a good GMAT score for INSEAD. However, if you were to score 680 on the GMAT with unbalanced section scores, rather than with the preferred 70th to 75th percentile Quant and Verbal scores, then 680 would be decent but not great for applying to INSEAD.
Now, there is a wrinkle here. Not long ago, a 70th percentile Quant score was 47, which INSEAD considered adequate at the time. So, even today, if you score 47 on Quant, along with scoring in the 70th percentile or higher on Verbal, for a 660+ GMAT total score, INSEAD should be basically OK with your GMAT score.
TTP PRO TIP:
For the purpose of applying to the INSEAD MBA problem, aim to score in at least the 70th percentile on both the Quant section and the Verbal section of the GMAT.
That said, it’s one thing for your GMAT score not to put a question mark on your INSEAD application and another to look strong compared with other applicants. So, let’s discuss one more key consideration, how applicants accepted to INSEAD have scored on the GMAT.
INSEAD-Accepted Applicants GMAT Score Statistics
INSEAD does not publish many applicant or class statistics. So, stats such as the INSEAD MBA acceptance rate or the middle 80 percent INSEAD GMAT score range for each entering class are not commonly known. However, I was able to piece together enough information to get a pretty clear picture of INSEAD MBA GMAT scores. Here is what I found.
The INSEAD average GMAT score for an entering class has ranged from 706 to 711 over the last five years. INSEAD’s MBA class incoming in January 2022 had an average GMAT score of 710. So, in deciding on a GMAT score target for your INSEAD application, you can go with the idea that the average GMAT score of an accepted applicant to INSEAD is around 710.
KEY FACT:
INSEAD’s MBA class incoming in January 2022 had an average GMAT score of 710.
For more information, the middle 80 percent GMAT score range for INSEAD’s class of 2016, which is the only GMAT score range INSEAD currently has on its website, is 660 to 750. Additionally, in a presentation given in 2021, INSEAD provided the following information from INSEAD class profiles in 2019:
So, what does all this information mean to us?
Takeaways From What We Know About INSEAD GMAT Scores
The graphic above makes the reality pretty clear. In 2019, over 60 percent of accepted applicants to INSEAD who took the GMAT scored 700+ on the GMAT. Meanwhile, regardless of how holistic INSEAD’s admissions process is, only 3.5 percent of accepted applicants scored 650 or below on the GMAT. So, we have the following takeaways.
Unless your application is extraordinary in some way, in order to gain acceptance to INSEAD, you need to convince the admissions committee that you can handle the program by scoring in the 70th percentile, or close to it, on both the Quant section and the Verbal section of the GMAT. Such scores translate to a total GMAT score of at least 660 to 680.
Furthermore, 70th-percentile section scores still put you behind the INSEAD applicant pack in GMAT terms. So, unless your application stands out in some other way, such as because you have uncommon work experience, you’ll likely want to score higher. So, you could aim to match the recent INSEAD entering class average GMAT score of 710.
Also, if you’re from an overrepresented applicant group or have a deficiency in your application, then scoring 720 or higher on the GMAT to make up for those factors is likely the way to go.
TTP PRO TIP:
Unless your application is extraordinary in some way, shoot for a GMAT score of at least 660 to 680 for INSEAD, or 720+ if you’re from an overrepresented group or have a deficiency in your application.
So, that’s the story on INSEAD MBA GMAT scores. Now that you better understand what GMAT score you should have for applying to INSEAD, you could learn how to achieve that score by reading this post on the best way to study for the GMAT.
