You’re staring at a screen. One tab has your GRE score report, the other has a forum thread from 2022 where someone swears you need a 330 to get into Wharton. But then you see the GMAT averages and suddenly you're trying to do mental gymnastics to figure out if your 165 Quant is actually "better" than a 680 on the GMAT Focus Edition. It’s exhausting. Honestly, the whole obsession with gmat and gre conversion has become a bit of a localized fever dream for MBA applicants.
The truth is that ETS (the people who make the GRE) and GMAC (the GMAT folks) aren’t exactly best friends. They are competitors. Because of that, there is no "official" bridge between the two tests that both sides agree on. Most people end up using the ETS Comparison Tool, which is basically the industry standard, but even that comes with a massive asterisk. It’s a statistical model, not a law of physics.
The Reality of How Schools View GMAT and GRE Conversion
Let’s be real for a second. Ten years ago, if you submitted a GRE score to a top-tier business school, the admissions committee might have looked at you like you walked into a black-tie gala wearing flip-flops. That has changed. Completely. Whether you’re looking at Harvard, Stanford, or INSEAD, the vast majority of programs tell you they don't have a preference.
But "no preference" doesn't mean they don't convert the scores behind the scenes. They have to. They need to report their class profiles to rankings like U.S. News & World Report or the Financial Times. Since those rankings historically prioritized GMAT scores, schools use a gmat and gre conversion calculation to see where you sit relative to their averages.
Think of it like currency exchange. If the GMAT is the US Dollar, the GRE is the Euro. The exchange rate fluctuates based on the school's specific data from previous years. A 162 in Quant on the GRE might feel like a solid score—and it is—but when you run it through a converter, it might spit out a GMAT equivalent that looks a little "lower" than what that school usually accepts. That is where the anxiety kicks in.
The Problem With the Old 800 Scale
For decades, we all knew what a "good" GMAT score was. 700 was the magic threshold. 730 meant you were a rockstar. But then the GMAT Focus Edition showed up and threw a wrench in the gears. Now, the total scores end in a "5" (like 645 or 705) and the old 200-800 scale is officially legacy.
This makes gmat and gre conversion even wonkier. If you are looking at older conversion charts, you are looking at a map of a city that has been redesigned. A 645 on the new GMAT Focus is actually roughly equivalent to a 700 on the old scale. If you try to map a GRE score to the old GMAT scale, and then map that to the new GMAT scale, you’re basically playing a game of telephone with your future.
Quant is the Pivot Point
If you’re applying to a quant-heavy program—think MIT Sloan or Chicago Booth—the admissions officers are going to look at your GRE Quant score with a magnifying glass. You can't just look at the total "converted" score. A 167 Quant on the GRE is generally seen as very strong, roughly aligning with the 80th-90th percentile.
However, some schools have internal data suggesting that GRE Quant doesn't test the same kind of logical "grit" as the GMAT. I've talked to consultants who suggest that if you are a "poet" (liberal arts background), the GRE is your best friend. If you are an engineer, the GMAT is often expected because the school wants to see you handle the Data Insights section.
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Why the ETS Tool Isn't Perfect
The official ETS tool uses something called "predicted GMAT scores." It’s based on a sample of students who took both tests. But think about who takes both tests. Usually, it’s people who struggled with one and switched to the other. That is a biased sample. It’s not necessarily representative of the highest-performing test-takers.
Also, the GRE Verbal section is a different beast. It’s heavy on vocabulary. The GMAT Verbal is more about logic and sentence structure (or it was, before the Focus Edition trimmed things down). Because the tests measure different skills, any gmat and gre conversion is fundamentally an approximation. It’s like trying to convert "gallons of milk" into "miles per hour." You can find a way to relate them if you try hard enough, but you're losing the nuance of what each one actually does.
The Percentile Trap
The most accurate way to handle gmat and gre conversion isn't to look at the raw score, but the percentiles. If you are in the 90th percentile for GRE Verbal, you should compare yourself to someone in the 90th percentile for GMAT Verbal.
The catch?
The populations are different. The GRE is taken by people going into English Literature, Biology, and History, not just MBA hopefuls. The GMAT is taken only by business school applicants. This means being in the 90th percentile on the GMAT is arguably "harder" because you are competing against a more targeted, mathematically inclined pool of peers. Admissions committees know this. They aren't just looking at the number; they are looking at who you were standing next to when you got that number.
Real Examples from the Trenches
Let’s look at two hypothetical candidates.
Candidate A has a 325 GRE (162Q, 163V).
Candidate B has a 655 GMAT Focus.
If you use a standard gmat and gre conversion method, these two are remarkably close. Candidate A might feel like they have a "higher" number because 325 sounds big. But Candidate B’s 655 is in the 90th percentile of all GMAT Focus test-takers. In the eyes of a top-10 program, Candidate B might actually have the edge because they’ve proven themselves against the specific MBA applicant pool.
But wait. What if Candidate A is an Olympic athlete with a 3.9 GPA from Yale? In that case, the "lower" converted score doesn't matter. The GRE becomes a "check the box" exercise. This is the part people miss. The conversion is a tool for the school to ensure you can handle the math. It’s not the final verdict on your intelligence.
What About the "GRE Advantage"?
There is a persistent rumor that it’s easier to get a high "converted" score by taking the GRE. Some people call it a loophole. The logic is that the GRE math is slightly more straightforward—less "trickery" than the GMAT. If you can score a 168 or 170 on GRE Quant, your converted GMAT score might look higher than what you could actually achieve on the GMAT.
Is this true? Sorta. If you are great at memorizing words and decent at high-school-level math, you might "over-perform" on the GRE relative to the GMAT. But schools aren't dumb. They have years of data. If they see a 170 GRE Quant from a candidate who then struggles in "Data Science for Managers" during their first semester, they adjust how they weigh those scores for the next year.
Practical Steps for Your Application
Stop obsessing over the exact decimal point of your conversion. It's a waste of brainpower. Instead, look at the class profile of your target school. If their average GRE is 163/163 and you have a 161/165, you're in the ballpark.
Here is what you should actually do:
- Take a diagnostic of both. Don't guess which test you'll be better at. Spend four hours. Take one of each. See where your natural baseline sits.
- Focus on the schools. Check if your target programs publish their GRE averages. If they only publish GMAT, they are likely still using the GMAT as their primary metric, and you'll want your gmat and gre conversion to be at or above their GMAT average.
- Ignore the "Old" GMAT tables. If you are looking at a chart that says a 330 GRE equals a 740 GMAT, make sure it specifies which version of the GMAT. The new Focus Edition scores are lower in raw number but higher in value.
- Verify the Quant. If you're going for Finance or Tech, aim for at least a 165 on GRE Quant. If you can't hit that, the GMAT might actually be a better place to show your skills through the Data Insights section.
The obsession with these charts usually stems from a desire for certainty in an uncertain process. But an MBA application is a holistic puzzle. The conversion is just one way to look at one piece. If your score is within the 80% range of the school's previous class, move on. Focus on your essays. Focus on your letters of recommendation. Those are the things that actually get you moved from the "maybe" pile to the "yes" pile once your test score has cleared the initial hurdle.
Keep it simple. A strong score is a strong score, regardless of which acronym is at the top of the page. Use the converters as a general compass, not a GPS with turn-by-turn directions.