B-School

November 5 test--the admissions board mailed a memorandum to those students whose applications will be reconsidered as a result of the error.

Foley said that most of the 200 applicants considered in the first round of admissions decisions took the test in November and are affected by the miscalculation.

A spokesman for ETS said that the mistake was "a statistical error," but that no one was exactly sure who went wrong.

"We had a problem, but now we've corrected it. There's no sense in asking us whether we have beaten our wife," John Smith, director of media relations, said yesterday, adding that this was the first time in his memory that the ETS has ever made such an error.

Smith said that about 150,000 people take the GMAT each year and that "unfortunately most take them in November."

"The raw verbal and quantitative scores were correct," Smith said. "But when those were combined to make the composite score, some sort of miscalculation was made."

The total score was reported "nine to ten points lower than it should have been," Smith said.

Because the Business School admissions board considers many other factors other than GMAT scores, Foley said, he doubts the status of many candidates will change.

Nevertheless, this year the admissions board staff will put in some extra hours. "We're talking about 200 people, going through and looking at the corrected score versus the original score. Where we find a difference, we must then re-evaluate the candidate," Foley said.

Thousands of business schools throughout the country which place more emphasis on the GMAT scores will have even bigger headaches, Foley said.

Last Friday the 13th, when members of the admissions board sent out the memorandum informing the 200 applicants of the error, they put Thursday's date on the letters for superstitious and traditional reasons. Apparently, it was too late.