How to score in the 99th percentile on the GMAT

I have scored in the 99th percentile on the GMAT twice. Once can be a good day. Twice suggests there is a method, so this is the method, written down as plainly as I can manage.

It is not a secret, and most of it is dull. That is the first thing worth knowing. The candidates I see stuck at 665 for six months are rarely short of material, or effort, or intelligence. They are usually repeating the same four or five mistakes at high volume and calling it practice.

What score is the 99th percentile on the GMAT?

On the GMAT Focus Edition, a total score of 725 is the 99th percentile. GMAC's concordance table puts 725 at 99.2%, 715 at 98.7% and 735 at 99.5%. Anything from 785 up rounds to 100%.

If you learned the GMAT on the old scale, the Focus numbers look low. A 725 feels like a step down from a 760, and it is the same achievement. Admissions committees know this. Some candidates still don't, and they set targets on the wrong scale.

How is the GMAT Focus Edition structured?

Three sections of 45 minutes each, 64 questions, two hours and fifteen minutes in total, with an optional ten-minute break. You choose the order of the sections.

Total scores run from 205 to 805 and always end in a 5. Each section is scored from 60 to 90 and counts equally. There is no geometry, and data sufficiency now sits in Data Insights, not Quant. At the end of each section you can review any question and change up to three answers. That feature matters more at the top of the scale than most people realise, and I come back to it below.

Is a 99th percentile score about intelligence?

Less than people think. The GMAT is adaptive: get questions right and the next ones get harder. Past a certain level, almost everyone in the room can solve almost everything given enough time. What separates a 685 from a 735 is not whether you can do the hard questions. It is how few you get wrong while doing them at two minutes each, and how little time you burn on the one you should have let go.

Put differently, the top of the GMAT is an error-rate test. That is good news, because error rates can be trained in a way that raw ability can't.

What do 99th percentile scorers do differently?

Five things. None of them is exotic.

1. They log why, not what. A useful error log does not say "question 14, wrong". It says misread the constraint, or right method, arithmetic slip, or ran out of patience and picked the trap. After thirty entries, patterns show. Most people have four or five recurring causes, and fixing one is worth more than another hundred questions.
2. They practise with official material first. GMAC's own questions and practice exams are the only ones written by the people who write the test. Third-party material is fine for volume. It is not fine for calibration, and a lot of it is harder in the wrong ways.
3. They train pacing as a separate skill. Two minutes a question sounds like plenty until question 9 takes five. Strong candidates check the clock at fixed points (roughly a third and two thirds of the way through each section) and they decide in advance what they will do when they are behind.
4. They let questions go. An educated guess in forty seconds is a better result than a correct answer in five minutes that costs you the last three questions. Running out of time is expensive. GMAC is clear that failing to finish a section lowers your score significantly.
5. They use Review and Edit deliberately. Bookmark the question you are unsure of, commit to your best answer, move on, and come back with the time you saved. Three edits per section is a small budget. Spend it on questions where you had a specific doubt, not a general feeling.

Why do strong quant candidates lose points on Verbal?

Engineers, quants and scientists lose more points on Verbal than on Quant, and nearly always spend their preparation time the other way round. I see it in almost every technical client.

Critical reasoning is a logic test with a thin coat of English over it. Every argument has a conclusion, some evidence, and an unstated assumption linking the two, and every question type asks you to do something to that assumption: find it, attack it, support it. Once you see it that way, it becomes a formal system, and technical people are good at formal systems. The ones who struggle are usually reading the passage like a newspaper and answering on instinct.

Reading comprehension is different. It rewards reading for structure (what is the author doing in this paragraph, and why) over reading for detail. You can always go back for detail. You can't go back for structure if you never built it.

What does Data Insights reward?

Data Insights mixes data sufficiency with table analysis, graphics interpretation, two-part analysis and multi-source reasoning. It is the only section with an on-screen calculator, and it counts for exactly as much as Quant and Verbal.

It rewards the habit of deciding what you need before you compute anything. Data sufficiency questions in particular punish people who solve. You are not asked for the answer. You are asked whether the answer could be found, which is a quicker question and a different one. Candidates from finance and research tend to do well here once they stop reaching for the calculator by reflex.

How long should you study for a 99th percentile GMAT?

From a strong quantitative starting point, eight to twelve weeks of structured work is typical in my experience, at something like ten hours a week. From a weaker starting point it is longer, and the plan below stretches rather than changes.

The hours are not the point. The review is. A practice exam you do not review properly teaches you almost nothing, and I would rather a client did three with a full day of review each than eight back to back.

Why do GMAT scores plateau in the high 600s?

Almost everyone who comes to me has already taken the test once or twice and stalled somewhere between 645 and 695. The instinct is more practice. It is nearly always the wrong instinct.

A plateau usually means a small number of reasoning errors the candidate cannot see, because the blind spot that causes the error also hides it. More volume repeats the error more often. What breaks it is someone watching you work through problems in real time and naming the pattern. It usually takes a session or two to find, and once it has a name, it is often gone within a fortnight.

Does a 99th percentile score get you into a top MBA?

It helps, and it decides less than people hope. London Business School says its average GMAT is around 645, with a typical class range from 555 to 805. A 725 puts you well above that average. It does not put you in the class.

I interview applicants for London Business School, and I can say without breaking any confidence that the score is rarely what the conversation turns on. Schools read a score as a threshold: can this person handle the quantitative core? Once you are clearly above it, extra points buy very little. A 735 with a vague story is a harder application to admit than a 685 with a clear one.

So aim high, and stop when you are there. The month you would spend chasing a 755 is better spent on your essays. I wrote about how to spend it in why I chose London Business School.

Should you take the GMAT or the GRE?

Nearly every leading business school accepts both, and LBS says it has no preference. Take the one on which you score the higher percentile. I have scored in the 99th percentile on the GRE as well, in both verbal and quantitative, and my honest view is that strong quant candidates tend to find the GMAT easier to max out and strong verbal candidates the GRE. One caveat, which LBS itself makes: some employers, particularly in consulting and banking, still ask for a GMAT score.

Questions people ask about the 99th percentile

None of this is glamorous. The GMAT is a test of whether you can be careful, quickly, for two and a quarter hours, and the preparation that works is the preparation that makes you more careful. Get the score you need, then go and do something more interesting with the time.

If you want the questions themselves, there are 83 free GMAT practice questions with worked solutions here, each with the percentile level it sits at, and a timed section at exam pace.

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