60% of Admissions Officers say GMAT Integrated Reasoning Section Scores Unimportant

The majority of admissions officers from more than 200 U.S. business schools say an applicant’s score on the GMAT’s Integrated Reasoning section is not so important.

In a recent survey, Kaplan found that 60% of admissions officers said that performance on the IR section was not important.

But Kaplan reports that 50% of business schools surveyed point to a low overall GMAT score as “the biggest application killer.” 

For its 2014 survey, Kaplan polled admissions officers from 204 business schools from across the United States, including 11 of the top 30 MBA programs as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. 

The IR section is scored separately from the Qualitative, Verbal and Analytical Writing Assessment sections of the GMAT exam, which means that poor performance on this new section can’t be masked by stronger performance on the other sections. 

For more details see the 2014 Kaplan survey of admissions officers