GMAT is the essential passport to prestigious global B-schools institutes such as Harvard Business School and Kellogg School of Management with more than 2,000 graduate business programs worldwide require candidates taking GMAT to seek admission.
Mr Wilson is a respected thought-leader and has been associated with GMAC for more than decade. He is an MBA from the University of California (Berkeley), and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. He has served as a faculty member in a number of institutions including Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining GMAC, Dr. Wilson was with Ernst & Young in various senior capacities.
Mr Wilson will write a fortnightly column titled ‘A Global Perspective on Graduate Management Education’ for India’s leading management portal – MBAUniverse.com.
Column by Mr David Wilson:
Greetings. I am David Wilson, CEO of the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), an association of leading graduate management programs worldwide, including Dartmouth, Harvard and MIT in the United States; INSEAD and London Business School in Europe; and the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.
I am honored that MBAUniverse.com has invited me to contribute a bi-weekly column on global graduate management education issues, trends, challenges and successes. In this, my first column, I would like to introduce you to GMAC and its resources, and give you an idea of the subjects I would like to explore with you in the weeks and months head.
The GMAT Exam: How It Is Advancing Graduate Management Education Programs
Of all of the products and services offered by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), I am most proud of our GMAT exam, principally because of what it has meant to the quality of the more than 4,000 graduate management education programs worldwide which require it for admission.
Top schools such as Harvard, Wharton, Chicago and Stanford in the U.S.; Oxford University, London Business School, INSEAD, HEC, IMD, IESE, and ESADE in Europe; and the China Europe International Business School, Hong Kong University of Science Technology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore, and the Indian School of Business in Asia rely on the GMAT to help them evaluate prospective students from around the world. In 2007, nearly 240,000 tests were taken.
Its popularity outside the United States is particularly pronounced in India. Over the past five years, the annual growth in GMAT volumes in India has surpassed 30% on average. Last year, about 13,000 exams were taken in India, while about 19,000 Indian citizens took the test around the world. And perhaps most revealingly, outside the United States, India as a country has the highest volume of GMAT exam takers globally.
The exam itself has been repeatedly studied, tested, and modified to ensure that it remains a universal, objective, reliable and valid measurement of student aptitude worldwide. Our singular goal: to help business schools objectively assess the capabilities of incoming students, regardless of first university background, national origin, gender, age or native language.
Student quality is important for the quality of the graduate management program. Consequently, schools need a measure that reliably reflects aptitude, predicts academic performance and ensures quality. University marks on there own aren’t a reliable measure because they are invariably subjective. But the GMAT exam is a reliable and valid predictor of student performance.
Here are the key qualities of the GMAT exam – and reasons why our business school members can be confident in the scores they receive:
Reliability – The probability that a GMAT test taker would keep the same score if he or she were to take the test more than once is extremely high; on a scale where perfect reliability is 1.0, the various components of the GMAT exam range from .89 to .92.
Validity – This is the degree to which GMAT scores predict first-year performance in graduate management education programs. Thirty years of validity studies has shown that the average correlation of GMAT scores and mid-program business school marks is .48 (where 1.0 indicates perfect accuracy of prediction).
Security – The GMAT exam is administered worldwide under strict supervision and security measures, including the requirement of a digital signature, photograph, and fingerprint of all test takers, as well as an enterprise security program to ensure the integrity of GMAT scores and data retained by GMAC.
Accessibility – The GMAT exam is generally offered six days a week at more than 400 testing centers around the world. On behalf of business school members, we want to ensure the greatest number of student candidates have access to the GMAT exam.
Comprehensiveness – The computer-adaptive GMAT exam is designed to measure the specific skills considered to be core requirements for admission to MBA programs, including verbal, mathematical, and analytical writing skills.
The GMAT is clearly becoming more important to Indian students and graduate management programs. Because of this, I hope to hear from you with your questions, comments, suggestions or criticisms concerning the GMAT exam.
David Wilson is president and CEO of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) (www.gmac.com).
Here are some of the issues I plan to address in upcoming columns:
The importance and goals of assessing prospective graduate business school students - Global MBA graduate salary trends
- Women and the MBA
- The evolution and future of the MBA
- Global trends in graduate management education
- Visa issues and their impact on studying/working abroad
Along the way, we will explore many other issues. I also hope to bring you the voices and perspectives of experts, friends, and members of GMAC who can offer their unique perspectives on these and other issues of global importance.
Finally, it is my hope and desire that this column becomes a dialogue, and that I can learn from you as much as I’ll be able to share. To that end, your comments, questions, criticisms and suggestions are welcome.
We have much to explore, and you have much to achieve. I look forward to taking the journey together.
