The way to get into these institutes is the Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT), the computer based online test conducted by Educational Testing Service (ETS) under the aegis of global nodal body Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).
To crack the GMAT, Indian students get coached at GMAT-prep institutes. MBAUniverse asked one of the leading GMAT-prep institute Jamboree about its assessments of the exam, the performance of Indian students in the exam and the kind of services it offers to students. A GMAT specialist with centers in 4 cities in India, Jamboree was founded in 1995 to train and counsel students on all aspects of international management education. Jamboree offers GMAT classroom training and GMAT computer aided training.
Commenting on GMAT, Mr Vineet Gupta, Director, Jamboree, said, “The GMAT has been a fairly standardized test though the years. I believe that it is a great test and really tests students on concepts. It is also a good indicator of a person’s academic and analytical abilities.”
GMAT is attracting a large number of students from India and they are doing well. “According to our estimate, there should be 20,000 Indian students taking GMAT exam every year,” said Mr Gupta. “Indian students perform quite well. Although we do not have data for the whole country, the average GMAT score in Jamboree is close to 640 which is way above the overall average of the test.”
GMAT consists of three main parts: the Analytical Writing Assessment, a Quantitative Section, and a Verbal Section. The difficulty level of questions in the Quantitative and Verbal sections is increasing. Mr Gupta observed: “We notice that the difficulty level of questions is going up. In the last few years, the Quantitative section of the GMAT has become tougher. Whereas earlier Indian students used to concentrate more on the Verbal section while preparing, now they have to focus on both sections.”
When MBAUniverse.com asked Jamboree to talk about the services they provide to students, Mr Gupta said, “Jamboree’s teaching methodology for GMAT combines classroom teaching with actual practice on the computers to simulate examination conditions. We believe that both elements are critical to the preparation.” The classroom teaching at Jamboree is rigorous and involves 66 hours of teaching. The course material is adapted to make it very close to the actual GMAT test.
According to Jamboree, over the last 12 years, they have helped more than 25,000 students achieve their dream of an education abroad.
