The New GRE – GMAT Killer?

At one level in time, the Graduate Management Admissions Examination (GMAT) was the de facto examination that learners took to get into company school. But in 2006, the creators of the GMAT, the Graduate Administration Admissions Council (GMAC), decided to sever ties with the Educational Tests Support (ETS), who up until eventually that place experienced administered the test. This shift, which ended the non-contend clause that the GMAC held in excess of the ETS, permitted the ETS to challenge the stranglehold that the GMAC experienced on business faculty screening.

Considering that 2006, the ETS has been campaigning educational institutions to acknowledge the GRE as an choice to the GMAT. According to a press release by the ETS, “About 450 MBA programs globally now take the GRE examination, like 45 % of the U.S. News & Environment Report’s major 100 U.S. plans and 7 of the leading 10 global MBA courses in accordance to The Monetary Situations.” These faculties consist of some of the top-ranked company educational facilities in the globe, these as Harvard, Stanford, Wharton at UPenn, Stern at NYU, and Sloan at MIT.

Additionally, the revised GRE, coming in August of this yr, is in section intended to make the examination a lot more interesting to business universities. The ETS web page states, “ETS has revised the take a look at to far better replicate the form of thinking you can do in graduate or company university and enhance your take a look at-using experience. New kinds of concerns now additional carefully align with the competencies you have to have to triumph in today’s demanding graduate and organization university packages.” Taking away analogies and antonyms, for occasion, shifts the aim away from memorization and toward analysis and being familiar with.

It’s no surprise that extra and far more universities are beginning to accept the GRE. The ETS estimates that there are close to 700 GRE tests facilities in 160 countries about the environment contrast this with a 2010 GMAC press release, which estimates that there are 500 screening centers in 110 nations around the world. Universities that determine to acknowledge the GRE can grow their applicant pools by making it much more handy for worldwide candidates applying to US business educational institutions in this period of globalization. Additionally, the transfer to accept the GRE is helpful to college students as properly. These who are hoping to choose between going to graduate university and heading to enterprise school do not have to pick out 1 in excess of the other or be concerned about having two assessments (and spending two registration fees) — they can basically get the GRE and utilize to both. Testmasters endorses that potential pupils choose both equally checks and submit the greater rating.

With the future release of the new GRE and the momentum that the ETS has constructed up more than the earlier a number of yrs, we can anticipate to see extra and extra business educational facilities accepting the GRE for admissions. Of program, the GMAC is not simply just twiddling its thumbs as the ETS courts its principal market — the GMAT is scheduled for a important facelift in 2013 to give the exam additional business enterprise-particular written content.

But who knows? By then, it may perhaps be too late.